When I first heard the news that Rupert Murdoch was going to start charging a subscription fee to access news content I though the old boy is finally losing his marbles. With media fragmenting on an undisturbed trajectory it seemed crazy to think that consumer would not simply shift their media consumption away from News Corp sites to non charging services.
I was like most people a little intrigued, why would someone who obvisouly has so much vision in this sector make such a seemingly crucial error?
Then I read a two articles in particular (that cant cite directly) the first, argued that many of the large publishers would follow his lead, an argument that makes considerable sense given they are all likely to be facing declining reveue in their online publishing businesses and so therefore have a great incentive to band together in this way. The second article referred to the general lack of reliability in the information published via blogs. Given the press release driven nature of mainstream media it is hardly completely reliable itself with much of the content being driven by self interested lobby groups but there is a point within this argument.
Quality journalism should attract a premium. It should be allowed to maintain a commercially viable position. Given the two main elements in the publishing equation going forwards: the shift to online from print and the plummeting of online media advertising revenue (the extent to which online divisions of publishing are lost leaders bearing no profit) there are few other options.
Quality journalism is an incredibly important thing. Therefore although I am besotted with the idea of freedom of information the fact remains that if we want quality journalism, and we do, there has to be a viable business model to support this industry.
It wont hurt media, peoples media reportoires are becoming increasingly diverse and so will support a wide variety of publishers and publishing models but at the core as consumers we will be choosing to support viability in the publishing industry. Surely its the only option.
There is undoubetly a shift in attnetion from paid to owned and earned media in both agencies and marketing teams around the country. Unlike most new waves of marketing behaviour however this shift requires not only a change in thinking but changes to the structure and model of the client side marketing team. In affect it requires many structural changes to a marketing team so that the required labour resources can be committed to content and social media so that owned /earned strategies can remain sustainable and generate return. This makes it a somewhat more difficult sell initially.
Most changes to marketing strategy have involved simply shifting budgets from the old channel to the new and in a longer terms sense the hiring of staff that have a knowledge of the new channel. For these new hires the job was essentially the same it just required specific knowledge of that channel and budgets could be managed through that channel to assure efficiency.
The owned/earned model however is different. Sure most brands have had owned media for decades but in the context of the digital age, branded content and social media properties it is now a much more labour intensive process. As all of us have no doubt seen social media and content development is something that has to be manitained once initiated. Its not a campaign orientated activity that marketing teams do on a porject basis but something that requires continued resource allocation towards in order to generate real returns.
It would most likely follow that pressure from agencies and marketing managers own research will highlight the imperative to shift towards focussing on owned/earned media which would eventually translate into changes in marketing teams strucures and activities. Additioanlly though I think that Strategy Directors should be having the ocnversation with Marketing Directors to make the necessary changes to their teams so that they can meet the requirements of the owned/earned model. There are a vast number of brands commited to this model in the US that are making excellent ground with a limited number of staff.
I guess I am talking about having content and social media savvy editorial types in marketing teams that have a nose for interesting content and can respond to social media conversation in an engaging way. It doesnt take that much to begin with, a couple of contractors initially and then once momentum is developed start planning a fully fledged content and social media team.
I think it can be said that without the existence of tension or controversy within a consumer insight or proposition that a campaign will be undifferentiated, plain and therefore inconsequential.
For a message or communication to stand out it needs to address or attempt to resolve some sort of tension that exists within the consumer or culture. To me it is analogous to news press whereby an interesting story or headline is by far more attention grabbing if it addresses a controversy or put another way a cultural, polical or social tension. In fact I would go as far as to say that any communication whether it be informative or artistic will only resonate with people if it addresses a tension in this way. The communication then becomes the vehicle through which the society expresses this tension (juxtaposition).
If the communication encapsulates the tension correctly it becomes a celebrated part of the vernacular of that culture.
In marketing communications this also applies. It is easy to write strategy based on insights that are logical. Logical is correct and safe but also in my opinion logical is just satisfactory. In order to cut through a strategic proposition must, like the news headline or artisitic expression, address or resolve some tension. If it doesnt it is likely to be relagated into the ’so what’ category because it does nothing to add to or assist the resolution of an unsolved problem. Which is perhaps the driver of any culture or economy, the need to find problems and solve them in order to progress and develop.
