After tinkering with media planning, technologies, research, and analytics, I am beginning to form a belief that what really matters is whether or not we have made audience interested in our brands through the touchpoints and the messages that we have deployed.
It's all about entertaining the audience. Broadcast and print media - and now the web - exist mainly to entertain.
Now one can potentially argue that "newspapers don't entertain - they provide news - and how could news be entertainment?"
One could also potentially argue that "emails, IMs, display ads, and search are not about entertainment - they are informative!"
But think for a moment:
The question I guess is this:
David Ogilvy said it succinctly.
[ You cannot bore people into buying a product. You can only interest them. ]
And which leads me to a thought:
[ As media planners (or communications
channel strategists), as digital media planners and strategists, as ad
strategists, as marketing communications strategists - are we always
planning towards getting our targets excited and interested in our
brands? ]
In this age of an (almost) infinite number of media touchpoints - from the traditional (TV, radio, PR, press, outdoor, 'detailing', experiential) to the relatively-new (online display ads, search, mobile push ads) to the emergent (location- and context-based mobile, blucasting, community-building - are our decisions guided by this simple, yet profoundly relevant, Ogilvyism?
Are we ready to move beyond "technology-led", "media-led", or "creativity-led" planning to "entertainment-based, audience-first communications planning"?
[See an earlier entry of mine - two years ago - on entertainment planning. Here's another entry on "internet/web everywhere" - but look at the applications that Cisco and Microsoft are envisioning: it's technology enabling access to entertainment [and information] sources everywhere. Here's another entry on "experience planning" from March 2008.]
From disrupsean at Flickr.Com
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