FOX8's Snag a Simpson initiative ... creating viewer engagement or bribe to increase viewer minutage?
so I returned home last night to find one of Pelican's number playing the above game on FOX8. the channel invites you to try and 'Snag a Simpson' … this involves you pressing select to play, and when you see a Simpsons character on the screen you snag them by pressing Red on your FOXTEL remote.
I know for a fact that you can do this because I watched said person do it.
only you need to 'Snag' 10 Simpsons in 15 minutes for your reward. the guide explains that it's free and you can play as many times as you want. I bet you can.
the generous interpretation is that FOX8 is genuinely looking to create viewer engagement and reward consistent viewing. the less generous interpretation is that the channel is blatantly attempting to bribe you from switching channels during the ads breaks (or shows for that matter) and at the same time increase their minutage amongst the measurement panel.
I fear that it may be the latter.
but I also fear that its another worrying sign that the implicit contract between channels and viewers (and advertisers) is broken. the contract states that you get the programmes for free (or for less if you're on subscription) and all you have to do is watch the ads…
only people don't buy that any more. in fact the contract seems a great deal less attractive than it once did... why? (1) a lot of people pay for their TV now, so they're not getting their content for free (2) the amount of choice available makes switching all too attractive (3) we're increasingly trained to consume micro-content - small packages of TV or otherwise that can be consumed in a couple or minutes (or seconds if you're browsing your Tweetdeck) - this makes catching even only a scene on an another channel preferable to sticking to an ad break (and even if you miss the rest of the show you caught the first half so what the hell) and (4) the ads in most ad breaks are pretty crap … I've taken time to watch a few ad breaks of late and I really really have been stunned by the general drivel that advertisers and agencies seem to think passes for an ad...
we made the contract together and I guess that we'll break it together; everyone involved will have been complicit in it's cancellation:
the viewers got impatient and became happy to flick around ubiquitous content.
the advertisers only cared that a small but big enough fraction of people who saw an ad responded, ignoring the fact that the vast vast majority of people who saw it were either ambivalent (neutral brand equity effect) or disliked it (negative brand equity effect) or hated it (super-negative brand equity effect and potentially damaging WOM.
channels continued to print money and fight for petty share wins, ignoring the fact that overall viewing was in decline and that viewers were distracted, multitasking and ambivalent to the efforts of the advertisers from whom they were taking money.
and what of agencies? perhaps agencies will become the most culpable of all. we failed to ask the networks the questions we should be asking, going along with their playground share battles, whilst all the time taking micro-payments in the form of a commission from every ad that we placed. agencies sat like market stall traders at the base of a dam that was about to burst; not investing in an ark but instead telling their customers that everything was fine … that the dam would hold … that the flood would never come.
we may come to see a great deal more endeavours to encourage viewers to 'Snag a Simpson", or a Robinson, or heaven forbid a Grimshaw. it's cheating. we can do better. whether or not we choose to accept our fate of SImpson-Snagging is up to us.
Zaac pointed me in the direction of the above this morning. it's the trailer for MTV America's remake of the UK's beloved Skins. as someone who watched and loved the show it makes for strange viewing. on one hand the new cast and setting looks strikingly different. but after a while the similarities between the above and the original UK version become not just clear but blindingly obvious.
the car going into the water. the quick edit phone conversation. taking to one's own genitals. even the back garden (yard now) trampoline. all conspire to indicate that this is a clean remake of the show. something which, if true, presents not only a missed opportunity but a huge failing of producing.
a missed opportunity, in that the best adaptations of shows for US audiences haven't been remakes but remixes. same show, different culture. think about how The Office transferred from Slough to Scranton, or how the boys from Manchester evolved into a very different Queer as Folk Baltimore. great remakes, or should I say remixes, protect and nurture the truth of a show whilst mixing in a new culture and society's perspectives and nuances.
from Slough to Scranton - same Office, very different culture
from Manchester to Baltimore - same, err, well totally different actually...
that "the remix is the very nature of digital", is of course now so widely held to be true that it's almost too obvious to quote it. but Gibson's elegant maxim is too often ignored. by TV makers and brands alike. just as in the case of TV shows that fail to capitalise on the opportunities that a remix affords, how many global ads do we see land on the screens of shores a far cry from their (often European or American) origins? or worse, dubbed out of their native tongue, so that we are sold to by smiling fresh-faced lip-synced avatars...
