session 10

In Brand Digital, Allen Adamson explores how successful brands deal with the changes that have been brought by the digital media. In many ways, the empowerment of consumers by digital media (e.g., blogs, tweets, facebook) has meant companies have to be aware that consumers with digital literacy are no longer voiceless. They can express their opinion about products and services and their opinion can spread in a manner we have never seen before. As Adamson says, when a consumer whispers a rumor, “it has the potential to turn into a verbal tsunami.” As David Kirkpatrick says in the Foreword to the book, there is one good explanation for why the relationship between consumers and businesses has changed. That explanation is about technology. According to this view, as digital media become cheaper and more powerful, consumers gain more communication power. Statements such as, “Consumers can track and monitor corporate behavior with the same speed and fluidity that corporations can track consumer behavior,” reflects a fundamental shift in “market power” made possible by digital media.  

Brand Digital is the kind of book I had never read before. It is written by someone who wants to help marketers understand how they can manage their brands in the digital age using digital media.  Although I am used to reading academic books, this one talks about issues that I have experienced directly. I have seen how a company like amazon.com uses the digital media to communicate with me (and how reviews by consumers are used by the company). I have seen individual use blogs, MySpace and even Facebook wall posts to communicate thoughts and feelings about a brand. Adamson talks about how the ability in “digitally listening” and “digitally watching” consumers has significantly improved the quality of insights the brand organizations employ in coming up with branding and marketing strategies.  One thing I did not expect in this book was a useful list of terms as “a digital language.”     



Book reviews posted by consumers are used by many parties involved.

Session 9

This week’s readings all discuss the extra textual materials that have become available because of the new digital technologies (e.g., DVD). Brookey and Westerfelhaus discuss how DVD format allows a new viewing experience. This experience is new for media theory (classis film theory) that assumes films are consumed in darkened theaters and in the presence of strangers. Brookey and Westerfelhaus  (2002) argue that the extra textual content makes it possible for producers to direct the viewing experience in specific ways. Using Fight Club’s “extra text” present in the film’s DVD as an example, they show how such extra text works: in this case, the text has been constructed to prevent the audiences from interpreting the homoerotic components of the film as representing homosexuality.

In another study, Brookey and Westerfelhaus (2005) show how the termination of a business partnership between two important media companies could have been anticipated by analyzing the content of the extra textual materials in DVDs.  In this case, they demonstrate how Pixar excluded Disney from such textual materials at the same time that they promoted themselves as a unique “corporate auteur” with the talent to produce what Disney would like to have (content popular with families).  They also examine how such materials are commercial factors for these companies.  

Parker and Parker also discuss the extra textual materials accompanying the release of films on DVD. They are interested in how these texts impact the experience of the film by audiences. Additionally, they discuss how these texts allow critical commentary and how audiences might react or appreciate such commentary.

All of these studies in their own ways show various implications of the extra textual materials made available by the new digital technologies. One of the most interesting aspects of these studies in my opinion is the way they reveal the importance of such technologies for scholarly analysis. The notion of authorial intention, for example, is much easier to discern and discuss with such technologies.