We have just finished a fascinating piece of work. Using Touchpoints we investigated if occupation has an impact on charitable giving. Guess what? It does. Employees in the public sector give significantly more than those in the private sector. And they give to specific causes.
Using the figures that George Osborne produced as part of the CSR we were able to quantify the potential loss to the sector overall, and then follow it up with bespoke work for our clients. For example, one was concerned about a capital appeal in the West Midlands, and we were able to quantify the potential loss in total public donations over the next year.
We followed this piece of work up with a joint quantitative online survey, with one of our creative partner agencies, WPN.
The objective was to probe issues thrown up by the Touchpoints work. The results really surprised us. Only some 5% of public sector employees are likely to lose their jobs in the next 3 years, but the fear in the sector is very widespread. 48% of public sector employees told us that they were planning on giving less to charities.
Now this may be a short-lived phenomenon. We have seen very poor response rates in October both before and after the CSR, and those have now recovered in November. It may equally rear its head again in the new year when redundancies and VAT rises really bite.
Either way we suspect the impact of occupation will be felt further than in just the charity sector, and it’s a theme we will continue to investigate.
More anon …
Mike Colling, Managing Director
Monday, 22 November 2010
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
The Future of Print Media
I spent Monday afternoon with a new industry group: Print Power. As one might gather from their name they have been formed from leading print companies (Associated, News International, NPA, PPA etc) to promote print as a united medium.
They asked me to represent the media buying industry, and speak on the subject “What does print have to do to earn a crust in a modern media world”.
This came hard on the heels of a request two weeks ago to appear on a Thinkbox programme and speak to the future of TV advertising.
The contrast between the future prospects for the two media channels was shocking. The death of both TV and press has been banded about by industry pundits for at least ten years. Normally these arguments are ill constructed and based on short term share loss to new channels. Over the longer term most channels (and cinema is a great example) reinvent themselves and recover both consumer audience share and revenues.
And that would appear to be the case with TV. With the launch of YouView, Google TV, IP enabled sets from Sony and Samsung, and a host of other initiatives TV is reinventing itself. We will see more change in the next 30 months than I have seen in my last 30 years in media. In fact I think the future of TV deserves a blog of its own!
But the future for print media is, for the moment at least, bleak. In the last 13 years the total print share of advertising revenue has fallen from more than 60% to 40%. And I see no new innovation coming over the horizon. The last major print jump forward was the Apple Mac in 1984 - revolutionising editorial and seeing the number of magazines leap from hundreds to tens of thousands. Print is suffering in reach- only 46% of us read daily; and in dwell times: we read for less than 3 hours a week. And ask consumers which media channel they wouldn’t live without and it's all screens, TV, computer, phone. Paper doesn’t get a mention.
Print at the moment feels like an aging sports team. They performed well once, but they are getting older. Competitors are younger and train harder. They should take a leaf from TV’s book: reinvention, but with consumer benefits remaining at the core. Print Power is maybe the first step in that, but it will be a long journey.
Mike Colling
Managing Director
They asked me to represent the media buying industry, and speak on the subject “What does print have to do to earn a crust in a modern media world”.
This came hard on the heels of a request two weeks ago to appear on a Thinkbox programme and speak to the future of TV advertising.
The contrast between the future prospects for the two media channels was shocking. The death of both TV and press has been banded about by industry pundits for at least ten years. Normally these arguments are ill constructed and based on short term share loss to new channels. Over the longer term most channels (and cinema is a great example) reinvent themselves and recover both consumer audience share and revenues.
And that would appear to be the case with TV. With the launch of YouView, Google TV, IP enabled sets from Sony and Samsung, and a host of other initiatives TV is reinventing itself. We will see more change in the next 30 months than I have seen in my last 30 years in media. In fact I think the future of TV deserves a blog of its own!
But the future for print media is, for the moment at least, bleak. In the last 13 years the total print share of advertising revenue has fallen from more than 60% to 40%. And I see no new innovation coming over the horizon. The last major print jump forward was the Apple Mac in 1984 - revolutionising editorial and seeing the number of magazines leap from hundreds to tens of thousands. Print is suffering in reach- only 46% of us read daily; and in dwell times: we read for less than 3 hours a week. And ask consumers which media channel they wouldn’t live without and it's all screens, TV, computer, phone. Paper doesn’t get a mention.
Print at the moment feels like an aging sports team. They performed well once, but they are getting older. Competitors are younger and train harder. They should take a leaf from TV’s book: reinvention, but with consumer benefits remaining at the core. Print Power is maybe the first step in that, but it will be a long journey.
