Speak to anyone working in social media and they'll tell you that fans are your greatest promoters. They'll babble on about “cultivating brand ambassadors” and “targeting key influencers”, but really what they mean is that when someone loves your brand, that's the best kind of advertising you can have.
The fan-created content does not detract from the original, but adds to it.
Tallulah Habib, social media activist, ITWeb
It's the kind of advertising that is free and automatically directed at the correct target audience. And it has one up on all traditional forms of advertising, because it comes from a source that people trust, not a talking head on the TV or a banner advertisement.
This kind of advertising is so valuable, in fact, that some brands - Land Rover, for example - actually pay fans to do their promotion, to use their products and to show those products to their friends.
Yet, while many brands find fans so valuable that they'd pay for them, is it not strange that in the entertainment industry, fans are continuously extorted and punished?
Take, for instance, the approach of copyright holders on YouTube. By all means, they should ask the video site to take down content that is dumped straight 'as-is' onto the free channel. That's piracy, plain and simple. But what of the fan-created content - what Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor and the man behind the Creative Commons movement, calls “Remix” content?
In his book on the subject (aptly titled “Remix”), Lessig speaks about how young people cut up pieces of video and music as a way of understanding the world and sharing opinions on it. He says it harkens back to a time of shared oral culture, where we'd tell each other stories and take part in their creation. His examples include videos that make deep political and social statements.
While one may argue that fan-created content is nothing near as noble, I think some of his key points stand.
Zealots abound
Fandom is a hub of passion. Anyone who's ever visited an online fan community will know just how deep that passion goes.
Dedicated fans take their devotions seriously, and will spend hours debating fine plot points, crafting alternative realities for the characters and producing terabytes of art to express their feelings about that which they love.
It's beautiful to behold. Beautiful enough to convert almost anyone into a follower! Now, as a creator of a product - a book, a show, a movie or even a song - isn't that exactly who you want on your side?
The fan-created content does not detract from the original, but adds to it. A simple movie or TV series can become a rich tapestry of media, from paintings and drawings to stories that reach beyond the confines of the plot and re-imagine its universe. A book can become illustrated, its plot extended, its life immortalised. A song can get a dozen free music videos.
Short-sighted
We have the technology to make it possible and the technology to share it. No one will put more love and care into promoting a show through poignant videos or artworks than a fan. No one will be more dedicated to sharing that work without asking for anything in return. What is this if not the famed brand ambassadorship? The free, targeted and trusted advertisement?
A music video taking a song from one artist and clips from a television show by someone else promotes both of them. For free. I personally have whole playlists of songs that I first discovered through these means. I have become interested in TV shows because I saw amazing videos about the characters. People have made money from me not because of cinemas or DVD specials or the radio, but because something I saw on YouTube took my breath away.
It breaks my heart then, when I see the message: “This video contains content from X studio, which may have blocked it on copyright grounds.”
It makes as much sense as a billboard in the middle of Sandton Drive being blacked out with the words: “You aren't allowed to see this advertisement.” No one wins, everyone loses.
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