mediation

Fulfilling its Social Potential: Why TV could very well be the comeback kid as media emerges from the recession

the established institutions of 'old' media were always going to take the hardest hits as the combined effects of a global advertising slowdown and a digitising media economy came to bear.  such seems to have been the case.  according to Warc's latest Consensus Forecast, 2009 TV revenues in the States will fall 10.9% yoy versus total global ad spend yoy decline of 10.5%.  more substantial 2009 decreases in TV are anticipated in the UK, France, Germany and Japan.

looking forward to 2010, TV could very well be the area of media that not only emerges most strongly from the recession, but charges out guns blazing leading the brigade of other media behind it.  the same Warc report suggests that marketers in two-thirds of the sample are intending to devote more revenues into TV next year, with Brazil, China and India up by more than 11%, the US by 1.8%, and France by 1.3%.

in fact whilst advertising revenues have declined throughout the recession, there seems to have been limited disruption on the quality of networks' output.  new offerings, such as the US's FlashForward or Australia's Celebrity Masterchef have emerged and more than held their own.  and whilst it could be argued that reality TV has more than shaped current TV output globally, it hasn't stopped the likes of Glee and Modern Family making their mark.

but despite strong content and a return of ad revenues in 2010, viewing will surely switch online right?  well no necessarily so.  this week also saw a report from the UK's Enders Analysis arguing that the scale of the VOD market has been overplayed, and that by 2020 the overall national UK average of VoD viewing will be 5%;

"and at these levels, and after taking into account the lower tolerance of interruptive advertising in on-demand programming, non-linear VOD services are unlikely to have a significant impact on commercial spot advertising revenues during the next 10 years ... the traditional linear broadcast TV model continues to work well in terms of reliability, simplicity, ease of choice and ability to deliver popular programming with mass appeal"

but all this is without taking into account the phase shift that could and should happen with TV in the year ahead.  2010 could be the year that TV genuinely goes social... as the Guardian observed in a cracking data-fueled article on Jedward's storming of the Twittersphere;

"Every Saturday and Sunday night, Twitter is exploding with real-time boos, back-pats and reactions to the show's performances. It's a re-imagining of the old-media watercooler ("Did you see The X Factor last night?") in live, online space ("Omg jedward are through!") - and it could point the way to the future of TV..."

as Gary Hayes, a former development producer for the BBC who now lives in Sydney and blogs rather awesomely here, points out:

"we now know when our attention is required, especially those inciting moments when emotion or serendipity may be possible. So with these two things happening there are a growing number of services trying to glue the two – either bringing the TV to the back-channel or layering the back-channel ‘over’ the TV" (source)

hayes has aggregated a whole host of services, either existing or in development, that are bring TV to the social space and vice-versa.  here are three of my favourites (all sourced from Hayes' original post):

EpiX has high-profile backing from the likes of Viacom, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Lionsgate.  it's a platform for viewing content online, but specifically you can invite your mates to private screening rooms and interact with them...  ITV if you're listening, X-Factor was made for this...

another favourite (and another example of the increasing warmth between and cooperation by the Gates and Murdoch organisations) in the shape of X-Box and Sky who have teamed up to make the latter's content available on the former's entertainment console.  but the basics of the streaming aside, the really interesting bits are when the TV screen pans back and your in a room with your and your mates' avatars.  representations that you can support, deride, encourage, laugh at or ask questions of.  real social interactivity in real time with real people...

there's a full video of a presentation that Xbox product manager Jerry Johnson gave to paidContent:UK here - jump to 5 mins 40 secs to get the social bit:

finally, on the mobile front there's tvChatter, a iPhone application that allows you to connect TV content to the Twitterstream relating to that show in real time.  you can follow Tweets from everyone or just from people you follow.  and if you're not sure what to watch, you can see which shows are generating the most interest and check them out:

this is exciting stuff.  and I'm not pretending for a second that its anything new: we've been talking about, SMSing and debating TV for years.  but never have we been so connected to so many people we know in real time to do so.  never have the conversations about the TV we love been so prevalent and so accessible.  I hope then that 2010 isn't just the year that TV sees a resurgence in revenues, but also the year that TV finally gets social...  we will never look at our screens in the same way again.

