I recall listening to a lecture by Malcolm Gladwell shortly after Blink arrived on bookstore shelves, and in the lecture he was essentially telling us everthing that was in the book. All secrets revealed. At the end of the lecture, someone in the audience asked Malcolm why he hadn’t held anything back? Malcolm replied, the best way to get someone to buy something from you is to first give it away. He wasn’t targeting his pre-existing customers, he was hoping to build a “relationship” with those in the audience who weren’t his customers. If his told his story well, he knew is customer base likely just expanded.

Now certainly, this doesn’t hold true for everything, but his point was well taken. In this digital age where there is so much competition, its almost imperative that we build presence, familiarity and trust which ultimately will lead to loyalty and demand and one way to do that is by giving away content. In many ways, its the loss leader model. You give away one service (or good) in order to make money with another service either near or long term. In your case, Hanson I would say this model proved out because it provided you the right kind of exposure and the right time to be offered the opportunity to lead the MCDM. Likewise, the equity you gain from having your documentary on Hulu will likely come into play when its time to release your follow up.

However, it plays out I wish you best of luck!

I think this idea of conglomeration and front groups has been more recognized when the movie and television industries are involved with big mergers like Time Warner/AOL or News Corp/MySpace, but is a more common theme with solely web-based media organizations. For example since 2001 Google alone has acquired 55 web-based companies, and for those deals that financial terms were released, they spent over seven billion dollars. This type of web conglomeration had made an entirely new business plan of web start-ups over the last decade; create something cool and useful enough to get some press then sell-out as soon as possible.

Just as corporations and industries create front groups to pass agendas to the public, the new trend will be web-based content having to be presented through a front group page to suffocate the whispers. Good luck with the new venture through Hulu as the message of Independent America is much more important than the medium it is viewed through.