On Operational Media

In this piece I’ll dissect some thoughts on the importance of incorporating media into one’s business as a tool for business development. Particularly in the modern world which utilizes infective digital media as a method of sharing ideas, building a strong media production and media management team can help what otherwise might be an unsuccessful product succeed. Well made media has the potential to take a good idea, or even a moderately good idea, and turn it into a successful product.

We’ll first look at the importance of sharing information of accomplishments and successes for personal and societal benefit, and ways in which this might be manipulated. Next, how taking advantage of media during research and development can help improve the product by opening the conversation to a world of users, some experts and some laymen. Finally, the importance to creatives of utilizing media in order to avoid falling into the “artist’s trap”.

Records for the World

Writing and media are intimately linked. Writing has always been and continues to be an effective method for understanding and sharing knowledge between human beings. This has advantages on a personal level, an interpersonal level, a social level, and an evolutionary level. Aside from these benefits, media has the ability to immortalize ideas, and human history has remembered those who apply this.

Students who take notes have higher information retention than those who merely listen, thus yielding a personal advantage through writing. Businessmen from ancient Mesopotamia to modern high-rises make sure that deals are “written in stone” (either metaphorically or literally) to ensure accuracy and to alleviate future disagreement, thus yielding an interpersonal advantage through writing. At its founding, a government writes the ideals which will help shape their direction in a constitution to ensure that their shared ideas perpetuate and are available for review, thus yielding a social advantage through writing. The scientific/higher education community uses peer reviewed and published documents to share accurate research for current and future generations to build on top of, thus yielding an evolutionary advantage through writing.

These advantages are reasons why this blog exists, as I dictate in The Stele. As the ancient ruler Hammurabi created his own stele to serve as a guide for the society he built and ruled, my stele serves as a guide for the information which is laid down in this blog. But back to the records for the world…

When Christopher Nolan released Inception in 2018, it was received as the fourth-highest grossing film of 2010. Preceded by such movies as The Dark Knight and The Prestige, Nolan’s reputation has been succeeded by Interstellar, Dunkirk, and two installments of the DC series (though the DC films were fantastic, they ended up being relatively low grossing compared to the films released during the same period by the Marvel franchise). His style exhibits a mastery of the use of film as a medium for communication.

When Julius Caesar returned to Italy in 49BC, he had accumulated a reputation amongst the Roman people as an incredible version of the ideal Roman citizen. In his commentaries The Gallic Wars he paints an incredible picture of success which, when released to the public, would be the ancient Roman equivalent to a film release of an Oscar-winning size. These episodic commentaries did not just win Caesar fame in Rome, they won him a place in history as more than just a conqueror, but as a master of early literature and media. He holds a triple seat in the hall of fame of western civilization as a conqueror, as a master of his modern war and, most importantly, as a writer/scholar.

Acknowledging that there may be great exaggeration regarding numbers of foes defeated in order to sensationalize his own success and further his political career, Caesar created history by writing it. Even today literary scholars and historians alike study this writing and rely upon it as mostly accurate historical record. Documentation through media immortalized Caesar and his expeditions.

Vast Improvement through Vast Criticism

The beginning of writing has been hailed as a significant moment in human evolution. The manifestation of an abstract idea into the physical world by translating it to sharable writing has various progressive benefits. Besides the reasons above regarding media as records for the world, media serves as a way for accessing an audience capable of providing critical feedback. Good product design relies on feedback from the community, and media establishes the initial side of that.

The academic community takes advantage of the feedback loop through the process of peer review. As researchers perform experiments and reach conclusions, they share their findings with a circle of peers. This circle provides perspective and intuition to determine the validity of findings and the feedback is returned to the researcher. This feedback loop investigates the opinion of professionals to improve the conclusion.

Product designers take advantage of this feedback loop by forming focus groups. These review a product or idea and provide an opinion. In well-prepared cases, the design team prepares specific questions based on elements of design in question. This type of feedback loop investigates the opinion of intended users to improve the design.

By documenting and sharing various steps of the research and development process, one can invite criticism. The improvement-minded creator will take the critique and make changes based on the feedback. Depending on the range of feedback and individuals from which it’s coming, some input may be disregarded but, across the board, a greater range of feedback will lead to greater improvement.

If you build it… they might not come

This section stems from my scorn for the phrase “if you build it, they will come” with regards to marketing and will mostly pertain to those in any creative endeavor. This supposes that any worthy creation will be revealed to the world just by nature of being created. I heartily disagree with this analysis from personal experience and historical record. Making your work known (through media) can be a make or break on a career pivot or project success.

As an artist, it is often easy to feel the urge to “shut up and work” with the mentality of the artist finding purpose in the work itself. How many thousands of artists have existed under this mindset and fallen into the “artist’s trap”? Perhaps the most famous of these is Vincent van Gogh who lived and died in relative anonymity. His posthumous recognition is an incredible example of the importance of this notion.

To solve this dilemma, the artist should expand their skill set into the world of media by practicing documentation. Alternatively, they could establish a relationship with someone skilled in operational media to assist with the documentation process. This not only provides a solution to sharing the artist’s work, but expands the potential audience into the media specialist’s audience as well. This takes advantage of overlapping networks to share the process of creation and the final product.

The artist taking advantage of a media specialist’s services should be aware that their vision may not be perfectly shared 100% of the time. Sharing details about the process can be often difficult, and just as difficult is ensuring that the media reports on pertinent details. Artistic details are frequently overlooked by a representative of the media without experience in the artist’s niche. Communication is important.

Conclusion

Writing is a skill and should be practiced as often as can be tolerated. Allying oneself with other media creators can yield magnificent advantages in terms of awareness and network expansion.