Things we never thought we'd see # 15: Why Google's use of press proves that media probably never was and certainly won't ever be simple ever again

great brands don't need to advertise.  right?  great brands generate their own publicity.  great brands grow through word of mouth.  great brands invest in innovation which gets itself talked about.  great brands activate their networks, excite their advocates and set the Twittersphere ablaze.

great brands pity lesser brands that need to resort to broadcast advertising to get their products and services in front of the masses because they haven't mastered the new media economy.  great brands don't advertise, right?  ...wrong:

Emily FK kindly sent me the attached today (yesterday...) from London...  Google.  advertising.  with a cover wrap.  on the Metro.  things we really, really, never thought we'd see.

on viewing it I recalled an ancient Chinese curse that goes along the lines of "may you live in interesting times".  they didn't value change did the ancient Chinese.  boy are we collectively cursed - interesting times indeed.  one of two things is happening here, you can take your pick...

option one: the Google (money) train is faltering.  their core business of search continues, of course, to be a juggernaut that is in very good health.  but could the non-core products and services that are fueled by the juggernaut be feeling a little more heat?

its the only realistic explanation...  despite coming from the fine-tuned stable of Goggle new media marketing, Chrome has failed to get traction in the marketplace.  the very handy market share reports that Chrome's current share is hovering at 3%, compared to Firefox's 23% plus and the collective Explorers' best part of 60%...

three percent.  that's a figure that Google executives haven't seen for a while and no doubt has them spooked.  they need more than 3% and they're going to throw money at getting it, because the information about what we browse, what we do and who we are is invaluable; and in Google's hands its game-changing.

the reasons as to why traction hasn't been hit could be numerous and are almost certainly a combination of apathy, familiarity with existing browser, anti-Googleness ("they've got enough information already" kind of thing), and perhaps even awareness.  one would hope that the latter has some part to play, for I fear for the ability of a press cover wrap to make a major dent in any of the other potential barriers.

there is of course option two...  that in the evolution of media and communication, there's a need for both sides of the equation.  or indeed every side of the cube if you get what I mean.  that its not enough for a brand to be a 'broadcast' brand or a 'networked' brand.  all this could mean that there's a time and a place for one to many, as well as a time and a place for many to many.

option two could mean that there's there's no such thing as old and new media.  there is only media.  media thats owned and rented out at a negotiated CPT by big business.  media that's made by individuals with a passion and an opinion or two.  media created by brands that they can subsequently own and leverage to tell the world why they exist.  media that we respect, share, love to hate, assume credibility, trash, believe, pass on, or - indeed - read on our way to work before logging on and checking out a new browser.

Google advertising on Metro.  proof, like we needed it, that media probably never was and certainly won't ever be simple ever again.

Thinking from a different place - the rewards of letting go: what happened when Vizeum debated who exactly is in control?

but what does it all mean?: Hook, Grant, Bailie, McClary and Corcoran with chair Chris Maples debating at Vizeum this evening

who's in control?  that was the theme of this evening's Thinking From A Different Place debate at Vizeum.  do brands make what customers want or do customers determine what brands make?  do creative agencies still control creation of the best ideas, or are the crowd now creating and aggregating the best content?

a panel, consisting of Vizeum's Matthew Hook, We Are Social's Robin Grant, Martin Bailie of Glue, Michael McClary from Microsoft and Andy Corcoran from MTV all awesomely debated a range of subjects from the decline of the newspaper industry to the impact of technology, taking in the future of media agencies and the nature of brands and advertising on the way.

it's easy to summarise such a debate by saying that its all getting more and more complicated and more and more difficult and we all need to move faster and faster and be better and better to stay ahead; but a few interesting comments steered the debate in a more illuminating direction.

