Nothing new - to be honest. But interesting nonetheless.
How the Cloud (with a capital "C") is going to change our lives? Well, it has the potential of changing our views on privacy - as well as how we look at computing, sharing information, and other tech-lifestyle related activities.
Amazing how we have grown since the Net was introduced to the public.
Having been re-immersed back into the world of communications planning and advisory, a realization - or a "re-realization" struck me.
Whilst we are in a world that is increasingly becoming more "digitized" and where certain media vehicles are becoming more and more a "concierge service" - i.e., a centralized service to stay in touch with all things - we are still lacking in real integrators.
Digital planners - who can think of the brand beyond the digital medium and its intricacies - I think, are still lacking. Don't get me wrong: digital planners are a great bunch of people. And by the innate nature of the web as being very measurable and accountable, digital planners hold a very critical role in any communications plan.
However, I have the belief that digital planners - who are specialists in their own right and could command great respect from the rest of the marketing planning community - needs to take into consideration that brands are not created overnight.
Just because click-through rates or CPCs or CPAs or keywords or widgets or RFIs are high relative to eyeballs doesn't necessarily mean a successful campaign. These - IMHO - are measures of "efficiencies" rather than effectiveness: How much dollars is a campaign generating versus the investments that are being poured into it.
There is still a need to look at brands - and these metrics that measure how consumers interact, experience, relate, and animate a brand cannot be captured by merely looking at CPCs and CPAs and other conversion measures.
True: all businesses ought to be measured in terms of their revenue-generation capabilities. And therefore all campaigns that support this businesses need to generate sales. HOWEVER, a brand isn't built overnight - and the impact of so-called "branding campaigns" are not necessarily immediately felt or measurable. Heck, if we can measure overnight the impact of a "branding campaign", I think that would be the ideal scenario. However, sticking to our CPCs and CPAs and SEMs and SEOs and other measures an tactics as "mere campaign measures that matter because they are closer to the company's bottomline" could well be a myopic viewpoint.
Media planning as an industry has evolved - strategic planners from mainstream creative and agency-companies are now welcome in the world of "noughts and crosses" and are changing the way media planning is bein done. These strategic planners do not necessarily use numbers - but they "adapt" their knowledge of how brands are created and how consumers encounter/experience brands not just through messaging strategies but also through the message's interaction/synergy with the medium that carries that message - regardless of what that medium is.
The same is true for digital specialists - they have to "adapt" their technical knowledge and expertise to include a deep understanding of how brands are created - online and offline.
This is not to say that the digital medium ought to be an after-thought, after all the traditional, offline media have been fulfilled and their budgets optimized. What I am trying to say is digital specialists should also be able to talk about brands and brand-building - in the immediate and in the long-term - within their specialised field - and at the same time, outside the digital realm.
At the end of the day, we are aiming to provide better brand-consumer experiences that would transform target audiences into brand users (and revenue-sources) and into brand ambassadors. Clicking an ad - in Google, in MSN Search, in Yahoo.Com, or in some other vertical - is one aspect of that experience.
But it is not the only aspect of brand-building.
Brands are created over time, across multiple experience-opportunities, with the end-user reinforcing her relationship with the brand at her own time, at her own choosing. Revenues in the short-term are good and they are good for the bottomline of the company for this quarter or this month. But businesses - the last time I checked - are in it for the long-haul.
I had a bit of a discussion with our digital lead in the office about Google and Digg. As of early last week, talks are probably making some headway. TechCrunch had even had a stronger 'pronouncement' that the talks are in the final stages with Google paying 200Mln USD (only?) for the deal. Of course, Digg had to respond to such talks. Its CEO, Jay Adelson, denied that these talks are in place.
As of the latest news, there seems to have been a breakdown in the negotiations. Google, apparently, walked away from the deal, according to TechCrunch.
What's driven Google to this? Well, we can only speculate. But this perhaps could give us a glimpse: It seems that Google is experimenting with integrating user-votes into their algorithms to further refine the search results that the search engine churns for its users.
This entry from TechCrunch demonstrates how some early tests that Google has been conducted in the area of "social/user-votes-integration" into search results.
All these are of interest to me as a campaign planner - and for marketeers.
