Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Are You A Rational Consumer?

If you aren't feeling very rational on the morning of the 9th February, you may like to spend a few hours at NESTA in the company of myself, Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls, kicking around the challenges created by a P2P world.   After all, when you get up in the morning do you feel like a 'rational consumer'?  No, nor do I.  But that's how the marketing industry has always viewed people and largely still does.  As predictable individuals who can be influenced through big media and the crafting of key messages.  But growing networked media environments, such as the blogosphere and social networks, have made that view of the world seem simplistic.  We know things are changing fast when an ex-Deputy Prime Minister freely blogs that he is 'furious' with a former colleague, FT journalists Twitter about their commuting hell, the old-Etonian chairman of Arsenal FC is interviewed on a fan's podcast, or people book their holidays according to the views of strangers they've never met.  All of which makes the marketing industry look a little too rational.  Of course, brands as markers of trust aren't going to change.  However, the tools and techniques that are used to create and maintain them, most definitely are.  Hope to see you on the 9th at about 9ish.  And if you need some rational reasons, it's free, NESTA does quality catering and it should be fun.  You can book yourself a spot here.

Web Spend To Grow In 2009 Says WPP

In its extensive report ‘This Year, Next Year - Winter 2008', Group M, the vast media-buying arm of advertising mega-network WPP, is forecasting that global internet advertising will rise almost six per cent in 2009 to reach thirteen per cent of total global ad budgets.  This is against an overall stagnation in global media investment that the report believes will be $458bn - just $1bn less than 2008.  It may seem strange that media investment across the world should stay steady while the globe’s economies burn.  However, the forecast compares starkly to the company's expectations only nine months ago of a five per cent increase in media spend during '09.  Additionally, the continued rises, albeit slowed, of China, Brazil and India balance out real falls in the US and Western Europe.  There’s a similar story in the UK.  Media spend is expected to fall just over one per cent.  However, total expenditure on the web will rise slightly to $3.3bn, mainly due to clients opting for the ‘value-and-certainty’ of paid search.  Clearly good news for Google that ended last year providing eighty per cent of searches conducted in the UK.  Indeed, the Group M figures show interaction (all web activity) taking the largest share of media spend (28.1%) in the UK for the first time, with TV in second (26%) and then newspapers (24.9%).  However, interaction is the only UK media sector expected to show growth.  In some ways these figures feel surprisingly optimistic, considering near-hysterical talk of UK bankruptcy and 1930-style depressions.  However, Group M must have some idea of their clients' media plans over the next two years.  And while WPP has a vested interest in maintaining confidence in the media markets, it would lose credibility to overstate the case too greatly.  We can only wait and see.

How Do You Value Content?

When Channel 4's boss, Andy Duncan, writes in the FT, ‘The future must be about maximising the value of our content,’ he undoubtedly speaks for media executives around the planet.  So what’s the problem?  Why has the value of content suddenly become so newsworthy?  The answer lies in the media ratings industry and the challenges it faces from the web and digital technology.  Ratings in traditional media are vital as they allow the commercial world to work out what content they should be backing with their marketing bucks.  For example Nielsen's Television Ratings, the mother of all such services, which has reported on the TV viewing habits of 9,000 American households for more than sixty years, determines the destiny of $25bn of advertisers' cash annually.  Here in the UK the same job is done by BARB, which monitors televisual preferences in 5,100 homes.  Both are centralised systems that extrapolate trends from a relatively small group of individuals and use them to create a commercial marketplace, in which C4 and others have been able to operate successfully for many years.  However, as Duncan’s quote suggests, this marketplace is now under pressure because advertisers question the value of ratings services which have struggled to keep up with the web.  Or as one grand media fromage memorably told me: 'We know the bike is broken but it's the only one we've got.'  The difficulties arise because the concept of ‘ratings’ is very different online.  The goal is still to judge the value of content but the similarities stop there.  Online ratings services normally refer to...

