Fresh off the press…

Sydney Morning Herald JULIAN LEE

Is there anyone out there who doesn't want to be a media owner? It seems not a week goes by without someone declaring that they are now in the business of creating content and that we should now consider them to be a ''media owner''.

In today's topsy-turvy world where the definitions of anything are no longer certain, aggregating entities and services such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Google could all be classified as media owners.

They bring you content - tweets, pokes, newsfeeds, and in Google's case links to stories (even if they are not produced by their own staff). They are a destination and people go to them in staggeringly large numbers. They even sell you ads. They may not fit into our traditional notion of a media company, but then I guess they would say a traditional media company doesn't fit into their world.

This week the global public relations agency Edelman announced it had recruited the BBC's former news director Richard Sambrook to be its ''chief content officer''. According to the agency, he will assist marketers in producing written, video and audio content that will allow them to tell their own stories to consumers. Yes there's more content on the way, only thankfully it should be more readable and watchable given it will carry the imprimatur of someone who has actually worked in the media.

Brands have the means to create content because the barriers to entry have been lowered exponentially by the internet. Their messages can go direct to their intended audience.

The prevailing wisdom is that it is better for advertisers to earn and own the media rather than simply pay for it. Owning it can be creating something that would otherwise never have been there and drawing people to it. From games and films to videos and user-generated promotions, advertisers are coming up with more inventive definitions of content and media. Earning the media - that is the favourable publicity they receive off the back of their activity - can only help amplify their efforts.

Last year we saw some good examples of brand-enabled activity, such as Jameson whiskey giving money to people to make short films, Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World promotion and Tooheys Extra Dry's Six Beers of Separation series of short films based on four consumers seeking to meet their heroes.

Many of these initiatives are great ideas, well executed and delivered but to call them media owners is a bit of a stretch. All the chatter around content and media reminds me of a few years ago of when every time a journalist picked up the phone to talk to Coca-Cola, a freshly minted drone would invariably utter the phrase: "Consumers want to develop a long-term relationship with our brand." You have to give it to Coke, they are on message, even if fewer people are listening.

Jules Hall of The Hallway, the digital agency behind Jameson's film venture, says the days of brand-funded content where advertisers stump up the cash in return for being woven into the storyline of a program are over, and anyone who has watched Rexona's Greatest Athlete will know why.

''The worst thing a brand can do is to make a 30-minute commercial. That just isn't going to work,'' he says. Of course the holy grail is to get the audience to blog, link and tweet about what you are doing. Says Hall: ''If people are talking about it then you could argue the consumer becomes the media." Now there's a thought.

Will jazz hands and show tunes persuade young American backpackers to come to Melbourne?

Tourism Victoria's latest promotion is a YouTube video ditty performed by a Canadian blogger and a cast of local amateur musical buffs, who dance and sing through the city singing its praises in harmonies that would fit right in on the geek-pride US television show Glee.

Tourism Victoria hired biology student Mitchell Moffit, 21, last year to compose a Melbourne tribute in song and dance after his unsuccessful musical audition for Queensland's "Best Job in the World" on YouTube made headlines around the world.

Moffit and his sister Kim, 26, were flown to Melbourne last July on an all-expenses research trip, and the young would-be performer was loaned a digital camera and recording studio when he returned in September to make his video.

Have your say on the video here

Melbourne, Australia — The Musical was only uploaded to YouTube last week, six months after it was filmed. In scenes reminiscent of Channel Seven's long-running Hello Melbourne promotions of the 1980s, Moffit sings his way through the city's laneways, around the Royal Exhibition Building, over Fed Square and into the Butterfly Club, a cabaret venue that recruited several of the hand-waving cast.

Lyrics are vague on Melbourne's particular charms, although "the museums, the culture, laneways galore" get a mention, as does "a game of footy and a meat pie".

Instead, the city is celebrated with classic musical lines such as "Melbourne! Don't want to leave it, cause it's Melbourne! And it brought us here, together, our lives for ever more".

While Tourism Victoria will be hoping for the video to go viral, 10 days after it was uploaded to YouTube it had clocked up just over 1000 views.

But Moffit's musical video arrives amid good news for Tourism Victoria, with figures showing the state is attracting more overnight international visitors than the rest of the country, with 30 per cent of tourists coming to state in 2009.

A Tourism Research Australia's International Visitor Survey showed Victoria's tourism industry was outperforming every Australian state with the number of overnight visitors increasing by 3.5 per cent, compared to the national average of 0.2 per cent.

While the baby-faced Moffit waxes enthusiastically about Melbourne in song and on his blog, he wasn't persuaded to move here. The man who originally wanted to live in Queensland to escape the Canadian cold is now studying at James Cook University in Townsville, and posting photographs of himself swimming between classes.

Perhaps we shouldn't have flown him here in July.