Yesterday, August 1, 2019, MTV celebrated it’s 38th birthday – please enjoy this blog by FCP founder Dan Cohen from the FCP archives, originally posted on August 1, 2011.
It’s the 30th Anniversary of MTV – Oh my.
August 1 is the 30th Anniversary of the launch of MTV. Prior to MTV’s arrival, music was a purely auditory experience. A thing heard on records, cassettes, and on scratchy FM radio. There was no way to connect a face to an artist unless it was on an album cover or you saw the artist live.
Fast-forwarding three decades, the modern artist IS the image. Can you really imagine Beyoncé or Lady Gaga without seeing their faces or remembering their music videos?
Like any child of the 1980s, MTV was a formative part of my adolescence, but reflecting on it now, I see lessons from the seismic shift begun in the 1980s that still resonate for us all as communicators.
Video mattered then. Now even more so.
Today, the video is the undisputed king of communications – in every possible way. Need proof? Internet traffic is dominated by Netflix and YouTube. Smartphones mean virtually everyone carries a video production studio in their pocket. Third graders now create video projects in lieu of book reports.
As a modern communicator, some questions to ask yourself or your organization are,
- Am I using video in a transformative way to reach my target audiences?
- Am I using video to present my organization in a new way or to change opinions about us?
If the answer is no, pick up your smartphone and start looking at the work you do through that lenses – and see what looks different. Think of a way you might transform what you do to make it more appealing to viewers.
Did you know you own your own TV network?
Today, all of us struggle to create consistency, or even near permanence, in the eyes of our key audiences. Social media tools (YouTube and others) and our own organizational websites now give us the ability to broadcast directly to folks that opt-in to receive our messages. We now own our own TV network, just like MTV, and have a window to climb into our audience’s minds.
Need proof? I randomly selected Sierra Club. It has its own YouTube channel with 1.5 million views and 1,800 subscribers. These 1,800 comprise an audience that has “subscribed” and Sierra Club knows they can reach each time they post a video. The viewers can then take the video and repost it on Sierra Club’s behalf across social media. Sierra Club has their own broadcast network…and you can too.
Tap into something universal
Successful pop music taps into universal themes like love and loss. So too, does powerful storytelling. To successfully engage our target audiences, we can tap into these universal themes.
What are the universal themes of your work?
- Do you help the little person take on the big challenge?
- Do you identify new ways to solve old problems?
- Are you bringing forth old wisdoms to solve modern-day problems?
- Do you have heroes and villains?
Once you have identified these themes, help your target audiences visualize them. It is not enough to tell them anymore, you need to show them.
One of the great modern day practitioners of this is The Story of Stuff Project. They take problems that seem impersonal or distant, and make them real and immediate through tapping into a universal desire to “do something” even when it seems like we cannot. They tell these stories in highly compelling ways and provide opportunities for their target audiences to get engaged. Seeking and telling these stories is simply part of the organization’s DNA.
Is it part of yours?