Mike Colling
Managing Director
Monday, 8 November 2010
The Key Messages from mediaPro 2010
Despite the best efforts of London Underground, this year’s mediaPro 2010 at London’s Olympia was a great success. The two day exhibition included a talk from our very own MD Mike Colling on how integrated planning helped the RSPCA quadruple response, double ROI and recruit new donors. However, the main aim for the mc&c team in attendance was to seek out new ideas and innovations. Our objective - to help give our clients the cutting edge for the year to come and continue mc&c’s approach of placing innovation and new thinking at the heart of our business.
Indeed, as ever in media, new ideas and thinking were not in short supply during the two days. The challenge in fact was to cut through the noise and find the key messages that really will stand the test of time to ensure our media approach is business effective not just a pretty PowerPoint slide.
So, here are the team’s two day highlights:-
Day 1: Tim Brooks MD of Guardian News & Media put it bluntly when he predicted that print media will most likely not exist post 2025. Lovers of the press fear not. As Brooks stated, the biggest growth area for the Guardian is mobile readers, despite their small share of total audience at present. The trends all point upwards for in this technology, with a world of smart phone dominance and mobile online interaction surely not that far off. The challenge for advertisers is to recognise how audience engagement changes with this medium and how best to make advertising effective on this platform.
The sense of being in the middle of a paradigm shift in business thinking, as the reality of an online world comes to fruition, was further brought home by Peter Fenton, investor and board member of Twitter. Fenton provided a tour de force narrative of the growth of the ‘global village’ represented by the growth in social media and most importantly, the emergence of what he see as the new consumer. This consumer is connected (online), empowered (with numerous social network connections) and impatient when it comes to an online response. While crucially the challenge is to reach out to those who have the greatest influence in this environment and engage them with a comprehensive engagement strategy. The challenge for brands, therefore, is to recognise this new communication environment, where listening to consumers is the key to really engaging them and old top down models are a thing of the past.
Day 2: Surely one of the highlights of the key note speeches, and music to our ears, was Roy Sutherland’s speech on behavioural economics. mc&c has been championing the insight behavioural economics can offer our clients for some time now and we are already converted! The challenge we face is to take this rather abstract thinking and ensure it’s made concrete as a media strategy, put into action and delivers results.
The middle of the day saw the enthusiastic advocacy of content led marketing strategy by Paul Troy of Barclaycard, following the success of the ‘waterslide’ campaign. For Troy this is the future, where consumers come to engage you instead of you constantly reaching out to them – driven by a content idea that naturally lends itself to cross platform delivery.
However, Troy’s questioning of the push advertising model, although compelling and certainly a key development of the last few years, suffers from one key question. What’s the nature of your business? Not all businesses have the budget or the natural flexibility to offer great content. Indeed, these questions were powerfully brought home by Nick Emmel of Dare, who questioned the need by advertisers to always chase the new idea or technology for their campaigns. As Emmel made clear, yes, these innovations can be great and the choice over whelming, but don’t be suckered into thinking that because they exist you have to use them. The key is to look at the media problem and answer the question ‘what’s the best solution?’ This could be the latest online development or it may be using press ads and TV. Choice doesn’t mean choose everything, it means selecting the best channels for your campaign driven by knowledge of what delivers, an insight that mc&c have long held to with our emphasis on data led media strategies that test, analyse and deliver.
And the key message we took away from our two days?
This is an industry built on shifting social trends, technological change and ever changing commercial pressures, where new ideas and innovation are the keys to ensuring our clients get the best use and value out of their media activity. In this sense we work in an industry shaped by change.
However, we are also shaped by continuity. The recent attempts at social revolt in Iran may have been aided by new the new social media of Twitter, but the 1979 revolution was fuelled by speeches recorded on cassette. As Billy Joel sang, “we didn’t start the fire”. Media innovation and change is constant throughout societies across the globe.
Nevertheless, it’s also a commercial environment where you need to be careful not to lose your head. Despite the huge changes over the last 30 years, key values still remain vital for success:
Understand your business
Understand your audience and
Understand what you want to achieve
Innovation and good old fashioned media commonsense are the real skills we as an agency can offer our clients. The world keeps on turning …
Jamie Cregan
Media Planner Buyer
Indeed, as ever in media, new ideas and thinking were not in short supply during the two days. The challenge in fact was to cut through the noise and find the key messages that really will stand the test of time to ensure our media approach is business effective not just a pretty PowerPoint slide.
So, here are the team’s two day highlights:-
Day 1: Tim Brooks MD of Guardian News & Media put it bluntly when he predicted that print media will most likely not exist post 2025. Lovers of the press fear not. As Brooks stated, the biggest growth area for the Guardian is mobile readers, despite their small share of total audience at present. The trends all point upwards for in this technology, with a world of smart phone dominance and mobile online interaction surely not that far off. The challenge for advertisers is to recognise how audience engagement changes with this medium and how best to make advertising effective on this platform.
