New life for old stuff

There's been quite a lot of content produced to show how the adoption of affordable multimedia devices and the advent of a multimedia online environment such as today's Internet are key enablers for creating and distributing new content. Sometimes though these means can be used to give new life to existing and sometimes forgotten material, which can be quite excellent. This Schweppes ad with John Cleese is a good example, which also shows that contrary to what was happening in the old world of media, today
content has a staying power (and that has enormous implications for specific forms of online marketing and for the business case behind certain types of campaigns such as those delivered by BuzzParadise) because:

• once made available on a major platform it remains available,



• it becomes searchable and reusable,



• thus enabling further creative production.

In fact it is almost as though we were building a huge virtual mind on a global scale that is capable of keeping track of almost everything that ever went through it and to use that material to generate new stuff. And of course, the antiquated copyright system is an obstacle to such productivity, which is one of the reasons why I think Creative Commons is also a great enabler of creativity.