The content industries are having a rough time. They never used to worry about the average consumer photocopying an expensive set of encyclopedias, or buying two VCRs just to capture the latest Adam Sandler video on a tape of their own. But digital technology has made copyright theft easy, and the practice has spread beyond the unscrupulous few.
‘There’s a mind-set among the general public that there’s nothing wrong with stealing intellectual property,’ says Lisa Walker, an account director with Hill & Knowlton, the Toronto PR agency for the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST). ‘They feel that if you can’t see it, then it’s okay to steal it.’
As consumer applications and the information highway grew, so did the notion that information should be free. We saw it during the latter days of the utopian ’90s, and file-swappers preach it still. Now, Canada’s music, software and satellite industries are trying to change those attitudes the way they caught on – one person at a time. Industry groups are using public relations to introduce ideas about the value of content back into public discourse.
Educate, or compromise
Thirty-eight percent of software in use is pirated and CAAST found through Decima Research that over half of Canadians think copying software for personal use is acceptable. In fact, most consider software piracy a less serious offense than stealing office supplies, falsifying a resume or keeping incorrect change from a store clerk.
While many would (and do) view these statistics as hopelessly irreversible, CAAST president Jacqueline Famulak sees it as a lack of consumer awareness and education. She likens the situation to another major public awareness campaign that was ultimately highly successful. ‘It took a long time for people to recognize that drinking and driving is bad.’
CAAST is using traditional PR tactics – including publicizing software raids, and issuing press releases about the organization and its goals. But it also runs a different sort of campaign. For the past three years it’s targeted small and medium-sized businesses with a ‘Truce’ campaign, where businesses are advised by mail that they have one month to review their software and get legal with no penalties.
‘We are not looking to launch law suits or do raids,’ says Famulak, who represents a variety of small-to large-sized software companies in Canada. ‘We’d rather see results from a campaign that educates.’
The immediate effects have not been outstanding. Member companies report spikes in sales during the Truce periods, but software piracy rates have remained steady for the last three years.
More importantly, public response has been positive. ‘We don’t tend to get the ‘Why are you picking on me?’ response. What we do get is, ‘Hey, this is useful information. Can I use this in my brownie troop?’ or ‘Oh, I didn’t realize.”
That kind of response spells major success; it means that people who get the message are taking it seriously, and passing it on.
‘It takes a couple of generations for a message to kick in,’ Famulak says. ‘We’re not dropping the hammer just yet.’
Start with the kids
The music industry isn’t dropping the hammer either, although a 20% drop in sales in the past three years might be good reason to. Instead, the Toronto-based Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) is launching its largest public relations efforts in the group’s 39-year history, designed to teach kids ‘The Value of Music.’
‘There’s a whole generation of young people growing up with the view that they don’t have to buy music anymore. We have to change those attitudes,’ says CRIA president Brian Robertson.
A survey conducted in April by Toronto research lab Solutions Research Group found that only 31% of Canadians aged 12 – 24 think downloading songs off the Internet constitutes theft. (Interestingly, it doesn’t: Canadian law allows the copying of copyright material for personal use.)
To counter that, CRIA launched a national print, radio and television campaign in March, worth almost $700,000 and targeting kids aged nine to 17. The message is simple: ‘You need music, music needs you: Buying music makes more music.’
Getting to that message took an extraordinary amount of research, including a three-year ongoing survey with Solutions, focus groups through Toronto ad agency Zig, and an anthropological study of teen behavior. The research found, among other things, that kids have an extremely negative view of the music industry; that they expect that music is simply available to them; and that some of the kids didn’t much care what happened to the artists. Says Robertson, ‘they didn’t really care if an artist like Eminem would be hurt, because there would be another 10 Eminems down the line. That surprised us.’
The research also found that about 20% of kids were thinking about the issue. That set the scene for the subsequent messaging. All CRIA had to do was put enough information out there for conscious kids to draw their own conclusions.
‘We’re targeting people who are still buying music,’ says Andy Macaulay, partner with Zig and a key thinker behind the campaign. ‘We’re not targeting people who only download music. The idea is to give [kids who buy music] the words to justify it.’ And maybe mention it to their friends.
Wisely, the ad campaign took the music industry out of the equation by concentrating strictly on the relationship between kids and music. PR efforts, headed by Julie Ann May of Toronto’s Hawkestone Communications, focus on showing a side of the industry that kids don’t see: struggling artists who are happy with their record deals. ‘The view of most artists is that they have more money than they need,’ Macaulay says. ‘Whenever you see a rock video, it’s limos and girls on their arms and lots of money. There’s a mistake in perception that the industry’s just rolling in dough, which it’s not.’
Some unusual Canadian artists came on board to deliver the message that independent Canadian stars rely on record sales just as much as filthy rich Britney Spears. Vancouver singer Bif Naked, who runs her own record label but relies on Warner for distribution, announced how grateful she is that sales have allowed her to tour North America. Up-and-coming Nova Scotia artist Buck 65 explained that he makes his living off of royalties from record sales.
Print ads have appeared in youth publications such as Faze and Youthink, and on younger-skewing Web sites like www.chart.com. BMG artists have gone on KISS-FM to promote the campaign. A student from a Toronto high school went on hard-rock station Q107 with the message. A discussion forum was held on CBC after-school program Street Cents, and Owl magazine, read by nine- to 13-year-olds, is planning a feature in September.
