MediaTel

James Whitmore, managing director at Postar, on the dangers of content over creativity...

In 1873, Czar Alexander II of Russia was seriously short of cash. What he did have in abundance were forests and labour. An enterprising man, he was quick to see that chopping down trees to make paper for magazines might lead to a swift and sizeable injection to the Romanov bank account.

He summoned Tolstoy to the imperial palace.

"Count", he said, "I need some content for my new mag".

"Well, Excellency, I have an idea for a short story about an unhappy marriage".

"One hundred pages per issue are what I need".

"Hmm, I suppose I could add a dashing count".

"Whatever. On my desk by Monday".

"But your Excellency - "

"I can always get Dostoyevsky. You would find Siberia chilly at this time of year".

"Very well".

History does not record if the conversation took place or if indeed it was the first use of the term "content" to specify artistic endeavour. I think it unlikely.

I recently read a comment about the future development of western capitalism. The writer questioned the established view that the "knowledge economy" would be the basis for future growth and prosperity. In theory, a highly educated workforce creates value as a consequence of the ideas and innovation springing from its collective intellect. But if you commoditise and systemise your "knowledge", the theory falls apart. Your product rapidly falls prey to substitution and thereby loses its value. Like the labour intensive industries, the knowledge economy will move east. The commentator went on to suggest that this was inevitable and that the economic consequences for the west were not pretty.

And this is where the Czar comes in. I think it perverse that our industry should so readily reduce the diverse and varied work of creative minds to an all encompassing "content". Presumably it is considered a snappy, modern descriptor for the stuff that gets in the way of the ads. I think it sounds more like a mass-produced 1960s car. It doesn't ring out as the development of an idea that might have value or that could command a premium. A thing that grasps attention, involves and inspires. Words matter and if you make something sound cheap and easy, that is how it comes to be seen.

If, by lumping them into a lazy catchall, we voluntarily make things sound unexceptional, then it should be no surprise when people see them as such and choose to pay less and less for them. I can well see a withering of the knowledge economy and how what we currently perceive to be the thinking and value-added elements of our industry will move elsewhere. We behave in so many ways to speed the process.

In the predestined race to the bottom, I am not sure that we ever help ourselves. Dangerous buzzwords cost livelihoods.