The last time he addressed the advertising industry, at a conference in ’93, Mark Kvamme was almost booed off the stage for talking about the Internet. By sharp contrast, there were no hecklers in the audience last week when Kvamme-a partner in Sequoia Capital, Menlo Park, Calif., and chairman of the board of USWeb/CKS, a San Francisco-headquartered marketing communications and Internet professional services company-delivered the keynote address for the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Lecture Series at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Attendees seemed eager to gain his perspective on what figures to be profound changes in the commercialmaking marketplace.
Observing that the way humans communicate is going through a fundamental shift, Kvamme screened a conventional TV spot for Audi followed by its possible future successor. The second commercial contained the same basic scenes showing an Audi glistening through the countryside-but the traditional marketing narrative was replaced by a personalized message, which congratulated the viewer on a recent promotion at work. The ad went on to suggest that the viewer contact a local Audi dealership to get an automobile commensurate with his or her new professional station in life.
Personalized messaging will be a staple of the new media society, said Kvamme, observing that in the future we will be permanently connected from the moment we get out of bed, provided with information ranging from weather reports to personalized television programming based on preferences stored in a database.
"We are going into a world where we are always connected, so we need to develop 24/7 storytellingA Now we do it in :30 spots or in a one hour block; we look at things serially," related Kvamme. "But the younger generation is parallel processing and taking in an unbelievable amount of information."
Clues as to how to format this 24/7 storytelling can be gleaned from the new generation, continued Kvamme, who cited an MTV study of entertainment habits, which showed that teenagers needed more than 24 hours a day to cover all the time they claimed they spent watching TV, going to school, playing with friends, surfing the Web and other activities. Kvamme used his eldest son as an example; the 12-year-old seamlessly switches between and at times simultaneously uses his iMac DV, a laptop, Sega DreamCast and the radio, occasionally doing his homework.
Kvamme noted that the filmmaking exploits of his four children hint at the future of storytelling as production tools become more readily accessible. Deciding to make a home movie about monsters in the backyard, Kvamme’s kids wrote the story, shot the film on their Imac DV camera, edited the material-complete with jump cuts and fades-and then showed it on their iMac. "The creation of stories has been limited to the professionals because the cost of the equipment has been so high; people couldn’t just produce their own movies but it is becoming possible now, with an iMac and DV camera, to create pretty good movies," he said.
"There is a very interesting community being built. Everyone is talking about the future, but none of us can predict what is going to happen. The big pipes are coming and they are going to make the Internet available everywhere right down to a message on the fridge, which tells you when to buy more milk."
But one of the biggest challenges is providing the content in this newly interactive world. "In order to create the same video experience, for say a :30 piece in an interactive environment, you need eight to 32 times more material. You need to create more and more content which is totally unique. We have not yet met the Joe Pytka or the Leo Burnett of the future," said Kvamme.
He also suggests that the production industry "get out of the studio" and start playing with the tools that are already on the market, including putting in a DSL line at home, buying a personal disk recorder such as ReplayTV or Tivo, and a DV camera or an iMac DV.
Kvamme’s keynote served as a prelude to a panel discussion entitled "Creative Opportunities in the New Media Landscape," which he moderated. Joining him were Robert Greenberg, chairman/CEO, R/GA Digital Studios, New York; Myer Berlow, president of interactive marketing for America Online (AOL), Dulles, Va.; Lee Hunt, New York-based VP, media and entertainment, at bicoastal/international Razorfish; and ABC News anchor/reporter Forrest Sawyer.
Greenberg, whose company-after 23 years in business-exited traditional spot production to fully focus on interactive content, noted that "the future film will be two minutes long and 120 minutes wide," explaining that 30 times more material needs to be created to make the interactive experience viable. He echoed Kvamme’s observation that less expensive methods of producing audio and video are becoming available, and need to be cultivated to accommodate the additional layers of content that are required.
"On the street they are not talking about the picture quality or the resolution-they are talking about the fact that the content sucks," said Greenberg. "The screen is in transition; it is important to experiment in narrowband to work out the logistics before shifting to broadband methods."
Although he is not the first to make such a prediction, Greenberg contended that film would not be around past 2010, because of the number of platforms that it needs to be moved across. He said that with the widespread implementation of digital video, a new language will emerge to replace the language of film, which has been in use since the turn of the 20th century. Distribution is also changing from delivery by truck to delivery via a server.
AOL’s Berlow noted that it was a talk by Greenberg years ago that inspired him to shift to the interactive side. He then quipped that after 25 years in advertising as an account person, it was truly a novel experience to now have a room full of creatives and producers actually listen to him. He said that to concentrate solely on storytelling is to miss part of the equation, contending that the priority should be to determine how to create more opportunities.
"I don’t believe the Internet is about storytelling-which is an inconvenient, non-democratic, salient and narcissistic way of getting messages across. To truly communicate means to listen. I don’t want Audi ads stuffed in my mailbox; I want a range of information presented in a convenient easy manner. Consumers have thousands of options. What we have to do is find a more convenient, open way to communicate rather than having targeted messages jammed down our throats," he said.
ABC’s Sawyer countered that reading, writing and telling stories will remain fundamental parts of life. "In the future, there will still be the experience of movies, radio and television but there will also be an exchange of information at a higher level. The Web is a three dimensional architectural world of virtual space and we are currently trying to uncover a story in the same way as we do in the physical world, but we need to look at it differently," he said.
Razorfish’s Hunt stepped in, observing that both speakers were right in that the Web offers push as well as pull technology.
