mediation

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.

Video. Everywhere. Always: What we can all learn about P Diddy's adventures in mobile broadcasting

Free TV : Ustream the idea that there will ever again be a status quo in media planning has surely got to be abandoned.  technology and interaction are now evolving at such a pace that the challenge is not just how best to use what's out there but firstly to know what's out there.

case in point is Mashable.  for two years it's been creating editorial about the best of Social Media news and views.  and I had no idea it even existed.  none.  so it's a thanks to PAffleck (thanks) who pointed me in the direction - via Mashable - of how P Diddy is using mobile app. Ustream.tv to broadcast his life direct from his mobile to the world.

he's not alone.  loads of people are doing it.  assuming you have a good enough phone (current limiting factor but this will change), you can upload your clips direct to your own broadcast stream.  better than that - if you see something cool you can start live broadcasting it - there and then - from your phone to your mates, or whoever...

I never thought I'd say this, but I guess we all have a thing or one to learn from P Diddy.  if he can do it why aren't brands?  how often are we and the clients we work with creating reasons and incentives for people to engage there and then with experiences that are happening right now in the real world?

it's difficult, but the reality is that we're moving to a world of video being everywhere always.  that's a lot of competition for our precious advertising space.  I for one - no matter how much I sometimes feel I have yet to learn - want to understand this now...  cos the brands that get this sooner rather than later may be the ones that don't just thrive, but survive, in a digital world where any status quo no longer and will never exist.

Ka's missed opportunity to make 'Find It' tangible: why brands need to incorporate incentive for time & attention into campaigns

and so to Benjamin Button (great but too long), which Mediation caught last weekend at the Brixton Ritzy; or more specifically the ads that came before it.  the new adidas effort with Becks at the coolest house party ever was on show (wonderful - very post-Skins - and cracking seeing it in the cinema), but what caught my attention was the new Ka effort.

opening with the copy '80 Kas?', the ad clearly invites you to look for and find the 80 Ka images hidden in the ad.  the fact that you could never catch them all in one view means that you have to follow the trail online.  after a bit of online exploring you eventually reach www.gofindit.net, only this appears not to exist, as you're immediately directed to Ford's corporate space for Ka.

so far so complicated.  the site then has a host of product stuff and ways you can engage with the campaign and the brand, much of which is vaguely interesting but its a bit of a gush of stuff.  everything from Banksy street art in Shoreditch to using mobile phones to make a Ka digitally appear in the real world are present.  and they all genuinely add up to the campaign 'Find It' idea.

the question I have is why?  aside from engaging further in the campaign, what's the reward for taking part?  a huge amount of effort has clearly gone into creating a great ad (= broadcast & amplify the campaign idea) and website (= access & digital engagement), but not a lot of effort - it would seem - has gone into incentive.

you could argue that the website being difficult to find is reward in itself, but its a bit of a push.  no, it seems Ford, like a lot of campaigns, are assuming that engaging with the campaign is reward enough.  it's a busy and cluttered world out there.  time is short and attention precious.  planners should be asking themselves hard questions about what they are giving consumers back.  what's the quid pro quo for their time and attention.

would have been great to have seen some Kas hidden either around the country or in the digital space.  how much fun could it have been to make the campaign idea tangible by physically being able to find and take home a Ka?  this could also have provided the link between the TV ad and the digital experience...  the first person to locate all 80 Kas wins a real one?

the question for planners is clear...  what incentive are you planning into your campaigns?  what's the reward - above and beyond engaging in your brand's idea - for someone's time and attention; it may not come as cheaply as you may think.

(here's that adidas ad - a joy)

When brands hit the high-street: How National Geographic made their brand manifest in spectacular fashion

I learned three things in a jump into central London yesterday.  one, that Uniqlo doesn't do gloves.  two, that the recession has yet to hit Abercrombie & Fitch, the till queue for which was a good twenty-punters long.  and three, that National Geographic have opened a rather amazing store on Regent Street.

National Geographic are not the first (and they won't be the last) media organisation to open a branded retail space, but they're certainly in line to be the one that opened the grandest.  its 20,000 sq ft across three floors sells everything from bug spray to the latest technology in exploration gear, but that is just the start.

the store also aims to provide an absorbing learning experience through interactive visual displays as well as an auditorium to host film screenings and public lectures.  it's an amazing space, and one that will go towards funding the Society's aims, as copy in the store explains:

"when you buy at the National Geographic Store, you're helping launch new expeditions across the world.  thanks to your help, projects we've helped fund have uncovered the Inca city of Machu Picchu and the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic.  today the Society supports more than 500 expeditions and research projects a year" (source: poster in National Geographic Store)

it is certainly opening in interesting times; as an article in Retail Week observes, the store is likely to be the last major opening Regent Street (and indeed London) will see in a while:

"Retail pundits will tell you that Regent Street is a thoroughfare filled with brand flagships where having a presence is rather more important than making money. This may be so, but in recessionary times the tendency to let the eye stray towards the bottom line is more tempting than last year."

which is a shame, because it's exactly this kind of initiative, exactly this kind of engaging brand innovation, that is most likely to future-proof a brand.  as a focus for PR efforts, as a destination, and as a source for new news and sparks for word of mouth, the National Geographic Store is everything an interactive and engaging brand experience should be...

