What do the RIAA and Trade Shows have in common?
So yesterday, The Pirate Bay sent a message to the RIAA, a pretty loud and clear message. Regardless of how you feel about the freedom of online information, online piracy, or downloading music, the RIAA is going about this all wrong. This isn’t about piracy…it’s about offering the consumer what they want, and how companies try to control how the consumer consumes. Pre the internet, it was easy to control what the consumer consumes.
Ultimately, then and now, it’s all basic economics…Supply and Demand. The supply was limited, so demand was high. Now supply is essentially unlimited. The media industry needs to move faster to change and accommodate the needs of the consumer. We are taking in more information than ever before. In today’s New York Times, the have a great article on how the editorial industry is evolving.
Then there is the PR battle. Back when I worked on the National Hardware Show, we had it our with our partner association. We were determined to offer the customers what they wanted, and the association partner didn’t want change, so we split. The year long campaign was filled with the ex-partner bashing us in the press, calling us names, and even suing (sound familiar). We were determined to solely focus on our customers and offer the best trade show we could. Focus on the value. Focus on the Venue. Focus on the ROI for our customers. In the end, their show only lasted one cycle, and my favorite (as it was in Chicago), was called the Wake on the Lake by many in the industry.
The moral of the story is, don’t fight change. Embrace it. Focus on your customers. Find our what they need and create a product and experience for them, the way they want to consume it.
3 Responses to “What do the RIAA and Trade Shows have in common?”
Leave a Reply
Jaime says this is where you will find opinions and views on B2B marketing and social media. Jaime is a marketing executive working with online marketing and social media in conferences, trade shows, and online communities.
- Stan Phelps: Nice post Jaime. Jeter is a class act. Walk the talk....
- Margaret Core: good reminders!...
- Peter: What this tells me is two things: 1. Brands must always...
- Dan: Jaime, looking forward to having on the team!...
- Sumit: I think they made a huge mistake attacking the likes of Naps...
- Jaime: Thanks for the comment Dean. I wonder if you intentionally ...
Thanks for the article, I like the connection to the RIAA, being a music business student when I was in college.
[...] hear more on my thoughts on what the RIAA and Trade Shows have in common, visit my trade show marketing blog. from → Trade Show ← Marketing is a Scam! Help Me Find a New Job [...]
I think they made a huge mistake attacking the likes of Napster so aggressively and publicly. Doing so only made the kids more determined to download more. They should have been talking to these people behind the scenes and setting up their own online distribution model. By wasting so much time they allowed way too many people the opportunity to download for free and then get used to the idea of always getting free music – had they set up their own Napster rival early enough or worked with them, a sizable proportion of the people that downloaded illegally would have moved in to their pay platforms.
The games business have been very on the ball with this and have had successful digital distribution platforms like Steam for years now. The TV and film industry were lucky enough to benefit from the fact that their digital product (legal or otherwise) required more bandwidth to transfer and much larger file sizes to store than MP3s in the late nineties / early noughties. As a result they got to see how badly the RIAA handled the new world of digital distribution – and thus learn from their mistakes. Platforms like Hulu & iPlayer are a smart move to tap this audience early before they resort to illegal downloads and an easier method to introduce them to paid content.