SpiralDog?
Answer: SpiralFrog
Question: What a bunch of 40 year old bankers, music and marketing executives thinks a teenager thinks is cool?
There has been a ton of press this week on the launch of SpiralFrog; the Economist summarizes thus:
In a challenge to the dominance of Apple’s iTunes in the market for music downloads, Universal Music said it would make its catalogue of ditties available free on a new start-up site, SpiralFrog. At first available in North America, the service will require consumers to watch 90-second advertisements before downloading a tune, which can then be stored for up to six months on a computer (but can’t be burned to a CD).
Obviously I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think this will fly, ‘cool name’ or not (I think even this goes in the ‘trying just a bit too hard category’.) Everything about it smacks of a bunch of middle aged executives and their backers getting together and – looking through their 20th century prism – completely missing the point of what made things like myspace, youtube and even iTunes successful. I can just see the initial pitch: think the Orange film funding parody ads… If they had sent out their press release on April 1st, there is a 50/50 chance that people would have thought it was a spoof. How long until someone does a YouTube video in the Orange genre above parodying them? Here’s a couple bits to any ambitious film-maker to get the script rolling:
[opening scene...pan giant mahogany and glass boardroom on Madison Avenue; 8 40-60 year-old executives in white shirts and ties (suitably diverse for political correctness, including at least two women) sit around the table. One tousled teenager and sullen teenager in a GreenDay t-shirt sits at the end, fiddling with his sidekick and listening to his iPod...] …
{need to fill in absurd brainstorming session leading to concept/business model here}
(ending…) [52 year old white male executive, excitingly waving his reading glasses] “…and we’ll call it ….SpiralToad…no wait, Frog…frogs are cool right? SpiralFrog! It’ll be so wicked!”…[all the executives turn their expectant eyes towards the teenager] “So Jimmy, what do you think?…” [nervous pause...before teenager nods his head vigorously. Executives smile and high-five. Camera pans onto Jimmy's iPod nano screen showing 'American Idiot' playing and at same time soundtrack cuts to 'what Jimmy hears...which of course is Green Day at full blast and they final shot 'through Jimmy's eyes' of celebrating 'silent-movie' executives (drowned out by iPod music)...then fade to short blackscreen SpiralFrog brand shot, end]
Why won’t it work? Good explanation here. I mean what were they thinking??? How many songs do you have on your hard drive? How many songs do you want to download per month/year? How many of the Digital Generation (which one has to assume is their main target demographic) are going to sit through hours of ads per month just to get their music? It’s worse than AM radio: you generally get at least a couple songs before each commercial slot. And why don’t they think the ‘PVR’ problem won’t render their model obsolete? How long is it going to take before some smart 16 year old writes an open-source script that automates the downloads…? What are SpiralFrog’s (advertising) customers – let’s be clear these are their real customers – start wondering about the large number of all night seesions of 200 consecutive downloads between midnight and 7 am? Are the nation’s teenagers no longer sleeping at all? Or are their ads merrily flickering into the void of a million sleeping households? Hey maybe that’s the strategy – if the kids leave the volume on the messages will be subliminally transmitted to them in their sleep… Right.