First, the idea of integrating a social-dimension to search results is probably a good idea from the end-user perspective. Right now, Google's PageRank and other technologies (Microsoft's Browserank, which debuted on SEOBook.Com) are dependent on "referral links".
(Microsoft's BrowseRank looks at user's behavior and the time spent per 'referring link' to ascertain the importance of the 'target link'; OK - that's putting it simplistically...)
Adding on a social component to search results is essentially "sourcing the wisdom of the crowds" - crowds, who I should add would be or are going to be very likely to be interested in the same things that any individual user is looking for.
The technologies of referring links (and other metrics gathered through sophisticated algorithms based on web-crawlers and others) will have an added, truly-interactive dimension - which means that with this, users get to have a say on what's relevant and what's not.
Will it lead to better results? I am no algorithm expert - but I would think so. If I were searching for "Ducati motorcycles" (which I have been doing for the past 2 weeks), I would want to have more relevant information on Ducati - way beyond what the corporate website of Ducati says (which always comes up tops on the list). And right now, I will have to follow every single link that the Google search results page spews out.
With this added dimension of "vote-ups/downs" from other end-users who may have searched the same keywords as I have done, it might just make my life a little easier. The ones that were voted up by people who did the same search earlier than I did would most likely be relevant to me, too. It may not be perfect - but at least it is a starting point.
The end-user, I think, will benefit from this greatly. She may lose out on a few interesting websites - but even then, she can vote-up/down on her own volition results which she may have found to be relevant to her search.
On the other hand, there are questions on "search results manipulation". If we had incidents of "click-fraud" in the CPC model - then we'll have to live with (or at least get Google to put a lid on) fraudsters who will be exploiting the possibility of artificially bumping up/down ratings.
On a cost-basis (which in these troubled times are beginning - or are becoming a more frequent point of discussion in marketing meetings - traditional or digital), costs per click or costs per acquisition are probably going to increase.
The results no longer are just dependent on Google's algorithms - with the social dimension of the search results, the crowd contributes. Essentially, people who have done similar searches as I am now doing, for exaple, will have already paved the way for me to the most relevant results - which could potentially be relevant to me, too!
Now, isn't that more valuable than pure, algorithm-derived search results? If I were google, I would do the same thing. I would put a premium to this - whilst controlling the possibility of fraudulent vote-ups/downs.
Bottom-line: Google is living up to its vision - "to oganize the world's information". And if and when this incorporation of the social dimension comes through, it would have been a step closer to realizing that vision.
For now, Google + Digg is probably not going to pull through. But it seems, Google has got its head around the issue. And it seems that they are on the right track.
This is a very interesting video from Yahoo! Tech Ticker, an interview with Jonathan Yarmis of AMR Research conducted by Sarah Lacy. Yarmis believes that there are four pillars to disruptive technologies that will define the future - not in silos but in terms of how each pillar interact:
1. Social Networking Phenomenon, powered by the technology
2. Cloud computing
3. Mobile access to data
4. Monetization beyond the traditional search ads
Yarmis also suggests that "paid search ads in a social networking phenomenon" (and I will add, in other technologies - for example in mobile access to data on a phone or a wireless device) are not the only way to monetize all these.
(Think of it this way: If you are talking/networking with your friends on your PC or on your mobile device, would you really click on a text ad that's irrelevant to what you and your friends are talking about?)
The internet, Yarmis says, will remain to be free - and I do agree. Capex from tech companies that are funding these "free" internet services won't be able to maintain these levels of interest. Monetization will be critical. However, most companies are still very much stuck to the old "advertising mindset" of capitalizing on "inventory" rather than creating new ways of monetizing these.
This is a piece of interesting news that I picked from the NYTimes: a company in the US, called Sense Networks (in NY), has launch an analytics program that will help analyze data on people's movements, routines, and trips - and potentially encounters with other people (or crowds), ads, and the retail shop. This comes after NATURE published a study on how people of an unnamed city roam around their city/locale using cell-phone signals.
From a research perspective, this is a lot of data - a treasure trove of data.