Martin pointed out that we focus too much on the next big technology, or on the specifics of what people are doing with technology now, rather than focusing on two millennia of human psychology to point us in the right direction.  as he put it, if we "get the basics right you're 80% there" - produce interesting stuff that's based on a interesting point and view and land it in the laps of as many of the right people as possible.

the question of listening to customers was numerous times, in particular by McClary who observed that there's a "danger in highlighting [and responding to] only the loudest voices".  Hook agreed, observing that whilst you can engage 1,000s in a conversation, many brands are interested in talking to and influencing millions.  Corcoran reminded us of the Henry Ford quote that "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted they'd have asked for faster horses".

but it was the nature of control that caused the most interesting debate.  Grant: "historically brands were more in position of control"; Hook: "marketers desperately want control, they do everything they can to create predictability [of the result of their actions]"; Bailie: "it doesn't matter - no one controls brands; get rid of the idea of control"

for me its about maintaining a balancing act; about knowing when to keep and when to let go of control of what a brand does and how it does it.  would you ever let the crowd determine your core creative idea or brand positioning? ...almost certainly not.  would you let them create content inspired by it? ...yes.  should you let them make your products? ...no.  should you le them choose the ingredients? ...of course.

a point was made about the recent successes of Facebook and Twitter, with a question being raised about what business they're in.  they are - of course - in the business of aggregating audiences.  that's the media business.  the point of whether or not they can monetise that aside (big aside I recognise but run with it), part of their success is down to the fact that they capitalise on the fact that one of the best ways to grow an audience is to get your current audience to do it for you.

giving away control - of your product, or whatever is appropriate - is a particularly effective way of getting an audience to do just that.  give them ownership, give them reasons to talk about you brand, its point of view and its products and services.  but most of all give them a reason to come back, to stay part of the conversation with you.  because its those conversations that are the most valuable bit of media real estate of all.

Learning to advertise without advertising: what Mediation learned when he went along to listen in on The Guardian's Media Talk Live

so the latest MediaTalk podcast from the Guardian is up and out, but this week's is a bit special.  one because it was recorded live, but two because Mediation was lucky enough to be in the audience for the recording at Guardian Towers.  the panel - social media expert JD Lasica, reporter Sarah Lacy, blogger Robert Scoble, BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones and of course the wonderful Emily Bell - discussed a range of topics focused in and around the changing ecology of media business.

lots of sense talked (mainly by JD "shooting dinosaurs in a barrel" Lasica and Emily "we didn't listen enough to our audiences" Bell), but there was one question posed to wards the end (44 mins and 33 secs in if you're interested) that wasn't answered.  Susan Bratton asked: "there was some conversation about lack of innovation in advertising and sponsorship support, what would you like?".  Sarah Lacy said that it was "like porn - I don't know what it is but I'll know it when I see it"...

JD Lasica observed that interruption marketing would be gone in 10 years, and that you've got find "new models to make advertising that's personalised, customisable to me.  something that's welcome, useful, that I want on my screen".

it's an observation that often goes unsaid.  Mediation has often suggested that the problem with making media business models work in the new ecology isn't advertising.  the problem is adverts.  controlled and crafted packets of what an advertiser wants you to know work fine (brilliant even) in a broadcast model, but they're pretty pants in a conversation space.

in fact you could argue that - to paraphrase Cluetrain - brands are conversations.  in this context the ad format is as dead as a dodo; media business models will kick in again when, and only when, we collectively learn how to monetise advertise without advertising.

you can listen to to the whole podcast here, and read Kevin Anderson's blog post summary of the discussion here.

big thanks to the Guardian having me along.  a joy and a pleasure, if a bit weird seeing my favourite podcast being recorded.  awesome stuff.

More questions than answers: fighting for the future of digital broadcast in Mediatel's playground

yesterday Mediatel held their annual Media Playground and Mediation popped along for the afternoon seminar discussing Digital Broadcast.  it's a broad topic area, covering emerging technologies, content, changing consumer behaviours and rapidly evolving business models.  one thing is clear - we have a lot more questions than we have answers.

it was apparent that we're entering an age of complexity in how content is created, deployed and consumed.  no one solution will predominate.  Bruce Daisley - Agency Leader at YouTube - observed that it's less about the platform, and referred to a 'long tail' of competitors.  that content rules, was echoed by the panel...