All of which is helping to drive traffic to www.keepmusiccoming.com where kids can play an interactive game that walks them through the process of recording an album from the perspective of the artist or the producer. The idea is to ‘reinforce what goes into the making of a recording,’ says Robertson, ‘A lot of individuals don’t really know. It’s anywhere up to half a million dollars and two years of an artist’s life.’
CASSTing the net too wide
The Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft (CASST) is an Ottawa-based lobby group made up of satellite distributors, cable companies and broadcasters. They too are having a hard time with theft. A recent survey found that most people know that getting free satellite TV was illegal, thanks partly to an advertising campaign last fall that delivered the stark message: ‘Theft is theft: Stealing satellite signals is no different.’ Yet almost a million Canadians are stealing satellite signals.
The reason is that most people view satellite signal theft as a victimless crime. A complementary survey conducted by Montreal-based Léger Marketing last year found that 22% of Quebecers think satellite theft is socially acceptable. Worse – there is a large, and growing, subculture of people who feel they should be able to steal satellite signals.
CASST recently started another 13-week run of its ‘Theft is theft’ campaign, designed to keep the subject top of mind and maybe scare off a few offenders. The group has also targeted the media with an information campaign. For example, the organization estimates that signal theft accounts for about $400 million in copyright and subscription fees not going to artists, actors, broadcasters and the satellite and cable industry.
To spread the word, CASST held a panel discussion at the annual Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) conference in Vancouver in October. CASST then used a November media briefing in Montreal to educate journalists on the issue, and clarify the economic consequences to Canada’s culture industry and the people it employs. Detailed coverage appeared in most of the national media. Members have been eloquent, helping to make this ‘an issue of jobs, people’s livelihoods, and Canadian content,’ says Kelly Beaton, a spokesperson for Ottawa-based CAB.
But the problem is huge and growing, and the satellite and cable industry remains a faceless nonentity to many Canadian TV watchers. CASST doesn’t have an easy case to make to someone unaware of the complex rights negotiations that take place between Canadian and American broadcasters. And few consumers realize the extent to which Canadian programming is supported by broadcasting revenues.
Playing fair
Intellectual property theft isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s too easy, and the mechanisms for convenient, legal downloading aren’t nearly as sophisticated as those for ripping off the content industries – or as cheap. On top of that, there are still a lot of people who think the industries are getting what they deserve.
Says Famulak, ‘We are large, multinational corporations. We don’t want to have a heavy hand. We don’t want to be seen abusing our position at all. That’s why we make ourselves available to go talk to computer science classes in public schools. We’re trying to get our faces out there and say ‘We’re people just like you. We have families and we need our jobs.”
As technologies evolve and new means emerge for fair, legal downloading of content, or cost-effective satellite services, PR experts hope that ‘the norms will change with the environment.’ But that will only happen if consumers choose to continue to support these damaged industries.
Kaan Yigit, the president of Solutions and head of research for the Value of Music project, agrees that the project is ‘an uphill battle,’ but he also expects it to have some effect.
‘At the end of the day the kids know bills have to be paid, people have to eat. There aren’t too many kids out there who don’t understand that… when they buy a CD, some money goes to the artist.’
He likens downloading to littering, which everybody knows is an absolute faux pax. It wasn’t always like that.
‘That’s the idea,’ he says. ‘It’s an issue of social change.’
How to call a Canadian thief
The ‘Theft is theft’ campaign from the Ottawa-based Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft (CASST) is an anomaly in Canada; most anti-piracy groups are treading lightly around the fact that Canadians are breaking intellectual property laws.
‘In other parts of the world similar organizations have run the same PR campaign and they call it a ‘crackdown,” says Jacqueline Famulak, president of the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft. ‘They are very successful in Asia and Europe with that sort of thing. We didn’t think it was appropriate. That’s why we adopted Truce instead. It’s a peace offering. We’re not dropping the boom on you.’
Other regions have run whistleblower campaigns. Several years ago a group in the U.S. ran a fire-your-boss program where employees were encouraged to report the management of companies using illegal software. CAAST opted for a friendlier long-term campaign that wouldn’t serve as fuel for industry detractors.
‘It’s part of the Canadian culture,’ Famulak says. ‘We’re not typically loudmouthed. We’re very polite. We’d rather be given the facts and allowed to make our own decisions.’
Similarly, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, of Toronto, avoided the more confrontational tactics south of the border, where the Recording Industry Association of America uses artists such as Madonna and Eminem to equate MP3 theft with shoplifting.
The difference is partly legal. Downloading copyrighted content in the U.S. can result in hefty fines, which means threatening facilitators like Napster – or college students sharing multimedia files – can have a major effect. American software pirates can expect jail time.
Canadian law is more forgiving. People are legally allowed to copy copyrighted material such as music for personal use – although nobody is entitled to broadcast copyrighted material indiscriminately across the Web. Software pirates are clearly breaking the law, but people doing it are just as likely to receive a slap on the wrist as major fines.
Much of the difference is also cultural. Andy Macaulay, president of Toronto agency Zig who worked on the ‘Value of Music’ campaign, says that early research made it pretty clear that Canadian kids ‘would not respond to a message that likened downloading music to stealing music – they rejected that as a thought.’
‘This couldn’t be a negative campaign about the consequences of downloading. It had to be a positive campaign about the consequences of buying. That resonated. It was a credible message coming from an industry.’