From a marketeer's POV, this is a something like a dream come true: knowing where your consumers are, what kinds of media/communications they encounter with on the street, how they behave alone versus in groups versus in crowds of people, and how they behave inside the store en route to buying your product. A savvy marketeer can immediately see the value (I hope) of such information - and how it can be deployed to improve one's investments across different kinds of media and non-media channels.
I can imagine, for example, a marketeer or a media planning company in NY tagging all their outdoor sites, bus-/train-ads with GPS data - alongside shopping centers that carry their brands or their competitors.
I can also imagine marketeers and data-miners having a grand time consolidating information in-store with those gathered from these troves of consumer- and ad-/media-locator data - and creating predictive models and algorithms that would make brand campaigns more effective.
I can also imagine how these sort of data will move adspends away from TV and potentially other in-home media, including the internet because "the last golden mile" in retail marketing is still the most important part of the buying process...!
But I am also pretty sure that this will attract a lot of controversy: privacy and individual anonymity.
It's going to be - hmm - intrusive. It could very well be the start of conspiracy theorists' and privacy advocates' nightmare: Big Brother On The Loose. I can't imagine what would stop governments using this kind of technology (if they don't already have it - now that sounds a little like a conspiracy theory...) to track down individuals of interest to the state/nation in order to "protect" and ensure the safety of the public.
So - given these imagined possibilities, what should we think of these developments?
Well, I think we need to carefully think through this one very carefully. Whilst it is great technology - and it could benefit marketeers (and, marketeers would argue, it could also benefit consumers), I think that it furthers the questions on privacy, ethics in marketing research, and corporate social responsibility:
However, there are also repercussions that come with the availability of these kinds of data.
Tags: Data, Analytics, Research, Marketing Research, Media Planning
Will we ever see LinkedIn and Facebook meeting - and competing?
There is a view that most would have a Facebook account for 'fun' and LinkedIn for a more serious, professional image. That's what I do, too. I think - though - that there is more to LinkedIn that just that.
I have used LinkedIn to be heard - one of the major sources of traffic to my blog Marginally Subversive is my LinkedIn profile. I have had projects - and job inquiries - on LinkedIn, and I have also established 'connections' (for lack of a better term) with other professionals in my field and with people who I would not have had a chance to connect with in the real, flesh-and-blood world. I have, for example, academicians in my extended network - people who have accepted my request to connect for the purpose of perhaps, helping me out in the future when I hit a snag in my academic quests or projects.
LinkedIn's two-pronged strategy of generating revenues through subscriptions and through ads is interesting. But I think there is more to that: sure, LinkedIn's probably limited in terms of its inventory and its ability to deploy ads (i.e., it doesn't have Google's Ad-serving strength), but the quality of the people who are in LinkedIn is significantly higher than any other social network that I know of.
That's the beauty of social networks - the value of social networks do not rely on mere "quantity" and "breadth" or number of users. The value of social networks is also based on the quality of its users.
Look at Facebook: Its exclusivity to university students was what made it interesting and unique. Now that anybody can have a Facebook account, its sexiness has gone - and it has gone the way of "portals" and "search ads".
LinkedIn's business model is by no means perfect. But it is teeming with opportunities. However, it should be careful with how it evolves. Its users are what make LinkedIn precious - and I hope (as a user) they don't evolve into another "too-ad-driven" site.
Tags: LinkedIn, Social Networking, Social Web, Digital Web, Digital Advertising, Digital Models, Business Models, Strategic Planning
People don't care about the technologies that they are using - they care about the brands that these technologies are powering.
The brand promises - and engenders hope; the technology delivers. If the technology does not deliver, the brand gets spanked. If the brand does not deliver, the technology - no matter how good it is or how superior it is against its competition - won't survive.
Think MSN's Live Search - or better yet, Yahoo Search versus Google Search. We can safely assume that all three are 'good' search engines - with the backing of great software engineers, academicians, algorithm designers, and specialists. But why does Google dominate? How did "Google it" become an intelligible sentence? How did "Google" become a verb?
Or Creative Technology's ZEN products versus Apple's iPod.
Or Dell versus Sony Vaio versus HP versus Gateway versus Asus?
The brand creates the promise - that the technology behidn the brand does and will deliver. The brand opens the door for technology to do its work. If the technology behind the brand sucks, the brand suffers.