Rhys McLachlan - head of implementational TV at MediaCom - noted that this is, ultimately, what consumers will resolutely follow.  this was echoed by Jon Mitchell of Spotify who suggested that Hulu - recently down 3% - is plateauing.  they have (as opposed to Spotify) a limited amount of content, to thrive in a digital content economy you need ubiquity of supply.

and where eyeballs go commercial impacts follow right?  not necessarily.  McLachlan, in one of several soap-box moments, commented that "clients are increasingly risk adverse" and that "it's hard to invest in channels that are unproven.  there's an absence of valid metrics out there ... we are retreating to rather than flighting to quality.  people who want a share of my broadcast budget aren't making a strong enough case for their platforms"

McLachlan went on to comment that "we're complicit in perpetuating a trading model that was created in the 1950s ... we need to move on from this legacy model, a model that's been broken for some time".

it occurred to me that it's not the only model that's broken.  what so often get's lost in the maelstrom of how to aggregate and commercialise impacts in the new world of digital broadcast are the opportunities to engage audiences beyond the spot.  the spot is important and will not vanish into history anytime soon, indeed Daisley noted that YouTube's best performing ad (Gorilla of course) out-viewed their best performing piece of longer-form content (Wallace and Gromit if you're interested) by a ratio of forty toone "YouTube", he said, "is empirical evidence that great ads work".

but the spot ad no longer sits alone in the communications toolbox, and to approach commercialising long-form on-demand content by interrupting with ads really does defy belief.  interruption in a on-demand world is at best a contradiction in terms and at worst a failure to grasp the brilliant opportunities that on-demand offers the brands (and for that matter agencies) willing to embrace it...

because if anything is true as we negotiate the future of media and communications it is this; that brands and brand communications have - like everything else - to be in demand.

Opening up the store: how Sainsbury's gave us an authentic and balanced window into their world

brilliant bit of PR from Sainsbury's last night in the form of I'm Running Sainsbury's on Channel 4.  in the first of four episodes, Becky Craze aimed to prove that her idea of bagging a meal would not only deliver on Sainsbury's feed your family for a fiver efforts, but would help the coffers of the supermarket giant, which we were reliably informed are to the tune of £30k per minute.

described by C4 head of factual entertainment Andrew Mackenzie as "a look at the psychology of shopping and an opportunity to understand the institutions where we spend our money" the show - made by Silver River - was a genuinely balanced view of life working at the retailer.

overnights are reasonable - pulling in 1.6 million viewers and an 8% share, with a further 284,000 watching on catchup service Channel 4+1 an hour later (source MediaGuardian).  and the show seems to be generating a fair amount of chatter online.

positives were the genuine support that colleagues seemed to give each other (especially in the stores) and the enthusiasm of Becky to make a real difference to the company for which she works.  negatives were the patronising looks and comments from more senior figures within the company.  but with such negatives came credibility, the programme had an authenticity which I suspect will do well for the retailer.

but the real insight for me was the growth of own label.  Sainsbury's products in Sainsbury's now number 15,000 lines and account for half of all the sales in the supermarket.  one in every two items sold in Sainsbury's is own label.  and they're clearly holding their margin - the own label reportedly count for - nearly - half of all revenues).  enough to make any doubters of the continued rise of the retailer think twice.

next week should be fun, the show will feature an enthusiastic employee who takes the store to the customer - "it's not really stalking" she observes, "it's targeting".

The danger of applying old models to new technologies: why brands need to make the most of cinema's platinum future

Monsters vs Aliens; Hollywood's latest digital offering

Pearl & Dean are hosting their first annual Film Festival today... think presentations interrupted by movies (or vice versa depending on your attitude).  Mediation popped along this morning and heard a couple of cracking presentations.

the first - Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council - outlined the Council's view of cinema's future.  he observed that whilst "cinema has stubbornly maintained its analogue status", digital technologies would herald a new "platinum age" for the industry.  its predicted (by Charlotte Jones of Screen Digest) that there will be 250 x 3D cinemas in the UK by 2010, up from the 172 on which Monsters vs Aliens (above) launched earlier this month.  a good job too, considering Jerry Katzenberg - who knows a thing or two - has apparently predicted that within 5-7 years all movies will be 3D.