...an experience grounded not in the necessity to sell, but in the discovery and exploration of why that brand pertains to exist in the first place, and what that brand's point of view on the world is; the concept and idea of that brand made manifest.  everything, in short, that a retail space in the early 21st Century should be.

The power of being there: How CNN and Facebook brought the world to Washington

there's something uniquely powerful about being at an event.  being able to say "I was there", "I saw it happen".  events don't come much bigger than what happened yesterday when the USA got its 44th President.  such was the interest in the event that much of the UK broadcast schedules for the day were turned over to rolling coverage of the inauguration.

but if passively watching the event wasn't enough, CNN and Facebook allowed citizens from all over the world to get a bit closer to the action.  the two brands teamed up and co-sponsored a live video stream of the inauguration on a co-branded microsite.  everyone who signed up to the Obama Inauguration Facebook page and changed their status were displayed on this microsite in real time for everyone to see.

what made this so powerful was the combination of the (CNN) broadcast stream in combination with the (Facebook) status frame on the right hand side of the page which automatically updated the many and varied status updates from those around the world watching on.

a gloriously powerful meeting of mainstream and social media, with each making the other more powerful.  mainstream giving a sense of collective action - and arguably belonging - to the social space, with social media bringing a human, personal and individual presence to the broadcast space.

can we watch the event as though we were there?  well thanks to CNN and Facebook, yes, we can.

ps thanks to Mikhail for the heads up on this

Fighting the Future: reaching a rose-tinted concensus at the IPA 44 Club's Future of Advertising in a Networked Society

A short history of marketing from jabi on Vimeo.

the rather lovely above video - by jabi - neatly sums up the collective dilemma of how brands, marketers and, specifically, agencies address the challenge of social media.  the issue was the topic of discussion last night at the IPA 44 Club's inaugural event of 2009: The future of advertising in a networked society.  quite the session it was... here's the gist:

part one - report findings

• social media = the online tools and platforms people use to share information, thoughts, opinions, content etc
• problems is that brands are "crashing the party rather than hosting it" (Russell Davies)
• many brands are experimenting but not getting traction in the area
• we need a model of comms that reflects 'ME' as opposed to 'brand'
• a model that's about conversation and participation rather than interruption and engagement
• a model that incorporates David Armano's thinking about 'influence ripples'
• Johnny X by Dare is a cracking example
• which succeeded in concentrating the feeds into and out of it's online space (64% of upstream and 84% of downstream feeds came from 10 sites each)
• planning social media should focus on targeting the few, that demonstrate: (1) expansiveness (propensity to chatter), (2) popularity (propensity to filter and target) and (3) reciprocity (likelihood to act)
• network size is predictable, as is network flow, as is circulation

part two - agency survey

• brands in a socially-networked world are more responsible for creating and disseminating the right information - brands should be more discretionary in what they produce [Mediation found this less than substantiated and at odds with Clay Shirky's comments at the MGEITF this year on filtering in a content-abundant world being after the fact, ie produce then allow the network to filter]
• the way to reward brand advocates is not through financial incentive
• the industry disagrees on two areas: (1) that advertising principles are the same in a networked society and (2) that social media behaves in a fundamentally new way
• it is believed that most revenue is up for grabs in content creation, then data & insight, then market research & insight gathering (amongst others)
• these new revenue streams represent £11bn of additional revenue opportunity, with another £5bn potentially
• ...which would be (exactly!) enough to meet the £16bn shortfall in industry revenues by 2016 predicted by the IPA's Future of Advertising and Agencies report of two years ago (£16bn = the difference between the IPA's 'Central' and 'Consumer' Scenarios)

part three - the discussion

I won't bullet this because it's getting late and you had to be there, but this was the better part of the evening with discussion ranging between philosophy of brands in a social media space to the (inevitable) measurement and accountability of such activity.

for me a kind of rose-tinted consensus was reached; consensus that went along the lines of:

• marketing has always been about great social networking, the challenge is the same - getting the right content in the right place, its just that...
• (1) people power is more potent (we have 500 networked connections not 50 disparate ones) and (2) we need to react to the context our message are in rather than control the context our messages are in
• it's brilliant because we can react to real people in real time in the context of a real conversations
• social media isn't a bolt on, it has to be woven into every brand touchpoint
• brands need to behave differently, and understand that their relationship with consumers is - to consumers - much less important than consumers' relationships with other consumers

so in a nutshell social media is great because it's as old as the hills, better than the disruption model, measurable ...and there's a freak-off big commercial opportunity for the brands and agencies that get it right.

