These days, people expect to get things for free.
They expect to things for free because they should be getting them for free.
I’m not talking about hard goods like cars and clothing, but rather information. Mp3s, video files, newspaper articles: all of these things are nothing more than information that are processed in different ways by the end user. It costs nothing to reproduce them.
However, it costs something to initially produce them. Musicians need to buy instruments and recording equipment, and they spend long hours writing and crafting their songs.
The recent public support for the four founders of The Pirate Bay shows that people aren’t going to give up their ability to get free content that easily (swelling membership in Sweden’s Pirate Party supports this as well). As Mike Masnick has demonstrated time and time again on Techdirt, this kind of model is also capable of supporting musicians (but maybe not the record labels).
Jeremy Wright also spoke about this at the recent Third Tuesday Toronto event. When commenting on the future of advertising, he mentioned that there will probably be more examples of “great content, great conversation” brought to you by a corporate sponsor, rather than “sponsored” posts written by that sponsor. (I’m writing this from memory, so please correct me if I’m wrong about what he said or what he meant).
In the same way that corporation’s might have the opportunity to sponsor “great conversation” in an online environment like Jeremy Wright’s blog network, I think we’ll start to see examples of corporations sponsoring music and other types of art. Fans and the general public will be able to get the music for free, while the artist doesn’t starve to death. Its really a win-win situation.
I think that some people will frown upon this model, and will see it as another way that corporations are manipulating our culture for their own benefit. If that is the case, then these same people
I, however, don’t see this model of corporate sponsorship or patronage as a bad thing at all. I think it will create all kinds of new opportunities for artists in many different mediums to create art.
What are your thoughts on corporate sponsorship?
-Parker Mason
Posted in Communications, Marketing, Social Media, Toronto | 
Tags: Jeremy Wright, Pirate Party, sponsorship, Sweden
6 Responses to “Corporate Sponsorship”
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There are two issues here – one is the raging debate about whether content should be available for free and the other is, who will pay for it? As a proponent of paying people fairly for their creativity (whether it is manifested in the form of a newspaper article, feature movie or hit song), The argument I most often hear is “they’ve been ripping us off for years so why not?” While I think there was definitely a time when it was easier for people like recording artists to make piles of money from the sale of CDs, etc., that doesn’t make it acceptable to steal content now. If people don’t want to pay for content and also reject the idea of sponsored content, just where do they think good content is going to come from?
[...] pitching a digital camera. There’s an interesting article about this phenomenon on a blog, BlogCampaigning, in which corporate sponsorship of a blogger is defined as “great content, great conversation,” [...]
Good Grape, I guess they had their reasons for 1 blogger, not 6. Anyhow, it is a very important move and “the whole world is watching,” as we used to say.
This comment was originally posted on http://www.steveheimoff.com/)“>STEVE HEIMOFF| WINE BLOG
Parker, I agree. As I replied to Tish, this area is very rapidly evolving and we’re all looking into a glass darkly. Or something like that.
This comment was originally posted on http://www.steveheimoff.com/)“>STEVE HEIMOFF| WINE BLOG
“For one thing, why would a non-wine industry corporation sponsor a wine blogger?”
A fair question. Why does Breitling watches sponsor Ming Tsai’s video podcast about food?
This comment was originally posted on http://www.steveheimoff.com/)“>STEVE HEIMOFF| WINE BLOG
Hi Louise -
I agree with you that there are two issues and that I might have gotten them a bit twisted here :)
I don’t think it makes it acceptable to steal content, I just think that there needs to be different business models than just buying CDs or fueling the record industry. Corporate sponsorship is a great alternative, naysayers be damned.