'UK Online Is Nowhere' Says C4 Boss

I went to NESTA this morning to hear Andy Duncan, C4's boss, describe his vision for a Digital Britain.  Duncan said that big UK media should, 'collectively be embarrassed', about fighting each other over vested interests and consolidation while missing the impact of the web.  Rows which have been partially responsible for the UK being, 'commercially nowhere', when it comes to the global online geography.  'We are in danger of being like the US railroad operators at the end of the last century, which found themselves looking excessively inward - and then the car came along'.  The weighty speech came ahead of the long-awaited Digital Britain report from the UK Government's DCMS (which today the FT says might include Universal Broadband) and the next stage of Ofcom’s Public Service Broadcasting Review.  When considering its strategy to reignite the country's economy, said Duncan, the Government should recognise that the creative industries 'fluffy' image belies its value to UK PLC, two million jobs and sixty billion quid to be precise.  In fact, he said that the UK's media industries could replace the gap left by the country's decimated financial services sector.  But only if there is some very serious change.  In a world, 'where children don't differentiate between content they see on the web and TV', the C4 boss said, 'broadband and broadcasting' are effectively the same thing.  Now that the media ecology has changed to be no longer just content but, 'content plus tools' that allow citizens to 'create services of their own design', the UK could create a, 'digital tools industry' of great value building on its creative excellence.  As ever it comes down to the numbers.  Duncan's financial shorthand is that, 'ten years ago television advertising market in the UK peaked at over £3.5 billion'.  While online advertising didn't exist.  Today the TV market has shrunk to £3bn making it the same size as the online market.  And most of that cash goes to US companies (and one in particular) not into, 'quality British content'.  Inspiring stuff.

Rise Of The Personal Media Platform

People used to say about media, ‘Did you see that?’.  Now they say, ‘Have you seen this?’.  That’s because media used to live in one place at one time.  On TV or in a newspaper with a one day lifespan or less.  If you missed the appointment, it had gone.  The contrast with 2009 is stark.  Today great content is flying around the web waiting to be picked up and pasted in the media scrapbooks that we all create, build and tweak online.  Once these scrapbooks were simple lists of favoured websites or a musty hard drive folder stuffed with random images.  Now they look more like personal media platforms holding music, video, journalism, TV, shopping, games and commerce.   And increasingly these mini-media emporiums are joined together creating a share-and-compare economy.  We share items with our social networks and enjoy what have they have to offer back.  All of which means fun for us, juicy relevance for our network and kudos for those serving up the best digital goods.  This social world used to be composed purely of gonzo media and geekery.   But not anymore.  A more powerful web has allowed mainstream media to pitch in.  However, regardless of production budgets, content without pass-it-on currency, has no value in this growing economy.  It lacks the crucial watermark of social approval. Currently, personal media platforms are messy and can feel like a geek-fest.  More bazaar than cathedral.  Many wouldn’t have it any other way but for the mainstream to join the fun they need to become more user-friendly.  Which they are.  The humble browser is one way...

The Internet - Officially The Most Normal Thing In The World

It's probably unfair that UK housewives are seen as a barometer of normal-ness. However, this TNS research about global web habits, showing that Britain's homemakers spend more of their time online than any other group, illustrates how far the web has evolved from its geeky roots.  Not that long ago the internet was seen as a home for acne-ridden nerds, the sunlight-averse, lonely men and those looking for details on pipe-bombs.  So to discover that, in fact, the biggest fans of the web are the UK's moral bastions, shows how far the broadband revolution has come.  While the Chinese as a whole take the number one slot, boasting forty-four per cent of their leisure time online, UK housewives spend almost half of their wholesome downtime browsing the web.  Even more than the mythically wired South Koreans.  Yes, in the UK at least, the web has become the preferred media choice of the Woman's Institute - the nation's ultimate standard bearer of hardline normality.  So put down that extreme caffeine drink and niche gadget.  Move with the times. Put on a nice pot of tea and take a slice of sponge cake.  Let's celebrate the fact that we're all normal now.