Top 5 REASONS TO NEVER AGAIN GIVE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS FOR OLYMPICS TO MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIKE NBC AND HOW I USED SETH GODIN’S BOOK MEATBALL SUNDAE TO PROVE IT.

Reason 1. NBC Sucks! Who needs another Olympic Games filled with America’s self indulgent back patting, complete with fawning awe struck commentators. Hey don’t get me wrong, I like NBC, Katie Couric moving from The Today Show was upsetting and I still set my Blackberry to watch ER, I’m just peeved at the blackout of clearly important races to me a Jamaican. They were also races that were some of the most anticipated globally. A fact missed by NBC executives it seem.

Reason 2. The insight, ideas and real world examples within the 14 trends unleashed in Seth Godin’s new book Meatball Sundae, makes the idea of mainstream media owning exclusive rights to events like Olympics seemed, well, old school.

I’ve been reading Seth’s book Meatball Sundae during this Olympic Games season with green highlighter in hand and a neck brace on…insurance policy from all of the damn nodding in agreement that I did on the first read. The book is a slap across the face, a double espresso kind of kick in the butt to us all. Meatball Sundae – Is Your Marketing Out of Sync? is the title of the book and really asks a rhetorical question. What Seth says in 230 pages is, listen people many of you are going down the wrong path right now, things have changed. Further, here are 14 trends you need to get familiar with, scream  WTF and humbly go back to your drawing board. Yeah, it’s that kind of book. 

Now, outside of the fact that I’d love to gift this book to all the J Caribbean Brand and Marketing managers that have frustrated many of my colleagues and me over the past 10 years- h ow is this relevant to NBC’s exclusive rights to the Olympics and why I’m upset about that?

The basic premise of the book is this. How do companies, brands find their place and be successful in this digital age where customers are in control; where technology is now in the hands of many; where trends such as timeshifting; do it yourself;  find it yourself loads of information, loads of choices is only growing. That said.

Follow me to Page 23…and warning I’ll be taking snippets from paragraphs to make a sentence or a point.  On this page Godin says….”the way things are distributed …is changing”. On Page 30…. “ aided by technology the world now acts smaller and works faster,”…are you with me. Ok, now go to page 71 and read about Trend number 2- “Amplification of the voice the consumer and independent authorities”, it covers issues like Why Blogs Matter and Flipping the Funnel. The other two trends to mull over are Trend number 8 – “Infinite Channels of Communication”; Trend 10 “The shifts in scarcity and abundance” and one of the biggies, Trend number 14- “New Gatekeepers,No Gatekeepers”. Nope, I’m saying no more go buy the book and spend a weekend with it and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Back to the Olympics more directly.

Reason 3. When I can get the video of the 100m Men’s Heats thanks to mobile video, the exclusive Caribbean rights holder CMC (see we’re doing not so smart things in the Caribbean too) and the facility of YouTube  – who needs to wait on NBC to show a delayed and ad riddled version of it.

One of the tenets of exclusivity in old school media’s mind is that we, the consumers will only see it on their station at that set time. The trend of time shifting is in full effect globally and throws this out the door. Consumers want what they want when they want and how they want and they will have it no other way. And the only reason why NBC and CMC have exclusive rights to the Olympics coverage it’s because they banned cellphone cams, video cams at the Olympic venues. Don’t they know this is the age of the consumer being in control and no hanging on to exclusive media content contracts will stop that trend.

Reason 4. Does anyone remember 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and how many televisions were slapped, smashed and thrown from balconies across the world because of the glaring, unapologetic, self indulgent coverage of American athletes even when they came 12^th and 14^th.

Reason 5. Citizen Journalism is huge, growing fast and is unstoppable – through blogs, videoblogs, mobile videos,photos etc and I’d love to see more of that for 2012 in London even though ironically, I plan to attend that one. I’d love to see how the United Kingdom Olympic committee could get the world’s population more involved in the games- a sweet spot that has them as both spectators and participators. The cheap, universal digital tools are already in place and the consumers who now rule are using them.

NB: I am looking forward to Tyson Gay eating the collective Jamaican dust of Asafa Powell and Usain Bold this week. Go Jamaica!! They can delay broadcast us but we’re still the fastest nation in the world. Argument done.

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