Ockham’s Razour states that the simplest explanation of a strategy is the best or put another way the explanation that describes a phenomenum with the least number of assumptions is the superior. Although simple solutions are usually superior it does not mean that the simplest approach to solving a problem is the best and for this reason Ocham’s Razour is widely misinterpretted in the context of strategy.
Strategy planning should be comlpex, the deeper you look into something the more complicated the picture becomes and therefore to get to the root of a problem your strategy has to reflect the complexities of complex phenomena. The solution should be simple yes but the strategy engender thinking that encapsulates as many variables in the equation as possible.
Take Quantum Physics as an example. If you want to understand what is going on at the sub atomic level with a degree of accuracy you need to delve deeper into sub atomic particles where the mathematics becomes exponentially more complicated.If you didnt delve into greater detail like this you would not have a clear understanding of the elements at playand your solution would be lacking.
The same applies for strategic planning – the smaller details need to be acknowledged and the thinking kept complex. Simple thinking will not fully take stock of the complete picture of what is happening and so as in the above example any solution derived from it will also be lacking.
Often you’ll encounter the argument that online resources need to be organised over one centrally defined property like the companies website. Initially it makes sense, a brand to most people is a singular entity that is best off occupying one single space organised within one centrally controlled property but this assumption is fundementally flawed and worse out of touch with the way consumers interact with brands online.
A brand can be defined along the same lines as social psychologists define culture. A culture is defined as the sum total of all things that exist within or make reference to the culture from language to events, places and its people. There are literally thousands of singular elements that make the sum total for defining a culture. So to with a brand, the brand is the sum total of all things that bear resemblance and make reference to the brand and although some elements outweight others, it is not centrally defined and exists more in the minds of consumers than any central location.
Typically the motive for centralising content over one discreet property is driven by the CIO whose cost imperatives of having centrally controlled content management systems are decided on before marketing can even enter the debate (or know what to debate).
One of the most conspicuous aspects of the web is its fragmented nature and the fragmented way that people tend to consume content. Therefore it seems pragmatic to replicate this pattern by distrbuting and hosting branded content throughout a diverse range of locations.
Indeed a cultural idea or meme is percieved as having pervaded its way into a culture further (being stronger as a meme) if it is encountered over more sources rather than fewer. So in the interest of improving a brands standing and its penetration into a culture it is likewise pragmatic to ensure that it is encountered via many sources, the argument for multichannel campaigns.
Most brands see the need to have a presence on social media channels as a base covering exercise, we’ve ticked the Facebook box but the most valuable benefit of utilising social media channels to host branded content is to better replicate the natural fragmented pattern consumers follow when consuming content and reflect the naturally occuring incidence of a meme in a culture.
Whenever I encounter the ‘because you just do” response to something I immediately think its time to challenge the underlying assumptions for acting that way because there’s a good chance the landscape has shifted significantly to require a rethink . The other day a colleague of mine was asked to come back with a list of “why a company should have a website” and it got an interesting reaction from all within ear shot.
Most people laughed and said things like “everyone has one and so you just do” or the one I shared was that the “argument for having a site was such a long time ago that it was just assumed knowledge and almost didn’t require thinking about”. But I then thought that coming up with this list would actually be an interesting exercise because certainly many of the assumptions underlying the reasons of old were now obsolete because of changes to the digital landscape and content consumption habits.
So why does a brand need a website? Blogger Chris Heathcote recently asked in his post Peak Web have we reached peak web? in which inherently lies the question does every brand actually need a website?
The answer is of course “no” – a website fulfills a list of objectives for a brand but that doesn’t mean that a website is the only way to achieve those objectives.
Traditionally the reasons for having a website have been around having a destination to house company information and information about products and services so that a consumer has a place to find this info but if you were to look at the average traffic stats of all branded websites that number would be incredibly low and hardly seem worth the investment.
The proliferation of content and destinations on the web has meant that the overall value of content has gone down as a result of increased supply and therefore the overwhelming majority of brand website content would not be seen by users in significant enough volumes to warrant its existence.
Its best therefore for brands to execute web based campaigns and create content which is short lived to fit with consumer consumption behaviour of sporadic engagement over many channels as opposed to deeper engagement over a few.
