We don't talk any more

we see this “voice avoidance” as a trend that will only continue to rise. The Last week saw the launch of the Ofcom communications market report. This annual piece of bespoke research always brings new insights into changing consumer behaviour, and this year is no exception.

The first gem that caught my eye really resonated with behaviours we are seeing across our client base.

Ofcom asked a representative sample of the UK population “How do you prefer to communicate with friends and family?”

Back came the politically correct answer: 67% of us claim we prefer to meet face to face. Phone calls and text messages are said to be poor relations at 10% and 5% respectively.

They then asked an actual behavioural question: “what do you actually use on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family?” Face to face falls to second place, at just 49%, and the winner is, wait for it … text messaging, 9 points clear at 58%!

If we split this latter question by age the difference is even more severe - with 90%of 16-24 year olds using text to communicate with friends and family on a daily basis.

This really chimes with both what we see in the pub and in our daily results from ART™.

In the pub we see social groups interacting less physically and more virtually. They may be present together but they are “talking” (texting) with a virtual group of friends. And in our response results for clients we see the inexorable rise of text as a response channel. For many clients more than a third of all response is now initiated by an inbound text.

Given the ubiquity of the mobile phone, and the invasion of face to face marketing good news is that it brings opportunities as well as threats. But more anon.

Mike Colling
Managing Director

Technology changes, but behaviours lag

Historically the perceived wisdom has been that outdoor media have had little to to offer for clients seeking immediate response. (The exception has been the role of uplifting or predisposing response via other channels.)

The value of this wisdom started to erode some five years ago, with the advent of near 100% adoption of mobile phones, and in particular the use of text as a response channel. The growth of smart phone penetration to above 50% has accelerated a rethink of outdoor media as immediate response generators.

One indication of this change in behaviour can be seen in the proliferation of direct response advertising in commuter trains. Advertising from subscribers, charities, financial services and travel companies abound. All with calls to action: text, web and even phone.

Several of our clients have been amongst them. And with some success. We have seen profitable response generated but it hasn’t come via the channels we might have expected in this brave new connected world. Much of it has come via web, at times of the day outside of the normal commute.

Quantitative consumer research has just given us some insight as to why - with commuters claiming yes, they do respond, but later, at leisure at home via the web. Another reminder that, just because technology now allows “always-on” connections between companies and consumers, consumers may not choose to change their established behaviours to use them.