Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

What Is TV?

I was invited over to Thinkbox last week to talk metrics with their Research & Strategy Director, David Brennan.  For those of you who don't know Thinkbox was set up three years ago to market the main UK broadcasters' (C4, C5, GMTV, ITV, SkyMedia, Turner, Viacom) offerings to advertisers.  Not an easy job in the current climate where the prevailing view is that TV is on borrowed time as its financial model gradually erodes.  That said, TV is still big business and will probably be so for a few years yet.  Or as one media Grand Fromage described it to me last year: "Everyone knows the bike is broken, but it's the only bike we've got".  One of ThinkBox's main messages is that people are watching more TV - not less.  Which I can believe.  Another one is that TV advertising, even at PVR-speed, is still very effective.  Which I think is *ahem* contentious.  And thirdly that the TV's future in the joined-up media ecosystem is exciting.  (Thinkbox call it TV's Third Age).  Which makes me think - what is TV?  The landscape is so far removed from any traditional connotations of the family unit relaxing together...

Screw Metrics, Just Care

I really liked the comment Sarah Blow left below about the way she measures the effectiveness of online communities.  "We measure our impact through the reach of our network and through the feedback that we get from our members. The day that we aren't helping or people no longer feel the need for such a network is the day that we will fold up and move on to something else.  Another way of looking at impact is to ask people where the value in the community lies. Look at the information, the connections, the ability to create change and so on. There are all powerful things within communities. Also look at the number of members and how many are active participants."  Easy, huh?  Who needs metrics?  Just care!

Community Costs

One assumption underlying some client conversations I have is that community comes cheap.  It may have something to do with the hippy-trippy quality of the word.  Unfortunately, it's just not true.  As the splendid Community Guy notes it can often cost more than some traditional techniques - mainly because there is a start-up stage.  But this is really just an investment like any other.  One that, over time, will create a valuable asset.  However, the classic comment about open source software is highly relevant: "Linux is only free if your time has no value."  Community building is about smart people spending time building relationships in a way that machines will never do.  Make no mistake community is all about being cost-effective - not cheap-and-cheerful.

Straight-To-Web TV Strategy?

Although the Cadbury's Gorilla advert on TV looked like the worst kind of pencil-chasing activity, it became a lot more interesting to me when I noticed how popular it is online.  Is it an example of using TV to primarily launch activity on the web?  After all the advert itself does have that Heavy-style sociability quality.  Then over the weekend this article about agency-du-jour, Fallon, which made the ad, and their 'bi-lingual' approach made me wonder if this 'straight-to-web' TV strategy was more than just an accident.  Pretty interesting if it is, especially if they are using it to hoooover up budgets by streeetching tired paid media metrics - regardless of the affect on actual sales.

Is Word-of-Mouth Eating PR's Breakfast?

In November 2004 I wrote an article for the FT about the trends occurring in networked media which I described as the 5th Estate - a kind of new domain of influential opinion leading on from the Fourth Estate.  I ended with the question: "The PR industry would seem to be the natural partner as it is very familiar in dealing with stakeholders and lobbying groups on behalf of its clients.  But is it ready to deal with Citizen’s Media and the 5th Estate?"  I think the answer to that question has to be no - it wasn't ready.  Which isn't to say it never will be.  However, PR's slow start has created a gap for a new cottage industry to appear - namely word-of-mouth marketing.  I've never really been a fan of the term because to my mind, WOM is a consequence of all good marketing rather than an approach.  And it's an ugly word.  But so is 'blog' and everyone's got used to that.

The Value Of Things You Don't Own

It's very difficult to understand how you can use something if you don't own it.  Particularly in the commercial world, where the deepest instincts are too control.  All of which can lead to a More, More, More Mentality.  And particularly in the world of data.  After all, when was the last time you heard the words, "I think we need a little less information here"?  After a few hundred years of industrial empire building, it's hardly a surprise.  Many industrial metaphors have been effortlessly shipped over into the networked world to give us data warehouses, data mining and data processing.  In my yard, this mindset manifests itself in the desire to monitor all web content to assess sentiment, word-of-mouth and to extract maximum value.  After all, if you get enough of anything you can get something valuable from it, right?  Salt from enough sea.  Oil from enough earth.  Gold from enough hills.  So suck up enough data and you can extract....er, something valuable.  Right?  Maybe not.  Matt McAlister joins the dots between Umair's Evil thread and Scott Karp's analysis to  point out the pitfalls of this outlook: "I really like the idea that the future of the media business is in the way we build value for all constituencies rather than the way we extract value from various parts of a system. It’s not about how you secure marketshare, control distribution, mitigate risk or reduce costs. It’s about how you enable the creation of value for all."  To my mind, the simple idea is that the skills required to operate within networked media are new because no one does - or can - own all the data.  It's a bit like a library.  You can't really own it because it's actually a system rather than a thing.  However, you're very welcome to borrow stuff.  And maybe if I recommend some good books and you share them with friends we can get together over coffee as a result.  Then we have created a little group (aka social network) that can be valuable to us all and might become a big group.  Or not.  Alternatively, you can create your own library at home.  And put a big lock on it to keep all the value in.

2008 - The Year of How?

At the back end of last year, I noticed how conversations with my clients about networked media had turned from Why? to How?  As many of you will know (all too well!) corporations and large organisations move at a glacial place - and for good reason.  They are legal entities with sophisticated stakeholder groups, often tightly regulated and executives whose decisions can result in major investment.  So the move from Why? to How? is a major step forward.  Not least because it can mean internal reorganisation, investment in new services, training, and often going out into the marketplace to look for specific new skills.  The speed of change within networked media means we have moved way past the one-size-fits-all solutions (CEO Blog anyone?).  There are now a huge range of tools and possibilities, which means its important for each organisation to work out what it can bring to the party, choose the right set of tools to do so, and then reconfigure to meet the softer - but vital - cultural and social issues that the modern web demands.  Is it challenging?  Yep.  Is it exciting?  Yep.  Is it essential?  Maybe - that's your choice.