Book launch: Futuretainment by Mike Walsh, Sydney, 1 December 2009

2 December 2009

Last night Mike Walsh launched his new book Futuretainment – which looks at the future of media and marketing – at the Hotel CBD in Sydney. He spoke with technology journalist Brad Howarth, and offered a few of his insights into advertising and marketing, particularly in Asia, together with a couple of trend predictions for 2010.

People born after 1994 are digital “naturals”. They have never lived in a world without web browsers.
“Naturals” have never known a time when they cannot access decent content somewhere online.
Content producers and creators (copy-righters) such as musicians are effectively marketers.
Musicians, for example, encourage “content theft”… they don\’t make revenue from recorded music, that comes from sales of merchandise, live performances, etc.
Social networks drive TV programming. People increasingly watch what is forwarded to them (videos, links to videos).
Viewers are deciding what they will watch, not the TV networks.
How will content producers make money? Become a celebrity… cue Ashton Kutcher and his declaration to become “the next new-media mogul“.
Japan excels at producing content for mobile phones.
The Chinese know how to make money with social networks. QQ, a Chinese variation of Facebook, made US$1 billion last year.
In Korea people watch more TV shows on mobile phones than a television.
Digital consumers in Asia are generally very tech savvy, have access to unlimited bandwidth, and have little regard for copyright.
Ninety per cent of Chinese internet users have broadband, which is considerably faster than that available in Australia.
Augmented reality will put consumers in control by way of real time product and service reviews and critiques.

Originally published Wednesday 2 December 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.