Rockabox Media news feed. Catch our latest announcements and updates as they happen! http://www.rockaboxmedia.com Busy times. We managed the launch of Shutters and blimey, I didn’t expect such a positive response. I don’t think I remember a time in TZ when a format was so well received. Our challenge now is to make it work but the support we’re getting from my old lot down in Victoria is incredible; thank you chaps. Anyhow, campaigns and bits & bobs are wobbling in so there’ll be an update on this soon. That said, we’re going gently as I don’t want to promise anything that won’t deliver. That said, I now recognise that our demo is way out of date already. As soon as we clear a moment we’ll fix it but it’s fair to say that it doesn’t communicate the real benefit of the methodology we’ve created. That’s the interesting bit; the technology came about simply to allow us to deliver it. Time for a new demo. My thoughts at the moment are very much with Torie and the guys at Virgin and Big Pictures. Our Living show launched this week: online episodes with linear TV catch up. Sensibly I was kept far from the mix but it’s fair to say that a lot of energy has gone into this from all parts. Unfortunately the project came together the wrong side of the Shutters launch so we weren’t ready to combine the two but I’m hopeful that this will change for the future. It’s massively rewarding to see the business balancing the content side with the technology piece. My aim with Rockabox is very much to sit it in the middle of online & TV from a content creation perspective but at the same time to be the business that facilitates much greater return to brands, owning the methodology and its associated technology that allows brands to align themselves with content in much more effective ways. Our conversations with brands continue to mature, whether via agency relationships or directly. Thanks to Mike Bayler for his belief in the Rockabox methodology. Smesh…I shall tell you about that one soon. Hope you’re all well. James James Booth Tue, 29th Sep 2009 12:30:00 GMT http://www.rockaboxmedia.com I’ve been thinking more about interruptive experiences on video. Not my inability to watch something without being interrupted, more to do with the consumer and what they might expect. Hot-spotting is flavour of the month it seems; it makes sense to me for brand content where individual elements can be picked out and more found out about them; would work great for B and Q for instance, but I’m not there with it yet for advertising. Having bits light up in a ‘click on me’ stylee seems like it’s trying a bit too hard, and as a solution, can it scale? Anyhow, feel free to tell me I’m wrong. In the office. Chaos but working and blimey it’s nice to have a proper space. As the French would say, we’re varnished; a warehouse in Covent Garden shouldn’t be as easy as this to pick up. BT and builders... a huge thanks to our new neighbours the IAB for letting us pinch their wireless for a few hours while we waited for BT to do what they should have done yesterday. Well done to the Playfire guys on their recent good news. James Booth Tue, 14th Jul 2009 12:30:00 GMT http://www.rockaboxmedia.com Thanks to the lovely people at Harvest Media, we have somewhere to be while we wait for the new office in Covent Garden to finalise. After a fair bit of searching we’ve landed a fine warehouse next door to the IAB on Macklin St from mid July. NMA awards this week. One of the more fun ones to judge; always a good bunch of people there and such a positive attitude. We put together a video for Mike Nutley to help promote the event and we’re going to be filming the night too for next year’s promotion, so if you’re there, beware. It’s rather an exciting time: we’re a few weeks away from the launch of the Shutters format. This has been something I’ve been pondering for a while and not because I had some misplaced desire to step back into the world of rich media; oh no. It’s all very well and good attempting to introduce brands to entertainment concepts online, and they’ve been hugely positive; the problem however was around how they would interface with the content and consumer; what would be the presentation. With the best will in the world, I wasn’t going to promote pre-roll advertising, and nothing else out there did what we needed for extracting the potential from the type of content we were threatening to create. So there was little else for it….. What surprises me is how well the Shutters concept has been received; what I love about it is how it has enabled us to develop an approach to brand marketing that makes complete sense of the core Rockabox remit, that of entertainment. To see major brands react as positively as online publishers is hugely encouraging; for the first time since we kicked off I can really say that we have half a clue about what we’re trying to do now. James Booth Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:30:00 GMT http://www.rockaboxmedia.com Splendid. Being the useless type, the fact that our website has taken rather longer than planned doesn’t seem to have surprised anyone. Entirely my fault for deciding we should do it in house when we’ve been flat out with more interesting projects. For a while I’ve felt the need to explain myself. Why Rockabox? Leaving Tangozebra after the sale was a difficult decision. A few who know me well know why; the important bit today is today and I’m very lucky to have a new bunch of very talented people to confuse the hell out of once again. I’ve always been fascinated by publishing. Having spent many years in and out of most of the online publishers as a supplier, I’ve come to realise that the publisher’s lot is a tough one. Just as online advertising seemed to be delivering the promise of great revenues along came the crash to bugger up budgets. Facebook bouncing in to rob many a lunchtime user and the associated inventory hasn’t helped. Getting those users back requires something special which costs. Catch 22. Equally, brands today are wrestling with how to reach an increasingly sophisticated consumer; intolerant of push marketing, engaged in social media, and almost entirely in control of their media consumption. It’s a brave brand who goes stamping into our private space without offering something of value in return. Anyhow, this conundrum was mashing around in my bonce during the summer of 2007 so I scribbled down the concept of a business whose remit would be about content creation but that the content would be created very much with the idea of benefiting publisher, brand, and user in equal dollops. Well, that was the theory. Meeting Torie was an eye-opener. Suddenly, here was someone who really understood entertainment and seemed to have at least 35 hours in a day during which she would consume the lot. I’ve worked in and out of creative businesses for years but it’s fair to say that I’ve never met anyone who gets the consumer and approaches creative as Torie does, or has such extraordinary enthusiasm for it. So Rockabox happened and as neither of us had a clue about the other’s world we decided to sit back and let it evolve off the back of the countless sessions we put our poor off- and online friends through. I won’t bore you with the detail; there’s an awful lot, but today we feel very good about what we stand for as a business. For us it’s very early days and the last year has been completely about R and D as many of you who’ve humoured us will vouch for. But, out of this is a company that is busy with interesting projects; we’ve created a new piece of technology, off the back of which we’ve spun out a comprehensive marketing methodology that bizarrely seems to indicate fascinating ROI for brands when applied to entertainment and social media. All is nice. I shall apologise now. I’m likely to waffle in these blogs. I doubt I know enough to write anything profound on the state of the media industry at large but I might let the odd moment happen. I might possibly be of a mind now and then to share the ups and downs of my other businesses. I tell myself that there’s method in my investment activity, that at some point they will all sit in a sort of jelly of synergy. The reality is that they are each about the people behind them and their talent, energy and belief, and as such they’re important. That’ll do me for now. Thank you for taking the time to look. James Booth Wed, 17 Jul 2009 09:30:00 GMT