But it is the brand that starts it all. And to paraphrase my former professor in Cognitive Psych would have said: No brand, never mind.
When I was younger, my roommate - Jervs - and I had some friendly competition. We would write songs. He'd always been the more musical. It would take me days to get lyrics right - since I can't rhyme. It would take a few more days to put into a music sheet the notes that are floating in my head. (These were the days when mobile phones were expensive and had no "push-to-record" buttons... and I had a bad memory.)
Anyway, he'd always come up with good songs with good lyrics. And he'd never put them into music sheets. So by simply listening to his songs, I would "look" for the notes on the piano. And play them. As I went on playing his songs, I would tweak it a little. Perhaps an emphasized, sustained pause here and an emphasized note there. (I was aided by my earlier music theory and piano training with the Catholic nuns in the province.)
One time, he took me aside after having played his song on the piano during a small party and told me, "Dude, you're stealing my songs".
In all honesty, I did love his songs - and I did envy the way he would tame the whirl and twirl of both words and notes. But I had no intention of "stealing" his songs.
But looking back now: was I?
"Covers" are not uncommon. And all I was doing at that time was really doing a cover of his song - with my own 'flare and vanity' added in. But in my doing so, was I stealing his song?
These days, I am utterly confused by DRM as well. If I linked to a photo (as I did above), am I stealing it? Or am I just "merely doing a cover" of it? If I cut and pasted from Wikipedia in - say - a thesis, is that stealing? Is that cheating? If I linked to a YouTube video that is from another person who lifted it off another person who lifted it off a music video, is that a violation of DRM?
To dust off that presentation that says "When in a recession, do not stop advertising".
When I was working in an ad-agency a few eons ago, somebody would always come up with reasons on why stopping advertising during a recession - or "challenging times" - would be detrimental to the brand. The slew of charts that showed brands that did not stop advertising during a recession tended to be recalled more, bougt more, and bucked the trend would be flying (digitally) aboutin the office. I was tasked - once - to "localize" the presentation and present it to a host of clients.
(I think I vaguely recall making the analogy that "the Chinese character for danger is the same as opportunity" - I am not sure now if that indeed is the case. In spite of years of attempts, I cannot - for the life of me - read Chinese characters.)
I was amongst those usual suspects.
But I guess, this time around, I would do something else: I wouls say, "if there is no reason for you to advertise and continue advertising, then don't - and don't let anybody tell you otherwise".
Why?
Simple: There is no single rule that holds across all kinds of brands and categories. Just because Brand A suvived the downtrend "because they advertised" doesn't mean another brand will fare similarly - even if they had the same message, even if they had the same media plan, even if they had the same marketing considerations.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that it is the culture of tenacity that pervades throughout the organization - marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, procurement, talent management, etc. - that determines whether a brand or a company survives the economic slowdown.
Not advertising - its presence or its absence.
My suggestion to those who are being lured and tempted to advertise because "the great big, brands - according to my agency - survived the last recession by advertising": Take a look at you own history.
How did your brand - and your company - survive the last slowdown? Look at all the shallow - and the deep - metrics. Don't stop at awareness or image - look at sales.
Determine what the other departments did - what did the Sales team do? How did the Sales Director feel and reacted to the gloom and doom? What did the sales managers - the frontliners - notice amongst customers and how did they respond? What were the results of their response?
If you can, quantify the impact of each of the actions done by each of the business stakeholders. Sure, it will be hard work - but that's marketing - it is hard work making decisions.
Create scenarios. In the same way that financial strategists have buy/sell limits, set your own by creating scenarios. There is such a thing as "short-term advertising effects" which could guide you. If you keep on advertising, and well, recall stays the same, but sales are not picking up - then decide: is this a scenario that demands pulling out of advertising? Or should you pump in more?
I believe that saying - and believing - that "advertising during a recession is the best way to keep your business growing" is irresponsible.
Businesses are systems - and marketing, and definitely advertising, are one part of that system. And it is the entire system that will determine the probability of a company weathering a downturn.
Not advertising.
OK, I am no search-guru. The farthest I have gone to implementing a search strategy is watching my colleague who is a search guru do a demo on how to do a search strategy. But I am an avid user of search. My search default right now is Google - primarily because I search a lot of research materials and their scientific/academic journals search seems to be good.
