More on 'content'

Last week I wrote a post about the concept of 'content': I argued that while the concept has its uses (especially within the media industry), it is not always useful when designing consumer propositions. After some more thought, some reading and some good conversations, here is a different take on the same idea:

• First: We never want things (e.g. a burger); we want to do things (e.g. eat a burger). Products are not things, they are practices.

• Second: We rarely want to do something we've never done before--because, without the experience, we can't imagine the satisfaction. We want to do things we've done before, or which in some sense are of the same kind as something we've done before.

• Third: On the rare occarions when we do something that is entirely new (and this is never completely so) we are distracted by the oddity of the situation and have trouble noticing anything else.

• Fourth: Because our desires are for actions and not for things, they are always specific and rooted in some context. I don't just want to eat a burger: I want to eat a nice greasy burger in Barbella, or at home watching TV, with my girlfriend. This is desirable because I've done it before, or I've done something similar which makes this prospect desirable.

• Fifth: our desired actions always involve a desired mood, and this is never just a generic sense of 'happiness' or 'satisfaction': it is based on a mood we've experienced before.

Now apply this to media consumption:

I never want a movie: I want to watch something exciting, over a beer, because I'll be on my own. I don't want to watch it on my mobile phone, commuting, or at a desk.

I never want 'information': I want to read the Independent, on my way to work, while sipping coffee. I have the habit of doing this, and more generally I have the practice of reading newspapers. As a child I didn't; I learned it from others (all tastes are 'acquired').

As consumers we sometimes forget all this and think that the 'content' is what we want. Thus we find ourselves watching movies on mobile phones, or reading newspapers on PDAs. But once the novelty wears off, we realise that the experience is not the same. The new way of 'accesing' content is a whole new practice which we may or may not learn to enjoy; and even if we do, it may or may not replace the old one.

Addmittedly, this applies better to some types of content than to others. 'Informational' content is generally less sensitive to moods. A stock trader just needs his information delivered in a timely and convenient fashion so he can do his work; how this delivery happens is secondary there. But experience and mood is important for some informational genres: news consumption, for example, is largely about mood: feeling 'in the loop', 'connected' to a live presenter, not being 'in the dark', etc.

To say that the challenge in the on-demand world is to make content available anywhere and anytime, --without regard for the experiences in which consumption takes place, or the traditions within which these experiences exist-- is akin to saying that in the future food will be delivered via intravenous injection and tablets. To be sure, some people do need intravenous injection, and vitamin tablets are widely used as a supplement to meals. Likewise, chemically pure, disembodied information will always have some role (e.g. a breaking-news alert on a mobile phone, or a stock-market ticker), but to say that this will be the character of media consumption would be to extrapolate wildly.

The design challenge in the on-demand world is not to devise new ways of delivering or finding content. It is to design new practices that are not possible in linear media. These will involve old-style linear content, new types of content, and new ways of putting it all together (i.e. aggregates) that will themselves be forms of content.

Comments

[Andrew Scott]

Interesting ideas, but I think you may be as guilty of extrapolating wildly.

First - people sometimes do want "things". The easiest example is probably when people want more money. Another one is when people want good health.

Second - people often want to do things that they haven't done before. A couple of examples are winning the lottery and making love.

Sometimes people want content.. the name of a pop-star's new baby, the current direction of a stock, the outcome of a trial, the weather forecast for tomorrow, the colour of the new black, etc. They don't mind how they get it, but there is value in simply knowing.