Published in Canadian Bookseller, Volume 3, 2007:
     “Get out of the sandbox. Use your imagination. Get more out of your authors.” These were the final words of Terry McBride’s presentation at BookExpo Canada on June 8.     He was one of three experts in different fields who shared eye-opening ideas at the panel discussion “Thinking Outside the Book..” McBride is CEO of Nettwerk Music Group of Vancouver, which manages such artists as Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, Sarah McLachlan and Stereophonics.
     “People are still stuck in the sandbox and fighting over space in the sandbox,” he declared. He then asked who in the audience had ever used Napster or made a copy of a tape or CD. Seeing the upheld hands, he said “Everyone has broken the copyright law regarding music. You can’t legislate or litigate behaviour. You can only monetize behaviour.” For those unfamiliar with the new use of this word, which seems to have grown with the popularity of social media, “monetize” has come to mean “make money from.”
     Speaking of his own company, McBride added poetically “In 2003 we left the sandbox and went to the beach where the tide washes the beach clean every night.”   Using their imagination and following their intuition, they came up with Lilith Fair, an all-female tour.
     “It was the most successful tour in the music industry,” McBride stated. “It lasted three years.”
Get the Most Out of IP
     He then gave a couple of examples of how his artists have gotten the most out of their intellectual property, which he calls IP. He pointed out that artists prefer to create new works than to manage the rights of work they’ve already produced. Part of his business is helping artists do just that, while looking after their IP.
     McBride pointed out that Barenaked Ladies have a direct relationship with their audiences and fans. “They have tens of thousands of people willing to do PR and promotion for them.”
     He later explained “It’s not about selling records or CDs, it’s about selling music. A CD has 12 songs yet a Barenaked Ladies CD has 29 songs done many different ways, such as in studio, live, acoustic and others. There are over 300 different pieces of IP. This band is simply allowing fans to consume whichever way they want rather than only being able to buy a CD.”
     In the BookExpo panel discussion, he said “I’m not in the music business, I’m in the emotive or behavioural business.” He added, “It’s about the song. You have to create a universal story. The value is the emotion. We all have songs that transport us back to a particular time.”
     Avril Lavigne was his second example. She appeals to 14 to 18-year-old girls, he said, and she has a huge Asian fan base.
     “Others wanted to control Avril’s intellectual property,” he explained, “but she still controlled her likeness.” They used a form of Japanese comics to create a character that looks like Avril, added music and made it able to be viewed on a phone.
     “Here was an alternative compelling way to combine music, graphics and a great story in a format tailor-made for mobile phones,” he outlined later. “This was a way of creating IP that was not owned by the record label and was monetizing the behavioural habits of her consumers worldwide as this was translated into many different languages.”
     He then listed some guiding principles for his company’s work on this project. “Live in a world of imagination. You can get the episode on your phone. Let’s make this about the fans. Fans can make their own stories. The crowd is the source of future stories. Tens of millions of kids have seen it.”
Resist the Usual
     Terry O’Reilly, writer and director for Pirate Radio & Television of Toronto, was the second panelist to speak. “Marketing is critical. This is the age of choice. The number of TV and satellite radio channels is beyond paralyzing, it’s gone into the stupefying. Resist the usual in marketing. Our customers are time starved. They don’t have time to hunt for you. You have to break through the clutter just to get noticed. You have to connect emotionally with them. Talk about your product so people feel it in their gut.”
     O’Reilly offered specific advice about books. “Every category has its clichés,” he began. “What’s the cliché for advertising books? The book cover and blurbs from readers. You have to surprise people. Move away from the comfortable. Go in the opposite direction. It takes magic to surprise an audience.”
     He then gave an example of one of his ad campaigns, involving a tiny brewery that wanted to launch a new beer.
     “Beer stores today look like Chapters with twist tops,” he said to widespread laughter. “This was to be a beer for the people of Maine, not for tourists. We wondered how do we talk to the residents of Maine without having the tourists hear it?” More laughter.
     Their ad angle was that there was only enough of this beer for the people of Maine. They devised a code noise, a distinct whistle, which became a secret message advising of a new batch of beer.
     “We developed a series of radio ads,” O’Reilly continued. “Some ads didn’t mention the beer’s name at all. We had ads for fictitious businesses and then would have the secret whistle. People started to whistle this in public. Sales went through the roof. The client resisted advice not to use this ad campaign. It surprised people. They connected with it.”
     O’Reilly then offered his observations regarding the marketing of books.
     “I am your dream customer. But I have to read a review or see an ad. It’s the only way to find out what’s new. And all book ads look the same. No publisher talks to me. Why not send me updates? What about great book trailers? Tease me. Where are you? I’m easy.”
     His second example was a one-second ad for the Guinness Book of World Records.  It was in Norwegian. The ad consisted of the sound of a stopwatch beeping, a voice saying “Guinness Book of World Records!” and a rim shot sound effect.
     “The reason it was successful,” O’Reilly elaborated later, “was because it was so daring, so surprising and not only did it tell you the name of the product, it created an entry in its own book, as the world’s shortest radio ad. Quite an achievement for a commercial that was .9 seconds long.”
     His final advice to the book industry was to find the magic. “You’re not in the book business. You’re in the business of transporting me on a wonderful journey. Your market isn’t booksellers, it is book readers. Tell me something I don’t know. Go beyond where others go.”
 Collaborate, Customize
     The final panelist was Anthony Williams, vice president and executive editor for New Paradigm of Toronto. He is also the author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.
     “Wikinomics is a traditional book about non-traditional forces,” he began. “This is the age of participation. It is changing every sector of the economy. Things like Second Life, eBay, MySpace.com, flickr. There is mass collaboration. It’s not just Wikipedia. There are forces driving collaboration. And with Web 2.0 the tools are more accessible.”
     Williams added that the first generation of the Web was all about publishing online brochures, but now it’s about the creation of content and collaboration.
     “There’s a ‘net generation,” he said. “We now have the first generation of children to grow up interacting with and using technology. They’re comfortable with computers. ‘Net generations love choices. They like customization, speed, entertainment. There are 88 million young people coming into the market. We’re seeing the democratization of content creation.”
     Williams said that bloggers collectively have more traffic than CNN does on its site. The music industry has seen the rise of the listener/artist. People can now remix music and share it with friends. Some musicians encourage this, Williams pointed out, saying that it can create community. He suggested that newspapers are facing citizen journalism.
     “Newspapers have declining circulation,” he said. “You can read the news online, and there are other places to advertise.”
     As for books, he observed “There is incredible competition, especially for non fiction. The 21^st-century book is digital, and accessible from many devices. It’s one book in many forms. People want a book to be searchable by words, images, sounds. People want true multimedia books that engage the five senses.”
    He continued with “A book is not an island. It’s connected to other books through links and tags. It’s multidimensional. Readers are becoming producers. They’re called prosumers. Readers are the ones who create links and tags. The new books will be like Lego books. Components can be recombined with others.”
     Williams described future books as containing geospatial awareness. “A book could give a tour of the physical world with all of human knowledge. It’s a platform for learning, collaboration, composition and innovation where everyone can participate. And it should be customizable to let people get only the things of interest to them.”
By Gloria Hildebrandt
Gloria Hildebrandt writes for magazines and organizations out of Orchard House. She can be reached through gloria@ohouse.ca.