For other non-serious stuff though, I tend to not really stick to any one. I want my search to be everywhere I am at - which is mostly these days within the MSN Windows Live network. (Since I am a Live Mail fanatic and Windows Live Mail desktop app heavy user [it's always on and it aggregates all my email accounts - both for work- and non-work-related email]...)
I stumbled upon this site on the developments in Windows Live Search. Pretty impressive. I particularly liked the idea of the photo-search/image-search. My biggest problem with Google Image Search is that I have to click through to so many pages to look at all the images - and not only that, I have to get to the source file/site in order to see whether that image is indeed what I was looking for or not. Waste of time.
The one on video search is good, I thought. Google has integrated video results into their search - and have a dedicated search sites for Video. But I think this one from Live Search is good: You get to see lots of videos in one go - and preview them without actually leaving the search results site.
Hey, not bad.
Do people need this? I surely do since I tend to multitask and want things done in a jiff.
I wonder though when are they going to roll this one out.
And when will they make other people know more about these pretty powerful stuff?
C'mon, guys. Just because you got something good you can't relax and say "they'll come". Do some marketing - for once, be a marketing company. You've made the first step towards making great strides in improving the search experience - and you may have stumbled upon something that could be useful to people. Get them on the bandwagon if they are not yet.
It's time that we tell people how good and consumer-centric Microsoft is.
In another life, I delivered a vision for a business division that I was working on and the bigger company that owned that division. My vision was predicated on something:
What we were offering now (it was 2005 then) will become commoditized. It will remain
to be significant part of our business - for business won't change overnight. But it will be one that will see lower profits because it will demand a lot of human resources.What we need is to look into the future. And the future is in the realm of providing accountable advice - frameworks and solutions whose results can be measured against an agreed-upon set of standards prior to us coming into the picture.
Such businesses will not merely be won by the discounts and savings - though these will remain to be a part of the criteria, perhaps - as old habits are hard to change. But we can go beyond that.
One pillar is the integration of due diligence and rigor into our business - acting as objective consultants bordering on being academic and theoreticians, yet delivering real, measurable results.
The second pillar is the integration of technology into every aspect of our operations: to streamline repetitive mundane tasks and reduce overhead costs, to reduce "communication costs" by capitalizing on new technologies, to automate processes and "thinking processes" into databases of expert systems and algorithms.
More importantly, the integration of technology in the analysis of audiences and markets, and in the delivery of message to audiences and markets - both in the back-end and in the store-front.
Essentially, Marketing departments have to embrace technologies - and we - as their partners, their vendors, their suppliers, their contracts, and whatever way they want to see us - need to embrace it too. And we need to embrace it much earlier than they do.
Decision-making processes need to be aided by technology. Predictive techniques need to be grounded on technology and theory. Real-time data and accountability are needed - and these too will be driven by technology. Simulations - pricing and demand and communications and worst-case scenario planning and most-likely scenario planning - all these will be driven by technology.
Should this be driven by "digital planners"? No. They should be driven by "traditional planners with a keen sense of business". Should it be driven by one business unit? For now - yes. But it will need to cascade - the sooner the better - to the rest of the organization.
This is the only way we can avoid being a commodity - and being relegated into the background as mere vendors, as mere contractors, as mere suppliers. This is the only way we can escape the never-ending discussion on "discounts-value-adds-freebies".
I guess I didn't do enough to make these thoughts clear (and I doubt if the above is any clearer!)
But think about it: If technology is so pervasive in the lives of our audiences, then why shouldn't agencies and marketing companies embrace technology as part of their systems, processes, and well, communications with consumers and with other stakeholders?
Stumbled upon this blog entry - and recalled one IT-inclined friend's mantra: RTFM. When I bought my first Motorola phone and couldn't navigate myself through to sending a short text message, he reminded me to "RTFM" - "... that's why they put it in the same box as the phone, you know?"
Jeez.
photo from Flickr from joey.ganoza
Jeremiah Owyang had an interesting post in his blog about Facebook marketing demanding a high tolerance for risks in order to achieve success. He summarized these into the following theme - which I thought captured the realities that marketeers and marketing planners now have to contend with:
Successful applications were experimental, embraced risk, and quickly iterated - everything (that) big brands will struggle with.