the pressure to create ads that can be deployed across a multitude of regions leads to centrally developed, but often locally less-relevant communications. distinctiveness in communications is key - it mitigates misattribution and builds brand cues that extend the return of a media investment out of the short term and into the longer term. simply deploying a global property locally is no guarantee of success.
this presents a problem for TV producers and brands alike ... a problem that, for the latter, will only be exacerbated by a shift away from broadcast interruption as the de-facto method for audience reach, towards a two-way content and community-led platform that seeks to engage an audience.
MTV's gamble with Skins - to create what looks like a remake rather than a genuine remix - should give pause for thought for marketers. to what extent are we acting in a brand's best interests by picking up and redeploying content into a country - and culture - for which it wasn't designed? how many opportunities are missed, and investment wasted, by failing to reflect the nuances of a culture with whom you seeking to engage?
"the broadcast model isn't broken... yet. how prepared are agencies for when it breaks?" was the question I wanted to put to the Q&A panel at last week's iMedia Agency Summit in Sydney. whilst I didn't get the chance to ask the panel, I did get the opportunity to ask it to Rohan Lund of Yahoo!7, but more of that later.
yes, this week saw the AdTech Summit series hit Sydney, part of which was the iMedia festival which I attended along with around one hundred of my Sydney media counterparts. all in all it was a day of more questions than answers, but that was to be expected I, well, expect. that said, some genuine morsels emerged, which (after a bit of an absence from the blogosphere) I thought I'd share... here then, is what happened at iMedia, at AdTech, at Sydney...
Unilever brands that have utilised the social media space
first up, delivering the keynote welcome, was Unilever's Babs Rangaiah (@babs26) who described how he and others are pioneering in the Social Media space at the company. its necessary stuff in his opinion, pointing out that only 18% of TV campaigns generate positive ROI, and that 24 of the top 25 biggest newspapers are undergoing circulation decline.
his three observations were that Unilever is (1) living the [social media] space, (2) re-framing their thinking re Social media and Applications [ie NOT pre-rolls - thats the broadcast solution applied to the online paradigm], he cited BBH's Axe Wake Up Service app from Japan (above), and (3) rewriting its media manifesto along these lines, as would be written by customers:
be part of the world - Rangaiah pointed out the gap between time spent online and advertising spend online
penetrate our culture - the move from interruption to engagement; is what we create useful, entertaining or interesting? he cited the example of the Dove for Men campaign, which after scooping up a SuperBowl spot proceeded to land its American Football-playing star a seat on Oprah's couch
give us a voice and a role - Best Job In The World anyone?
be authentic - anyone unclear on this one just Google Dell Hell...
listen to us
create more value - "you want us to pay? ... [then] we want you to pay attention"
don't be so corporate
keep it simple - good one this, if you can't explain an idea to a non-marketing friend or partner in ten seconds then its probably to complex to ever get traction
telling friends - WoM is the most powerful form on advertising [Alleluia Babs, Alleluia]
do good
he ended on a topic that would be the subject of some debate for the rest of the day... how the rapid evolution on metrics in the online space has created its own rewards but also problems. from clicks and impressions to unique users to engagement or stickiness and now ROI ... measuring success has never been so possible nor so complex.
next up was the lovely Megan Brownlow, Entertainment and Media Editor for PWC's Outlook, which complies stats on 'where the money is' in the entertainment and media spaces... this is facts given meaning not opinions back up with stats, so worth paying attention to, especially a key observation re consumer spending vs advertiser spending...
PWC's five year view looks a lot like this
PWC revenue predictions as presented at iMedia Summit last week in Sydney
put simply, people are predicted to spend proportionately more on entertainment and media (content) than advertisers will spend on media. good news if your media business model is predicated on creating and distributing stuff that people will want and pay for. bad news if your media business model is taking commission on advertising spend. a problem further compounded by the well documented explosion in inventory, which any economist will tell you will lead to lower yields for media publishers and agencies.
