Chance to share heartfelt thoughts

By WILLIAM MACE - Independent Financial Review
3 December, 2009 

Kiwi film producter John Barnett says the success of his new online venuture, MyHeartwill.com, rests on attracting affiliate groups such as the American Automobile Association.

The man behind some of the most recognisable icons on New Zealand's cinema and television screens has been working on MyHeartwill.com for the last two years.

Barnett came across a book written by Australian health journalist Jill Margo, Living On, which gives people tips on leaving a recorded legacy message for loved ones after they have passed on.  It introduces the concept of a "heartwill" - a video, voice, pictorial or written recording of a life well lived.

Barnett, in partnership with Margo and American new-media guru Chris Adams, saw the potential for an online journal, where precious family documents and heartfelt messages could be uploaded in a secure site, constantly curated and shared with friends and family around the world, even after death.

But the site isn't just for those on their deathbed, says Barnett. He is pitching it as a more mature, intimate and convenient alternative to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The subscription-based site, which costs US$199 (NZ$273) for 10 years, has been built by Ponsonby-based SPP subsidiary Satellite Media.  It is currently being marketing as a worthy membership benefit to affiliate groups such as the American Automobile Association and the AARP (formerly American Association of Retired Persons), which claim a combined membership of more than 90 million people throughout North America.

Success will depend on breaking into the affiliate market, rather than trying to sell to individual consumers, Barnett says.

In New Zealand, he will target groups such as the Automobile Association and Southern Cross.

It is a punt, but Barnett is used to taking those.  As a producer of screen hits Whale Rider, Outrageous Fortune and Shortland Street, he recognises a popular formula when he sees it.

"You have to take the leap all the time.  You have to make assessments about what people are interested in, understand what people are going to see, what they are buying to read, what are they downloading, what they are listening to."

"But I never had any doubt that this was a universal thing.  You couldn't do this just across Australia and New Zealand, because your numbers are not all that significant."

It is the large baby-boomer "cohort" that MyHeartwill is targeting, and Barnett hopes it will ride the wave of people put off by the pesky public nature of popular networking sites.  "Increasingly, people are apprehensive about how much information is out there.  With social media, it's interesting how much more freely people say things than they would to the people they might be in a room with.  Girls used to keep diaries and they locked them, and no-one was allowed to see them, but now they want to put it all up in living technicolour [on the internet]."

As Barnett's American partner, Chris Adams, puts it; "It's a natural evolution of the way social networking has caught fire.  Why not go a little deeper and have something that you can share with only those you love? Frankly, I think the trend works beautifully in our favour."

Adams is head of Orbit Media Group, has worked with Facebook, currently heads View2together.com and, like Barnett, has a background in film through his company, Participant Productions.  He says the baby-boomer generation in the United States is gradually becoming internet savvy and is keen to make good use of their online time.  His main task is signing up the American affiliates, an industry which he says is emerging from a decade of scepticism with dot.com partners.

"From the last bubble-bursting to the next rise, a lot of internet sites that remained and were starting up did a lot of affiliate deals, and the problem is they put overblown expectations to really strong providers and couldn't deliver."

"A lot of associations and members got burned so they just asked for minimum guarantees, and that just dried up the market."

Adams says MyHeartwill.com has the product and the integrity to "blow open" a new market if it can get just a couple of associations on board.

- William Mace