but 3D is only one aspect of cinema's revolution in the making: archive films are proving popular, as are "more obscure films" such as Man on Wire, indeed as Buckingham noted, "the big alternative content success [in cinema] is live Opera".  add to this live sport in 3D (as being trialled by Sky) and the concept as cinema-as-studio (broadcasting the Shine a Light premiere to other cinemas for example) and you get an idea of where cinema could be heading.

at the heart of the UK Film Council's digital cinema vision is community; cinema "in the hands of local audiences", with cinema as "facilitator as well as curator".  Buckingham cited locally produced UGC from schools and collages, Nollywood movies making it big in East London, and broadcasting of events such as Royal Society lectures as further evidence of this "democratisation of culture".

unfortunately talk moved on to brands, where the vision is apparently a little more limited in its scope.  producer Phil Streather observed that brands had the opportunity to make ads that made full use of the 3D 'punch'.  why is it that we can't attach some of the "platinum age" thinking to brands?

why settle for ads?  if the vision and hope is that cinemas become locally-centric centres of culture and content, why are we slapping the outdated and outmoded format of an ad on the front of them.  cinema's opportunity is the same for brands...  how can we use these screens as platforms for our points of view on the world?  what could we create and curate for these screens that say more about us than 30" of stuff with an awareness aim.

we're better than this, and if the promise that digital cinema offers is realised, audiences will expect better; platinum brand work for a platinum channel.

One email chain about Whedon's Doll House: Two great hopes from Mediation about marketing TV shows

there follows a genuine email chain from my inbox today, names have been initialised to protect the innocent:

OB: "Dollhouse, the new Joss Whedon show, has started in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)  Hopefully over here soon…
CS: has had a lot of critical slating but lovely premise, can't wait to see it.  Cx
AK:Oh how very exciting.  I like Dushku.  Can't wait to see it.  Ax
JG: I saw the ads whilst out in Ottawa earlier this year. I do hope it gets picked up here. The likes of Battle Star Galactica (great show) were part funded by Sky... they’d do well to get behind some of Whedon’s stuff too.
OB: We stopped watched BSG half-way thru second series, just didn’t grab us. May try again.
JG:You’ll have to catch repeats then as it finished last night!  It didn’t really change style or quality through the series so I’m not optimistic you’ll enjoy it much more if you go back to it.
HDL: I really enjoyed the first series of BSG and then it all got a bit a silly.  V exciting re Dollhouse though sounds weird even for JW.  I miss Firefly...
JG: Dollhouse is coming here very soon, maybe on FX I caught the tail end of an advert for it yesterday – hope it’s good J
OB: In my efforts to find a date for Dollhouse in the UK I noticed that Knight Rider has been re-made too. Will def. be watching that!
JG: Not found an exact date – it’s going to be on the Sci-fi channel in May (Dollhouse that is) Sci-fi have got Knight Rider too.
OB: Thanks, will keep an eye out for it. It’s great that US TV comes over here so quickly these days rather than having to wait ages...

I hope two things.  one, that somewhere out there Sc-Fi is planning some media beyond it's own channel to tell people about this programme.  too many shows languish for too long with too small an audience because of the perceived difficulty - and cost - of promoting them.

this is because in the main, promoting programmes beyond your own channel is expensive and is most likely to pay back in the medium or even long term.  but Doll House is one of those rare exceptions to this rule: its a TV project which, because its from Whedon, is genuinely anticipated by a core fan base.  something on which I hope and pray that Sci-Fi are planning to capitalise on.

secondly I hope that for not too much longer the world doesn't have to live without some software that tracks what I like and tells me when TV shows that I may like are coming my way.  or indeed coming back.  I was on the phone to a lovely lady from Sky yesterday week (part of the flat move trauma) who informed me that Fringe was back on Sky.  if she hadn't have said something I may never have known.

this is an application waiting to be written, first brand to write it wins the prize.  watch this space; I will be...

