July 13th 1985 will always be etched in my mind.....
.....as the day my parents were late to pick me up from school at the end of term. On the way home they decided it would be a great idea to stop for dinner and then pop in to see some family friends before getting home well after 10pm.
Because of all this I missed the entire Live Aid concert!!!
So imagine my joy when I was lucky enough to get a seat at the Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium a couple of weeks ago.
For all the cynical press about the artist’s carbon “size nines” and the hoo-ha about some of the fruity language, it was actually a very entertaining day and all carried off in the best possible spirit.
What was interesting was that, while I was gyrating with Genesis and marvelling at Madge along with 65k other folks, a staggering 15m video streams were being served to laptops and PCs around the world during the live coverage.
At its height 237k people were watching simultaneously, apparently breaking the record set by Live 8 two years ago.
Other than Madonna, the most viewed acts were the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Shakira, Kelly Clarkson and......erm......Metallica!
Now the burning question is why? Why didn’t everyone watch it on TV? Why boot up the notebook when there’s a bigger screen in the living room or pub showing exactly the same thing?
The answer is by giving people a choice of platform, we allow users to fit viewing in more easily to their more, and more busy lives.
So you could have watched it in the pub or in a cafe, in the bedroom while the parents watched something else, online while discussing the acts on instant messenger with your mates or searching for CD’s or downloads while the band’s on stage. You could have been checking out their blogs or forums while flicking from gig to gig and goodness knows how many people have been viewing the footage in the two weeks since. 50m+ I hear...
There would have also been some people watching regular TV AND checking out the concert online at the same time.
According to a fascinating study by Yahoo! and Isobar last year called Fluid Lives – 51% of those surveyed admitted to regularly surfing the internet and watching TV at the same time.
Converging platforms are bringing the phrase “anytime, anyplace, anywhere” to life, and as savvy marketers, realising that these choices mean great opportunities to make meaningful connections with consumers is as important as the platforms themselves.
If only the internet had existed in 1985.......at least I got to see Duran Duran this time around!