Brownlow described the 'structural change' of this versus other recessions. the recovery will be shallower than any previous one, "a crawl rather than a jump out", but not for everyone. between 2003 and 2009 search revenues have increased from 31% of ad revenues to 50.4% - 90% of which, no one needs reminding, goes to one company.
the big growth is in consumer pay models, where growth is predicted to be 5.5% CAGR ('09-'13). hence media owners and publishers seeking hybrid business models (another hot topic of the day) to monetise content. Brownlow noted research suggesting that, for example, in newspapers people will pay, but only for verticals - a proportion (Finance 97%, Sport 77%) of the hard copy price as long as that same content is not available for free elsewhere. in this context Murdoch's rallying cry to the newspaper industry to declare war on Google makes immaculate sense. her final observation was that even if hybrid pay models work, lost revenues won't be replaced. the annihilation of the old model of newspaper publishing is still an inevitability.
Brownlow's final observation however was a cold shower for any Australians readying themselves for seats of honour in the digital revolution after-show party. compared to the rest of the world, the country is significantly lagging in online adoption, with revenues in the online space in the region of 25%, compared with 31% globally and up to 50% in countries such as south east Asia. "traditional media 'owns' the market in Australia for a long time yet to come". the reasons, infrastructure (and therefore effectively ISP cost) and attitude... the former understandable given the countries geography, the latter frustrating to say the least in a country with such an entrepreneurial culture (my observation not Brownlow's).
three 'game-changers' to end with: (1) the NBM or National Broadcast Network, a government initiative to hardwire the nation by 2017, but which Goldman Sachs predicts will be only 50% complete by then, (2) mobile, yes 2010 IS mobile's year and (3) interactive games, with a 7.5% growth forecast, 2.2bn market and two structural changes to boost the sector in the form of mobile and online gaming. play on.
next up the enigmatic Ed Smith of NDM who started with a topic that was to become one of the themes of the day... that of volume versus value in the online space. he made two observations - one, that (average) click rates were down from 32% to 16%; and two, that 8% of people accounted for 80% of clicks. so just how valuable is a click? how many brands and businesses are so overly obsessed with generating clicks that they're "going out of business as cost effectively as possible"? ...he questioned what the point of [100%] paid-for search was when you're not investing in product or marketing initiatives that 'build the brand'?
this was a phrase that kept on cropping up, bit of a fat phrase (and not in a good street way)... ultimately by 'build the brand' I suspect the speakers were referring to brand associations. and raising the (valid) question of how long the broadcast interruption model can create and sustain brand associations (ie what 'brands' effectively are) if we're all collectively ignoring / avoiding more, clicking less, and paying for content direct.
Smith went on to give the publishers' perspective wrt post-broadcast print... describing some of the emerging platforms he played with at a recent tech conference. I was going to ask him "how he was intending to meet the challenge of defending margins when the cost of producing content is no longer matched by advertising revenues?" ... but we know the answer to this, it's the much talked about hybrid model... of combining (lower) ad revenues with direct payment from people for the content. the 'iPad $ a day' model. Smith's retort to those who question the sustainability of the hybrid model: "People who say 'people won't pay for content' don't know what's possible". to that point, he showed us this:
he observed that the NYT's iPad application launched with three advertisers each paying US$200k for the privilege and challenged the audience with the question "are your digital media choices making your brand bigger or smaller?"
the end of the morning saw Fairfax Digital's CEO Jack Matthews take up some of the themes opened by Smith... "consumer demand for media, in all it's forms, has never been greater", "a new era of online advertising", "direct response get's too big a share of the media mix", "the future of media companies and agencies is to add value" ... there's a clear direction of travel from publishers here; away from trading debates based on the value of a click, towards trading debates predicated on the value of the audience the publisher is providing...
