Surviving in a reality-show world
June 12, 2006 | 12:00am
Vancouver, CANADA – One of today’s revered communications icons, Mark Burnett, addressed the general opening session at the 2006 International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) worldwide conference, which this writer attended together with over 1,400 delegates from 40 countries.
Burnett is more popularly known as the TV producer who pioneered the reality TV phenomenon with his hit shows Survivor and The Apprentice. He captivated his audience with his life story and refreshing look at how media and reality TV have raised the bar of audience expectation and participation in the business of TV programming.
Ten years ago, if you were looking for candidates to vote off the island, Burnett might have made your short list. After distinguished service in the British military, he became a nanny, worked in an insurance office, and then sold T-shirts at Virginia Beach. But Mark Burnett is more than a survivor, and now he’s one of the select few who can call Donald Trump directly and say, "You’re fired!"
Truly, Burnett is the hottest producer in international TV today. Entertainment Weekly named him one of the "Top 101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment," he’s a featured business leader in Variety’s "A Tradition of Trendsetting," and was included in Advertising Age’s "Top 100." He has also authored four books and served two terms on the board of directors of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Burnett, a self-confessed fan of mythical scholar Joseph Campbell, declared that a lot of his work is based on Campbell’s books: The Power of Myth and The Hero With a Thousand Faces, among others. Both of his globally acclaimed shows take the uneasy feeling of exclusion to a level of death, like when you’re voted out, or when the torch goes out. It’s something akin to not being invited to a party, or being the last person chosen to be part of an organizing team. Worse, it’s like being killed. These are emotional connections that are common to every person unless you have no awareness.
Production elements play a critical role in Burnett’s opuses. In Survivor, for example, contestants go past blue lighting on a long pathway, disappearing into the cobalt blue light with eerie, funeral-like music when voted off the show. Or, in moments of triumph and resurrection, a warm orange hue, the color of life, dominates the TV screen. These are the emotional hooks that effectively arrest the viewers’ interest, kept on a subliminal, psychological level.
Reality TV, Burnett averred, is all about mind control, where situations and sequences are shot using mood-led, foreboding, and dark lighting. His color and lighting choices and the meanings they evoke are parallel to events like Winston Churchill meeting his men in darkened places to plot out their next move during World War II, or Adolf Hitler staging his rallies long after the sun set, or the Klu Klux Klan doing its thing in the dead of night. In his shows, anybody who comes out of the dark becomes the winner.
Burnett’s IABC presentation did not include sexy bodies bearing tiki torches, back-stabbing aspirants, bug-eating wannabes, or naked, overweight hikers (oops!), but it was a refreshing look at today’s new media. With great pride, he revealed how the unscripted reality television genre revolutionized the entertainment business. He explained the impact of this shift on the way businesses communicate, and explored how organizations can face up to fast-growing audience demands and expectation of constant innovation and its active role in business decisions and communications. Burnett’s session made the conference delegates discover how the lessons of Trump’s boardroom can make one a survivor in corporate boardrooms.
In Burnett’s book, there are four types of audiences: The "OK, I will buy it" viewers who lap up anything that the idiot box offers; the "Let me see what you have to offer" people who scrutinize what you present before they buy in; the "Hold my hand" types described as passive onlookers who need to be led; and the "Attack me, babe" individuals, mostly males, whose testosterone levels are constantly hungry for agitation. Obviously, Burnett’s highly rated, award-winning productions are primarily targeted to the last category, where the display of macho power, even among women participants, becomes a vital ingredient in getting people hooked and habitually glued to the program.
What’s the future of reality shows? Burnett opined that its next home will be the Internet, where primetime will shift from its traditional definition to a 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. schedule (oh, yes, standard office hours). Audiences will now have the opportunity to watch their reality programs at their desks or laptops in the comfort of their office cubicles (assuming, of course, that they have nothing else to do or their bosses aren’t looking). Burnett has started work on such a show, called Gold Rush, an online reality series he is producing with America Online (AOL) as its first media partner. CBS, the main carrying network, has agreed to participate in a deal that will involve cross-media, cross-promotion, and cooperation for advertising sales.
"The companies described a scenario in which game players view CBS TV shows and the accompanying advertising, searching for ‘clues’ that will help them move forward in the game. CBS won’t alter the content of programming to facilitate game play, but will instead give the producers advance looks at shows so that they can incorporate existing elements. CBS may also provide celebrities or show-related content to enhance the online game experience," Burnett detailed.
"The game will take place both online and in the real world as contestants pursue stashes of ‘hidden treasure’ across the USA. Clues will be seeded around the AOL network, including on AOL.com, AIM.com, Moviefone.com and MapQuest.com," Burnett added. The companies are working to sign other media partners in radio and print, but, as Burnett explained, "CBS is the exclusive television participant. Print publications might include AOL siblings in the Time Warner network."
The business of television programming, according to Burnett, is largely a critical collaboration. It always comes back to creating great content that people like. It relies on good and interesting ideas. "We, however, shouldn’t be so full of ourselves as to believe we can reject the integration of advertisers’ products into content, which is a necessary tool for the networks to remain profitable," he emphasized. Having said this, Burnett warned, "It’s a mistake to create programming designed specifically for integration. Anybody who creates content specifically aimed at focusing attention on the advertising within a show will fail. The very thing that works is you are watching for the fun and enjoyment of the program, and hopefully staying through the commercial messages." Thus, advertising integration should seamlessly flow with the program content, and definitely, the great creative challenge is how to organically and cleverly put them together.
In a free market economy, integration of advertising and program content will be the name of the game. Relevant and creative opportunities for advertisers must be evident or they will not support programs. In the end, the commercial TV networks exist to sell products. Shows are produced to air commercials. In truth, Burnett commented, "Writers, producers, and directors are there to attract people to watch commercials. You cannot look at the purity and integrity of content without recognizing that reality. We need artists to create content that works, and these artists need to be reasonable about allowing products to be integrated. What does it matter if a show has a can of soda that has actually paid to be on the table?"
Burnett added, "In the end, the truth is that anyone making TV shows who truly believes at least part of their function is not creating a place for ads is deluded. Now, more than ever, the networks need new ways of getting advertisers’ messages to viewers and the networks are not our enemy. They pay the wages. They support the economy. We all work in commercial TV to assist companies."
Burnett, who jestingly said, "Canadians are Americans with manners," was a fitting opener to the realities that business communicators participating in the IABC international conference must face. Just like the characters in his shows, people in the communications industry will be confronted with newer and harder challenges to help make their respective companies or businesses survive. They need to constantly be in step with the times or they will get fired.
Burnett rocked the packed ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Vancouver. He is indeed an effective communicator because he is an effective storyteller.
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