Once again, we said this at the head of the previous post, but in case you’re coming in afresh… We’ve just finished a series of three social media training or awareness-raising sessions for the good people at BBC Scotland, in the wonderful studios on Pacific Quay. These sessions were to some extent a remix of the sessions we did in London during the winter and spring earlier this year (which we blogged) but of course, times move on so there a whole load of new stuff in there too. So we’re going to our notes and resources up here both as follow up to the attendees and as – just possibly – a useful bit of “stuff” for the casual reader (with the obvious caveat that this is NOT an essay, but the basis of a presentation and workshop.

The Boss, NIN and a new relationship with your consumers

We kicked off by discussing the different strategies employed in the business of conversing with their audience taken by two very different rock musicians, Bruce Springsteen and Nine Inch nails’ Trent Reznor. You certainly can't rely on the old ways of doing things, that's for sure. Having already run foul of the blogosphere by releasing his new album Working on a Dream as a Walmart exclusive, it seems that in the week after playing the Superbowl, watched on TV by 90 million Americans, Bruce Springsteen managed to flog just 100,000 units of the album. (And it’s not just poor old Bruce. Remember, U2 opened up the Grammys with their new single Get on Yer Boots without managing to get it into the top 100 songs on the iTMS. And all this against a background of 2008's most talked about about album - G'n'R's 17-year-hiatus-ending Chinese Democracy charting only at No 3 on its US release.)

As for Reznor, well, this presentation at the MidemNet conference earlier this year by business associate Michael Masnick tells the story better than we can.

The really essential thing here, though, is the different tone and approach used by each of these rock musicians when talking to the public - their fans. This brief slide show walks through some of the points made above but crucially ends with an email newsletter to his fans from Reznor and an "open letter" to the New York Times, apparently from Springsteen, addressing his Walmart error.

Justin then talked everyone through two sets of slides:

Losing Control illustrates the development of conversational approaches by broadcasters, from one to many, through one to many with a small back channel, through the viral approach and ending with the uncontrollable and difficult to scale up conversational approach.

Who are you and what are you selling? illustrates Double Shot’s views of different “families” of brands. We stress that these are our observations; there's no science in this and some of our attendees disagreed with some of our conclusions, not least about the brand structure of the Beeb.

We then briefly looked at how the advent of digital communications technology had seriously confused this already confusing relationship between customers/audience and brands, looking at some specific examples of BBC brands in new relationships to the audience.

Specifically, we asked about the ways in which multi-platform, on demand, and "additional" or user-generated content had changed this relationship.

The examples we used included...

The Wire. Yes, "those in the know" know it as an HBO show... but what about an audience who knows it only through the BBC's broadcasting of it? What about the people who write letters to the BBC to complain about it, or to praise it?

Mock the Week. Do you know what BBC channel it's on? Out attendees, between them, watch it on the iPlayer, on Virgin or Sky+, on Dave, over Torrents (naming no names). Some people even watched, well, on BBC2. You get the picture. (And if you need to "the picture" out - just look at that website; who's behind that?!)

Or here's 1Double Shot favourite, Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who, earlier this year,  did a special for her Radio 1 show about the emerging electronic music scene in Los Angeles and San Francisco: West Coast Rocks.

Here's the tracklisting on the Radio 1 site.

Here's a video she made while there, now on the BBC's Introducing site.

But where's the show, dammit? Well of course it's not there - thanks to the 7-day only window catch up. This is what we call the Seashell: when the evidence of a broadcast outlives the show itself.

Of course, it's even more fiendishly complex than that, because you but know where to look, you can download the show, from such sites as Core News - which you have to know, was just one among many.

And what about Stephen Fry's famous twitter feed?

Let alone mash-ups like this University Challenge-meets-South Parl pro-Cannabis video:

Or even straightforward user-uploaded BBC material like this classic Youg Ones University Challenge sketch:

Unpick this lot then. What is the BBC brand? Channel? Talent? Strand? Show? Genre? The BBC itself?

We have no definitive answers here; we're just convinced that it's immeasurably more complex than many are prepared to admit... and only going to get more so.

Enjoy!
Simon