Even progress in rich media executions has meant that click throughs from banners are no longer an imperative. Enough rich content can now be pushed through a banner execution to not even warrant a user going to the site for more information rendering the site obsolete and in many cases an unwanted detour.
Sure there’s lots of brands that need sites particularly ones that require more information by the consumer to make a decision but lets not just jump to the conclusion that a site is a default requirement in many cases a site is not entirely necessary and at the very least I expect 80% of website sub pages out there dont need to be.
[Here's an excellent example of agency Boone Oakley's abense of a website}
This is a follow on from the post “Social media as a guiding principle” which argued that if a brand wants to utilise social media properly it needs to have something worth talking about and if it doesn’t have something worth talking about it should create something.
Recently Proctor & Gamble used social media successfully to market its tampon product by creating a content driven social media portal. The results were very successful as Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research explains.
This is a great example of a brand creating meaningful content by looking to consumer issues peripheral to the product and its use. Its unclear if this campaign was extended to mainstream social media platforms particularly given the nature of the subject. But the ground work has now been laid by the brand to continue a meaningful dialogue with its consumer which is an excellent position to be in as it conveys a positioning of understanding the consumer and a willingness to offer experience above and beyond it’s product benefits.
This campaign fuses two of my favourite things: the clever utilisation of dead space and the debunking of misinformation. This campaign for The Reality Coalition by Crispin Porter + Bogusky achieves just that – it cleverly utilises the otherwise dead space of an error 404 page with a contextually related message via an OTP style banner placement.
Its clear to everyone now that brands can derive benefit from engaging in social media but the important thing for a marketing team to ask themselves before embarking is “have we got anything worth talking about?”
The hard thing about social media isn’t getting marketers to sit up and pay attention to it, they all want to know how to take advantage of all of the hype, its actually executing which is the difficult part and that’s because often times the brand doesn’t have anything really worth talking about over social media. Its a lot like the difference between someone on Twitter telling you what they had for lunch versus someone actually giving you information that benefits you somehow (which is the yardstick through which participants on the medium are generally judged). If a brand wants success on social media it needs to have something worth talking about otherwise like the guy sitting in his office with his ham salad sandwich no one will care about what the brand has to say on Twitter, Facebook or Youtube and their foray into social media marketing will be a waste of time.
Its very well established that a dialogue communication model is superior to the broadcast model so going full circle in the context of the depth of social media penetration if a brand doesnt have something worthwhile talking about then really this is an indication that their marketing is somewhat off compass in terms of creating dialogue strategies and they should look instead to recalibrating and directing their strategy towards something that will yield something worth talking about.
In fact I would go so far as to say that if a brand doesn’t have anything worth talking about on social media like Twitter then they should rethink their entire strategy and select thinking, initiatives and ideas that ARE worth talking about. In this way the guiding principle of deciding on which directions and ideas to promote is based around the notion of whether or not its something worth discussing with and between consumers on social media.
[I'm working on a diagram here to show how this can all fall into a cycle of planning, executing, sharing and evaluating so please wtach this space.]
Marketing and mass media have been awash recently with reports of social media and how brands will need to engage in social media strategies in order to stay relevant. Several articles have shown survey results of marketers indicating their intention to engage in social media strategies or that they see social media platforms as a necessary adjunct to their current activities. This is all positive and really something you’d expect given the magnitude of user engagement with social media but the lack of action from most brands risks relegating them to the background.
As with the notion of first to market advantage so to is the notion of first to channel advantage. Those brands which have the ability and smarts to act quickly and be one of the first to a new platform in the form of a campaign stand out from the crowd and are seen as innovative and keenly aware of their target consumer. This form of return then diminishes over time until the laggards are either seen as also rans or need to up the ante on the incentive for the user to engage in the campaign in order to strike an accord with their audience.
In the current climate of uncertainty there is an opportunity for brands which are able to understand new channels quickly and execute well over these channels to capture market share as most of their competitors retreat into more conservative strategies. There is obviously perceived risk in doing this as there will not be an abundance of case studies to support the effectiveness of relatively new channels but there is always risk the greatest being doing what you have always been doing while the rest of the world is changing around you [i.e lack of adaptability]. Marketers should adopt an entrepeunerial mindset whereby they are constantly on the lookout for new channels and new ways of engaging their audiences. This will yield big returns for those brave and clued up enough to act quickly and leverage this first to channel advantage.