Matthews outlined three change catalysts in the space: (1) three screens (2) building brands on desktops and (3) agency / campaign integration
he made a delightful observation on the three screen model: "if the desktop user is a browser, then a mobile user is a hunter". I have a lot of time for that, it really focuses how you think about adding value to people in the mobile space. he reiterated the belief that "people are willing to pay for content on mobile devices", and pointed out the projected rise of video advertising on the desktop - 48% CAGR in ad revenues to 2014. he also made it quite clear to the audience that Fairfax Digital is in the business of and focusing on "building engaged audiences more than reach".
he ended with a call for integration, observing that "we have no aligned metric for measuring 'brand building' [that phrase again] online", and that there's not enough integration within agencies on aligning on and offline media. he acknowledged that his organisation had to be more prepared to work with other organisations too... an acknowledgment that he described as a "fundamental shift" in Fairfax's position.
after post-lunch sessions by Michael Hendricks, Head of Decision Management, CitibankAsia Pacific ("we're about acquiring the right customers, not the most", "our most valuable customers use all of our channels most of the time") and Corporate Anthropologist (who knew?) Michael Henderson, it was back to the media agenda with Rohan Lund of Yahoo!7...
58% of Yahoo!7's audience media 'mesh' at least several times a week: 95% on email, 63% on social networks, 54% to get more info on a show and 40% to follow-up on an ad they've seen... time spent online watching video is now 13%, and very much social.
Lund challenged the session - in a context of content, content content - to question what our business models were? access isn't enough. "we [Yahoo!7] make it easier for users to access content that matters to them most", adding that "our businesses are data businesses ... our core business is targeting".
he outlined Yahoo!7's recently launched catch up service, thru which every primetime show is available. he described how the ambition is to get the browser closer to a TV environment, and talked thru the challenges of making TV shows available for different IPTV-ready TV models. interestingly, for non-partner TVs they've introduced open-source development. and he was quite clear that he saw no reason why online video CPMs will never be lower than for TV; in effect a premium for targeting.
back to the question I asked at the start of the post, I put to Lund that "the broadcast model isn't broken... yet. how prepared are agencies
for when it breaks?" ... he believed that agencies are becoming more integrated, and understanding better the balance between on and offline. but acknowledged the elephant in the room; that "no one ever got fired for buying TV", and that people are still "hiding behind TV as a safe solution"...
good to have it out and said, and credit to Lund for doing so... but I think its less about TV being seen as the safe solution, and more the reach and delivery of the broadcast model that's seen as the safe solution. the absurdness of this just gets truer every day. if the iMedia summit made one thing clear its that the figures are now starting to track the theory. viewing fragmenting, click rates decreasing, ad avoidance up... and the solution? a continued clinging to the sinking ship that is broadcast interruption. it's like the Titanic's going down and the industry is scrabbling to get on board...
this was followed by (for me) one the highlights of the day as Sean Finnegan, President and Chief Digital Officer at Starcom MediaVest Group took us thru his vision for his media agency's digital offering.
his logic is crystal: clients are struggling to deliver accountability in rapidly changing markets where its harder to connect with consumers. agencies therefore need restructure and resource to provide a range of new offerings: RealTime consumer insight, actionable insights, and content - all created by what Finnegan describes as 'liquid talent'. how...
business intelligence and hub formations
data exchanges (in the US buying of non-identify-able consumer data is now mainstream)
standardised findings with consumers and the industry (common and consistent measurement)
instant content delivery, real time text and video (eg EA's Tiger Woods video)
strategic alliances, frenemies have never been more important...
he observed that "efficient pricing is no longer a value add", and that "marketers and agencies that focus only on price are leaving value on the table". we've gone "from a linear to a networked comms infrastructure [which] creates a transfer of power to the consumer". he noted that we "need to start understanding the passions and behaviours of individuals [across media platforms]", and observed that this would have inherent problems for publishers.
he also outlined his thoughts on the media agency offering... "because of our proximity to consumers we have to be more adept at design and messaging", but also gave a stark warning to media isolationists: "you need to be confident enough to partner with competitors that are better than you to deliver the best solutions for your clients ... the more we give away, the more we grow".
his view on the future of the Starcom's digital offering is clear: a move away from media people as aggregators towards media people as analysis of data, interpreting, modeling and projecting for clients and brands. his people will be more account managerial and who are less in the business of "killing bad news" and more in the business of "selling the best ideas".
so what to make of it all?
great day and some interesting comment and debate, but you can't help but leave with the impression that there's far more questions than answers. but perhaps that's well and good, it's an easy cliche to say that there's never been a more interesting time to work in media... but its true never the less. for more than three years this blog has set itself the task of negotiating the future of media and communications; a task is no less interesting, gripping and exciting than it was when in November 2006 I wrote my first post on TV (versus) online:
"the internet is television. but it's television on viewers' rather than broadcaster's terms. the issue isn't the demise of TV, but the decline of the broadcast model and of the broadcaster as commissioning editor and content aggregator."
its vaguely how terrifying how little has changed. the debate, the argument and the negotiation continues, and we're all the better for forums like iMedia in which to talk, and for that matter drink, it out...