I think that hits the issue on the right spot.
And I also believe that at least in Southeast Asia, that encompasses not just Facebook marketing - but marketing in any new forms of advertising and communications, including online and digital marketing.
What struck me in Jeremiah's entry is this comment from one of the speakers in the event that he's attending (Graphing Social Networks), from Rodney Rumford:
“Most of the people (at big corporations) who are making the decisions for Facebook are 45 or older, and are not immersed in Facebook”
... to which I say is one of the many challenges that we are facing.
There are more challenges in Southeast Asia for digital communications planning to truly take off and be more than just a "by-the-way":
There are more barriers, but these I think are the ones that need to be addressed soon for digital media planning and communications to take hold and accelerate even further.
Unless these are addressed, I don't think that we will make significant in-roads into the area of digital media communications.
I am beginning to fall in love - yet again - with a new service on the internet. After having fallen in love in Flickr.Com a few years ago, I have discovered something else. Not as flashy as Flickr (if you consider Flickr flashy) - but useful, really. And clean, easy to use.
This time, it's SkyDrive that's keeping me up all night.
The thing is, I have so many photos on my laptop that I want to share with only a few people. I am sure that Flickr does that - you know, choose who sees your photos. But seriously, not everyone seems to be interested in taking photos. But what do they have? Hotmail.Com accounts.
That's where SkyDrive comes in.
That's where I park all my photos nowadays.
The only thing that worries me: It's still in beta. And it's only got 1GB so far of available memory.
But seriously - I want this to be my 'cloud drive'. I want this to be more than my storage space - I also want this to be my special place where I can share photos - and documents - with people whom I love and consider important.
Anyway... try it out. If you've got a Hotmail.Com or Live.Com account, it's good.
And the other thing to note: A Hotmail.Com account gets you a blog on Spaces, Photo Gallery (which is integrated in your Spaces blog), SkyDrive, and a few other stuff that you can use.
Interesting starting thoughts on what makes a successful marketing campaign on social networks. This is from Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research.
What's really interesting is how the conversation is going on after Jeremiah started it. I found the original article interesting - and to my 'social-tech-newbie' mind, comprehensive.
Until I got to the comments and realized that there are more that needs to be considered.
Look at how the conversations between the author and the commenters are evolving - and clarifying the main theme.
I would call this a successful - hmm - campaign.
Whilst I no longer am directly involved in the business of marketing analytics, I still hold this topic close to my heart. I think that a lot of advertisers - and media and advertising companies - are still wasting their money on campaigns that are borne out of briefs that say "we want to create awareness of our new campaign" and "the boss wants me to put this on the front page of this newspaper title".
I also think that optimum is the operative word - not maximum.
Just because you can buy all the Thursday full-page, 4color ads every single week of the next five years on the leading newspaper at a significant discount level - and claiming that it is effective because "it's what we've been doing for the last 20 years and our sales have always been the same" - is simply not the right approach to advertising or communications planning.
What if you had the chance to save money? Ad analytics would be able to do that - but I guess, it takes courage and gumption to even test it out for a week or a couple of weeks.
Anyway, here is a video that I found on PodTech.Net on the topic of advertising analytics. It's an interesting introduction - but I think that there is too much reliance on data - 2 years' worth of (weekly, I am guessing) data in order to generate decisions is just simply too much. I know, I know - but there must be another way to really implement more accountability in the world of communications planning.
I have a conversation with an ex colleague of mine about the future of the media planning and communications planning industry. And here are some excerpts of what we talked about:
Him: So do you think that advertising is going to decline this year and in the next few years?
Me: Well, in terms of adspends that are being monitored, yes - it is very likely. TV is already showing signs of slowing down at least in Singapore and in Thailand. In the Philippines, FTA-TV is getting to be more and more challenged by alternative forms of entertainment. And in Malaysia, the growing strength of Cable versus FTA is already something worth mentioning.
What should media agencies do?
They are in a very good position, in fact. They hold all the data and information that can transform the media industry into something beyond the media planning of the old.
What kinds of data do they have?