I just don't think that it' that easy.  our industry is woefully unprepared for the future.  there's some brilliant thinking and debate going on, but the commercial models, joined-up industry measurement systems, and marketing best practice principles - from a 'what works' as opposed to a 'self-regulatory' point of view - just aren't moving fast enough.

most importantly, not enough consideration was given to the integration of broadcast and social media.  they're not going to exist in isolation and broadcast media is going nowhere. iTunes didn't kill CDs and Amazon didn't kill Waterstones.  social media certainly won't kill mainstream broadcast media; the same mainstream broadcast media that in the vast majority of instances provides social media users with the content they comment on, pass on, or reappropriate for their own ends.

the other interesting question is how the behaviour of digital natives will evolve...  we're familiar with the media 'hubs' that are the current crop of adolescent's bedrooms; they're multi-tasking away across ten devices and infinite bits of content.  but what happens when they grow-up?  how much of their social media behaviour will they take with them into adulthood and how much will they replace with the aggregated broadcast consumption of their parents?

we live in interesting times; and I guess we wouldn't have it any other way.

one last word, I urge you to read JVW's post about the event and specifically his debate on how the IPA can use social media to get their social media report into more people's hands whilst not impacting on revenues.  a pleasure and a joy.

Listening and learning: Contagious and Naughton on the importance of responding to conversations

Twas the day before Christmas, when all thru the comms industry; Not a planner was stirring, not even a still-drunk buyer from the Christmas party the night before...

and so the last post before Chrimbo brings the loveliest of Christmas pressies from Contagious, who have given us all their Most Contagious review of the year for free.  it's packed full of cracking examples of the best marketing and comms ideas from the last twelve months, some of which pick up on what was their anticipated theme of the year - the conversation:

"If 2006 was about user-generated content and 2007 about social media, then 2008 is about the conversation.’ So predicted Contagious editor Paul Kemp-Robertson in The International Herald Tribune back in January. ‘In other words, brands will have to steel themselves to the idea that marketing is a two-way street, not just a conduit for directing their messages toward pliant consumers."

I hope that's true.  I want it to be true.  I want 2008 to be the year that our conversations stopped being one-way, and where marketing and communications learned how to listen in interesting and relevant ways.  because listening isn't enough; it's easy to say 'we're listening' with one hand yet continue to deploy messages for perception or behavioural change in the broadcast streams with the other.

and if 2008 was the year of the conversation, I hope that 2009 brings the year of informed debate.  the year that we can use those conversations in ways that influence how we go about doing what we do and saying what we say.

this importance of conversation was highlighted in a great article by John Naughton in the Observer, who reports on how a WSJ article failed to correctly understand a story on Google's relationship with ISPs.  more crucially though, when the blogosphere went about correcting the article, their contribution was then largely derided by the broadcast stream.  Naughton observes that:

"Watching the discussion unfold online was like eavesdropping on a civilised and enlightening conversation. Browsing through it I thought: this is what the internet is like at its best - a powerful extension of what Jürgen Habermas once called 'the public sphere'."

this is the ambition, this is the hope.  that brands not just only listen in on the conversation, but then act on the information and opinion discussed within it's increasingly public sphere...  have awesome Chrimbo's guys, here's one last little treat from those crazy kids at AKQA, enjoy.
 

From theory to practice: the challenge of planning Transmedia

Keith Arem's graphic novel Ascend, for which a game is currently in development

it's now been over two years since Faris bought transmedia planning to our attention in his post of the same name on TIGS.  the theory has been well expounded in the period since then; with a post by Jason Oke at Leo Burnett Toronto which explored the TP concept within the context of a single ad quickly kicking things off.