Doing digital on TV: How lastminute plan to get us all channel-hopping on Saturday night

thanks Emily for the heads up on this brilliant bit of thinking from lastminute.com who - fresh to to TV advertising for the first time in four years - are playing for a media first on Saturday night.  an emailer to their database explains:

"On Saturday 28 February at 9.50pm, watch us on telly and win a big bundle of good stuff.

We're creating a television first - and we want you to be part of it. Tune into ITV on Saturday 28 February at 9.50pm. Three 60 second adverts will be aired, straight after each other, starting on ITV, moving to Channel 4 and then ending on Channel 5.

It's going to be the world's first Mexican wave of thumbs up... spanning the channels and spreading the good stuff, right around the UK. Watch the three adverts and guess the number of thumbs you see.
Come back here and tell us how many thumbs you think you saw. Simple!

You could win a great big bundle of good stuff"

everything is in place here; (1) an dCRM and PR strategy to get this onto people's radars, (2) an innovative bit of media thinking that is consistent with and relevant to the campaign aims and (3) incentive to get involved, in the form of prizes to be won after the event.

but what's most smart is the line of thinking that got them to this idea in the first place.  Simon Thompson, chief marketing officer at lastminute explained in a Guardian article that "because Lastminute.com is a digital-based brand we have to go on to telly with a digital mentality ... To follow this ad consumers need to participate".  a brilliantly simple bit of logic that has gotten them to a very smart place indeed.

so it's all good - unless you're the OMD TV buyer, in which case 9.49pm on Saturday night may be a very nervous moment indeed ;o)

Twitter's ascent: why the emergence of this best kind of media space means brands have never had it so good

and so to Twitter, which - thanks to, in part, Obama, Ross and Fry - post a 27-fold increase in the last 12 months is now the seventh most popular SN site in the UK.  with such growth has come the inevitable and necessary Campaign article on how brands can capitalise on this particular bit of media evolution.

some sense talked by Robin "have genuine conversations with people ... show your real personality and allow people to connect with you" Grant and Faris "we've got to earn attention by being entertaining, useful and also nice" Yakob. 

but also some craziness bounded about by Dare's Flo "create a fake receptionist" Heiss and internet consultant David "don't anthropomorphise it, what if an inanimate object was to Tweet" Bain.  the question of how much fun a social network would be if inanimate objects Tweeted aside, (although its not entirely mad - my fridge for example; "feeling great today post a thorough defrosting and clean out yesterday, brrrrr - life good" or my Wii "exhausted post Chris playing for sixteen hours non-stop on Super Mario Galaxy - still at least he's completed it now and he and I can get back on with our lives"), the question remains why, when and how should brands enter the Twittersphere?

the debate is picked up in a post on Robin's We Are Social blog, where he makes two important points: (1) a brand's Twitter strategy should be built around the business objectives its trying to achieve, and (2) the hard work only really begins when you're up and out there creating and managing the day after day micro-interactions with real people.

its worth reading down the comments, one by Adriana Lukes struck me as particularly relevant:

"If you think about brand as identity and branding as behaviour lots of the idiotic advice rightly ridiculed in the post just looks absurd. Fictional or inanimate characters' behaviour fools no one and is just another tool in the messaging toolbox. And one-way communication is messaging, two-way communication is behaviour. Twitter is rather supercharged on that front..."

the evolution of media and communications and the fragmentation of channels and empowerment of consumers that has come with it, is not a beast to be grappled with.  rather its a gift to be embraced.

we need to change our collective idea of what 'broadcasting our brand communications' means.  from... a single-minded focus on one-to-many (with things like Twitter playing around the edge), to... having and using a tapestry of touchpoints by which to reach existing and potential customers.

TV ads and Twitter should be part of the same plan, because they come from the same place - the brand, and more specifically the reason for being & idea that sit behind that brand.  understanding and continually and consistently articulating that idea is what will align 'one-to-many' as well as 'many-to-many' touchpoints.

Twitter isn't something 'else'... like so many emerging platforms its the best kind of brand space; a space where you're forced to be relevant, interesting and polite, but most of all a space where the people you're so desperate to talk to, can talk back.  we've never had it so good.