Do you believe in the maxim "You are what you read or watch or listen to"? That however you interact with different kinds of media channels define who you are - say, if you want to watch a lot of serials on TV - it says something about you. And that if you are addicted to lifestyle magazines or say, the sports section of a newspaper - it says something about you?
Well, the data that media agencies have are all these. And I just don't mean "data as percentages". I think media agencies need to dive more deeply into these and uncover more stories.
But they've always worked - we've always worked - on the levels of ratings and percentages?
Which I believe is insufficient. We should have dove a little deeper. I know that some companies have tried getting elemental data for optimization purposes - "individual level data" apparently is good for optimization.
But it's more than that. Imagine being able to cluster people based on the likely-TV behaviors. Imagine being able to cluster people not just in terms of their psychographics - based on answers to surveys with a battery of attitudinal statements - but based on their actual behavior on TV: when they switch, how often do they switch channels, what kinds of programs make them switch, what kinds of ads make them switch, what programs make them loyal, what artistes make them loyal to a program.
All these are in the usual TAM data that Nielsen Media Research, TNS, and other research providers give out regularly.
It's just that we've never dove deeply.
Is it because we lack the intellectual capacity?
Of course not - and I take offense at that! (A bit of a chuckle) It's because we are content with percentages - with measurements of the old - GRPs, reach, frequency, CPMs, frequency distribtuions, demographic and affinity definitions.
We have just become complacent - we have just become contented with what we have. We need more metrics. We need more curious and disciplined people. We need people who are willing to experiment with numbers - and with the combinations of numbers. We need people who will say to their Western counterparts that "Look, guys, these are some ideas that we have because we think that our media landscape is far different from yours. We need to measure this and that, beyond ratings and GRPs."
Is it then a matter of will?
And curiosity and the boldness to dream big. The funny thing about being bold is that it lifts you up above the rest and you become more of a target. But that's the price of being bold.
So what are you proposing?
The past several years have seen some strides in the maths and statistical theory world. There's this thing called "Hierarchical Bayes" methodology, stemming from Bayesian theory.
There's also the field of computer simulations, and good old econometric modeling and similar regression techniques - but done on an individual, respondent level basis and on a cumulative basis.
All these are pointing to richer, far more powerful usage of already-available data.
What of content?
What did Marshall MacLuhan say? "The medium is the message." A lot of people think of that as a "goal" - some think that that is all about "integrating the medium and the message".
I think differently.
I think it is not the goal - "the medium is the message" is a declarative statement, a factual statement. It is essentially suggestive of the reality that we cannot separate the medium from the message - nor the message from the medium. The medium is the message - and vice versa.
What drives people to watch TV is not TV per se - it is the TV + the content that it contains - the messages that are contained within TV. What drives people to go online is not just because online is online - but because within online, there is a content - a message - that if it were not available, people would look for elsewhere.
The medium is the message - and the message is the medium - are facts, not goals. It is not something that we work towards. It is a given.
So where does that leave the divide between creative and media planning?
Who has the data? Media planning departments. Who can best explain the needs of the consumers and uncover these needs? Media planners. Who can best describe the underlying thoughts, wants, needs and "motivations" of consumers? Media planners.
But it is the creative - the messaging department - that puts flesh to these.
But isn't advertising all about selling?
True. But like all seasoned sales people would know: you cannot sell unless you have somehow made an argument - emotional or logical, rational or irrational - to consumers. If you have not connected, you can't.
Where does information management, Bayesian theory, simulations, Hierarchical Bayes, and multiple-level regression analyses come into the picture?
Richness in understanding who the consumers/audiences are - based on what they actually do, not just on what they say or claim to say - and not just on demographics. But real behavior. Real-time, real observable individual-level behavior.
Will it be a panacea?
No such thing exists. It is a first step - a significant step away from percentages (which treat all consumers as equals and as "mere statistics"). It is a first step towards real understanding of consumers and audiences.
Doesn't it already exist in the digital world?
To a certain extent it does. But the digital world is also battling issues in privacy - it is so "close" to personally identifiable information that it is quite scary. At least in TAMs, in PeopleMeters(R), there is still some sense of anonymity.
So what should media companies do?
Be brave. That's the first step. Be more than just order- and brief-takers. Be more than just mere "OK, we'll book it by tomorrow" sayers. Think through each and every media plan - and go beyond the percentages.