NBC's SuperBowl broadcast cash cow; could the last marketer out please turn off the lights (pic sourced)
news this week that Chrysler has caused quite a stir by 'snapping up' one of the last remaining ad spots in the Superbowl. 'Chrysler' you say, 'the Chrysler that got bailed out by the American taxpayer to the tune of $13.5 BILLION last year?' ... yes, the same.
I am, in a word, stunned. stunned that an advertiser that had just been bailed out by the American taxpayer could decide that blowing something in the region of $100,000 per second on a 60" TV ad is in any way shape or form the right thing to do. when oh when are people going to get that broadcast advertising is neither efficient nor effective at selling things. McKinsey, if you remember, did a really cracking bit of research that went a long way to proving that consideration isn't a funnel and doesn't work like that.
I'm not suggesting that advertising (ie one-to-many 'adverts') isn't good at doing things. it really is. it's very good at (1) communicating new news, (2) getting people talking about your brand and (3) it's very good at validating purchase decisions. but none of these are relevant for Chrysler; who in this move have only succeeded in getting people talking for all the wrong reasons...
Ad Age quote one commenter as saying that the move is a "slap in the face to every American taxpayer ... This is Chrysler's way of saying 'Thanks for saving us, but now screw you, America. We're gonna use the money to pay for some Super Bowl ads".
a spokesperson for Chrysler- quoted in the same article - comments that "The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched TV programs of the year, not only for the football game but for the creative advertising ... It provides an efficient platform to make a statement, set the new brand-positioning and reach the maximum number of viewers in comparison to traditional advertising ... It would be more costly to achieve the same number of viewers in traditional media placement and ensure the high viewership attention span that the Super Bowl delivers."
I'm sorry but the 1980's called and they want their marketing model back.
its a statement from a company marching backwards: "efficient platform to make a statement", "set a new brand positioning", "in comparison to traditional advertising", "high viewership attention span" ... I really am at a loss for words.
Advertising Age's headline was that "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" - their reporting suggesting "Don't advertise, you don't move product. Advertise, you get hammered for wasting money" ... I'm sorry but in this case Chrysler are just damned. damned because they have. they have wasted money, they have taken a lazy way out, and they have ignored the new paradigm of marking and communications that has evolved around them over the last decade.
Pepsi decided that they wouldn't be damned if they didn't. the company that spent $142m on SuperBowl advertising between 1999-2009 (source) have decided that they'd rather invest the money on something a little more meaningful than lining the pockets of Madison Avenue's Bad Men. Pepsi are marketing by investing in the people and projects that people think are worthy of investment. Pepsi get that ad money isn't there to 'sell' stuff. it's there to get people talking about your brand, because what you're doing is worthy and meaningful and acting as though you give a damn about the people that you want to buy your products. and full credit to them.
in the slow painful death of the broadcast sales model, it's the existence of events like the SuperBowl that will allow its last standing defendants to cry "it works ... we can shout at people and claim 'our brand believes in freedom, or choice, or in the human spirit, or technology or whatever we think will most differentiates us from a competitive set that we create in order to validate our investments and people will believe us and they will buy and it will be awesome".
but if the reaction to Chrysler's move tells us anything its that the long held contract between advertisers and people who buy stuff may be starting to show more than a few cracks. people are realising that thereare other ways to be marketed at than to be shouted at by a company who can spend $100,000 a second on an advert. sure the model and it's contract will hold, probably for a good while to come, and Chrysler seem happy to throw their dollars at it. but I'd rather be one of the first ones to get out and taste the fresh air than be the last one to turn out the lights. what you do, I guess is your call.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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...
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.
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.
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