I'm sure that the idea of TP has cropped up in most media, comms and ad agencies by now...  it certainly has in Mediation's.  but we've yet to see - as far as I can make out - a significant campaign emerge based on TP principles.  the same is actually true of the entertainment industry; in an interview with Games TM magazine(edition 75), Henry Jenkins - the Godfather of TP - concedes that truly persuasive examples have yet to arrive.

they're doing better than us though.  transmedia planning should be everywhere by now.  the theory is familiar and is not only relatively unchallenged, but is offers the very solution to some of the biggest marketing challenges of the moment.  of its many advantages, the primary benefit has to be the extent to which it pays back on the time taken to consume it.  Jenkins goes on to observe that "regardless of the commercial motives behind it, transmedia entertainment done well also provides rewards for fans".

so why is getting the theory working in practice so difficult?  here's some starters for ten...

firstly, the financial investment required.  the reason the best examples of TM largely remain in the entertainment arena (the Matrix, Cloverfield, Heroes, Lost etc) because it takes a significant chunk of investment to develop and then create the content often required.  the commercial models for Fox or Paramount are set up to do this, the commercial models for marketeers often aren't.

but this is a bit of a cop out.  for the cost of making three 30 second ads you can certainly afford to make an episodic drama for online distribution.  and no it doesn't matter if it's not going to go on broadcast TV because those people who consume AV content online are exactly those people most likely to 'get' transmedia narratives...  this means of course that the media budgeting has to evolve just as much as the production pot.

no, the real issues in making TP happen lie much closer to home than 'we don't have the budget' territory.  they are twofold, the first of which is we're bound to the conventions of the media spaces we use.  in the Games TM article mentioned above, Keith Arem discusses the TM principles behind his graphic novel Ascend (the image above).  he observes that:

"if a project requires a 30-minute budget introduction, games can do that, but the medium could just as easily offer six high-budget five-hour episodes to revolutionise the story.  film and television are still limited by rigid series structures and minimum lengths".

advertisers on those channels are bound by those same conventions; conventions we as an industry - planners, buyers and media-owners (and indeed Ofcom) alike need to start challenging.  it's the limitations of the spot model that in many cases is preventing transmedia's breakthrough into broadcast channels; and as long as transmedia only exists online, it's unlikely to capture the imagination of marketeers or the budgets of FDs.

but the final barrier to making TM happen in brand comms is the closet to home of all.  Jenkins notes that TM experiences can "be a source of ... frustration [for consumers] if it's inconsistent, undermines the coherence of the work, or promises insights it never delivers".  Arem's solution is simple: "have a good team of like-minded individuals around you ... my philosophy for all of our projects is to have a core team to supervise all creative and technical aspects of the production.  the main focus of that team is to keep the story and assets consistent, and integrate them with the entire franchise".

I think you know where I'm going with this.  agency structures are lucky if they can do this internally let alone with other agencies, resulting in the presention of a joined up and unified transmedia solution to a client.  not only might different creative agencies have to work to one vision, but that vision has to be molded by the space planned by its media agency, and of course vice versa.

the reality is that as long as the conversation with a client only gets as far as "how big is the pack shot?", both agencies and clients will be bound to a dynamic that not only acts as a barrier to transmedia planning, but actively works against it emerging into the mainstream where it so surely deserves to belong.

When Boris, Ken and Brian met George, Zippy and Bungle

a lovely bit of remix for the London Mayor elections which sees Boris, Ken and Brian meet George, Zippy and Bungle.  brands need to learn to more easily move this quickly, attaching themselves where relevant to current events.  the edit quality on this is superb - check out Zippy's look of horror when George makes his accusation...  Adland watch and learn...

Build then advertise it, and they will come: how the iPlayer delivers and relies on BBC's platform-neutral offering

news that the BBC's iPlayer delivered 42 million downloads in the first quarter of 2008 confirms the success of the BBC's online offering [source: MediaWeek].  it doesn't come as a surprise.  the player is simple to use and easy to navigate, and crucially the streaming option allows you to dip into programmes without the drawn-out drama of downloading and saving to your hard-drive.

it marks the most important of what is a range of moves to ensure platform neutrality of the BBC's offering.  hot on the heels of it's Virgin Media and iPhone deals comes the news that BBC will be joining forces with Wii to deliver it's content on Nintendo's home entertainment system.

the strategy is as spot on as you can get as we approach digital switch off.  Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture introduced us to the notion that it's not technology (and applications) that's converging but rather content.  we're consuming converged content on our terms across a range of platforms to suit our needs.  brands and other advertisers could learn a thing or two.

that said, you can sympathise with the criticisms of commercial broadcasters, especially those beyond page one of the EPG.  the BBC - despite the fallout of it's current restructuring, has investment to spare in developing the iPlayer - it's remit to digitise the nation being a keystone of it's license fee settlement.  they are in an enviable position, being a broadcaster that knows what you have to do is one thing; having the investment to make it happen is quite another.

of course the other benefit of being a big broadcaster is being able to cross-promote your platforms.  the iPlayer is as reliant on the eyeballs delivered by it's more established parent as the parent is on the 15-34 reach delivered by its new offspring.  and the BBC trumped it again here.  their penguin trailer on April 1st was just class.  enjoy.