If I were to summarize the most critical dilemma facing media and communications planners these days, it would be making the choice between "REACH- versus RICH-" media and communications planning planning philosophies.
REACH media/communications planning is perhaps the easier way out. One comes up with numbers, measurements, and cost-per-thousand impressions to rationalize why certain combinations of media channels and programs are best. Numbers don't lie - at least not in the media planners' presentation.
REACH-based media planning is relatively easier to justify: Just show that a lot of eyeballs get to see the ad, awareness picks up after a few weeks of airing, and voila - another successful campaign.
For clients, it is a less-risky move: REACH-based planning will always churn out the same things over and over and over again. TV and newspapers - top titles, mind you - will always be there, with a spattering of radio spots and the minimal investments in online banners ("Oh make that an expanding ad!"). To round it all up, clients would also want some outdoor - which some creative executives would probably lift out of their print and poster layouts ("Just blow it all up!")
RICH-focused media/communications planning, on the other hand, demands a lot from media and communications planners, their clients, and other stakeholders - including creative agencies, digital companies, content providers, and media space vendors.
Because its focus on generating RICH audience experiences, metrics such as GRPs, reach, frequency, and CPMs, suddenly become incomplete. Planning theories such as "recency planning" versus "effective frequency planning" become insufficient in determining what constitutes an effective media and communications plan.
What used to be a simple decision for clients becomes more complicated: "How do you measure - or worse, predict - consumers' experiences? How sure are you that that is the desired effect? How sure are you that it is rich-enough?"
REACH- versus RICH-based media planning - which one will you choose?
From e-Marketer.Com: US Internet Users are Glued to Video.
In this study by BURST Media on January 1, 2008, it shows that more and more people in the US are watching the internet online. Leading the pack are the Males 18-24 year olds, who from memory are the most difficult groups to reach. More than 1/3 of this demographic actually watch a video online at least once a day.
Women 18-24 are not too far behind: At least 55% will have seen at watched one video online in one week.
What does this say about traditional media planning?
Traditional media planners still look up to TV (mostly in Southeast Asia) as the best way to reach consumers for "motherhood statements": "Audio visual properties have been proven to be the most effective way of delivering messages to consumers; it has the highest reach and GRPs to be delivered in one week; it creates the best awareness levels and therefore return on investments."
But that is changing, isn't it?
I believe that the time has come to revamp how we think about media planning or even "touch-points" or channel planning. We are no longer planning how brands are seen - or even interacted with - by consumers. We should be planning how we are going to be entertaining audiences with our brand.
Their choices of media no longer are no longer the "critical dealbreaker or dealmaker" - it's how entertained they are and how - gasp - engaged they are with the media and the content that they are watching or consuming.
The challenge now is to create entertaining interaction points between brands and consumers.
That is easier said than done, but I am sure that in some small digital, creative shop in this side of the world, a strategic planner and a creative director are huddled and brainstorming how to create the best experience for consumers of a brand of detergent, soft-drinks, shampoos, and PCs.
And that sooner or later, we will be measuring not just GRPs and reach and frequency and CPMs - but how much we have entertained our consumers, and how much did that create sales for brands.
Still more from the Trendwatching.Com briefing on the Expectation Economy.
One thing that struck me whilst I was reading the briefing report from the Trendwatching.Com's briefing on the Expectation Economy was the need - or the ideal scenario - of watching other industries that go beyond your own category.
How true.
I have had clients in the past who were just concerned about their own "direct competitors". A client in the Philippines was so keen on watching what others are doing - and have even issued a blanket order to "match any and every ad placement that come up with".
That client is now struggling to keep its pole-position in the category.
Why? Because they were so myopic about the needs of their target users. They thought that their competition was only those manufacturers that created almost the same product as they did. What slipped their mind was "You're not just offering a product - you are offering an experience!"
And this was what one of its competitors - which I co-managed back then - did: The Marketing Communications Team - which included us form the agency side - collaborated and brainstormed outside our category. We looked at everything and anything that coincided with what we wanted to be: Something that is more than a commodity, something that wants to build connections (not just loyalty - but real, deep connections - and t