The sense of being in the middle of a paradigm shift in business thinking, as the reality of an online world comes to fruition, was further brought home by Peter Fenton, investor and board member of Twitter. Fenton provided a tour de force narrative of the growth of the ‘global village’ represented by the growth in social media and most importantly, the emergence of what he see as the new consumer. This consumer is connected (online), empowered (with numerous social network connections) and impatient when it comes to an online response. While crucially the challenge is to reach out to those who have the greatest influence in this environment and engage them with a comprehensive engagement strategy. The challenge for brands, therefore, is to recognise this new communication environment, where listening to consumers is the key to really engaging them and old top down models are a thing of the past.
Day 2: Surely one of the highlights of the key note speeches, and music to our ears, was Roy Sutherland’s speech on behavioural economics. mc&c has been championing the insight behavioural economics can offer our clients for some time now and we are already converted! The challenge we face is to take this rather abstract thinking and ensure it’s made concrete as a media strategy, put into action and delivers results.
The middle of the day saw the enthusiastic advocacy of content led marketing strategy by Paul Troy of Barclaycard, following the success of the ‘waterslide’ campaign. For Troy this is the future, where consumers come to engage you instead of you constantly reaching out to them – driven by a content idea that naturally lends itself to cross platform delivery.
However, Troy’s questioning of the push advertising model, although compelling and certainly a key development of the last few years, suffers from one key question. What’s the nature of your business? Not all businesses have the budget or the natural flexibility to offer great content. Indeed, these questions were powerfully brought home by Nick Emmel of Dare, who questioned the need by advertisers to always chase the new idea or technology for their campaigns. As Emmel made clear, yes, these innovations can be great and the choice over whelming, but don’t be suckered into thinking that because they exist you have to use them. The key is to look at the media problem and answer the question ‘what’s the best solution?’ This could be the latest online development or it may be using press ads and TV. Choice doesn’t mean choose everything, it means selecting the best channels for your campaign driven by knowledge of what delivers, an insight that mc&c have long held to with our emphasis on data led media strategies that test, analyse and deliver.
And the key message we took away from our two days?
This is an industry built on shifting social trends, technological change and ever changing commercial pressures, where new ideas and innovation are the keys to ensuring our clients get the best use and value out of their media activity. In this sense we work in an industry shaped by change.
However, we are also shaped by continuity. The recent attempts at social revolt in Iran may have been aided by new the new social media of Twitter, but the 1979 revolution was fuelled by speeches recorded on cassette. As Billy Joel sang, “we didn’t start the fire”. Media innovation and change is constant throughout societies across the globe.
Nevertheless, it’s also a commercial environment where you need to be careful not to lose your head. Despite the huge changes over the last 30 years, key values still remain vital for success:
Understand your business
Understand your audience and
Understand what you want to achieve
Innovation and good old fashioned media commonsense are the real skills we as an agency can offer our clients. The world keeps on turning …
Jamie Cregan
Media Planner Buyer
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
The Impact of SMS as a Response Channel
I spent this morning looking at some pretty dreadful results. One of our clients recently ran a test campaign that didn’t succeed. With 20/20 hindsight one can see why not. A new proposition to a new audience, with a new creative agency, and a new media mix, at a new price point. They had asked for a radical jump, and that’s what they got. Good clear learning that they shouldn’t progress in that direction in the near future. And that’s valuable.
But they also learnt one positive thing, and that’s the value of adding sms as a response channel to their DR advertising. For them it generated c40% incremental response. Net additional consumer contacts that wouldn’t otherwise have been captured. And that’s fairly typical of results across our client base. Increasingly we are seeing response to DRTV and other media channels move away from phone and towards text and online. And we would much rather consumers texted us than went online. Online we might convert 2% of responders to some form of sale. If they text us we typically convert 35%+.
Consumers’ love of SMS as a channel seems to be growing and showing no sign of abating. In 2009 we sent 104 billion text messages, 4 per day for every man woman and child. It’s a mobile medium that is here and viable for most clients now. It’s well worth considering if you aren’t using it.
But they also learnt one positive thing, and that’s the value of adding sms as a response channel to their DR advertising. For them it generated c40% incremental response. Net additional consumer contacts that wouldn’t otherwise have been captured. And that’s fairly typical of results across our client base. Increasingly we are seeing response to DRTV and other media channels move away from phone and towards text and online. And we would much rather consumers texted us than went online. Online we might convert 2% of responders to some form of sale. If they text us we typically convert 35%+.
Consumers’ love of SMS as a channel seems to be growing and showing no sign of abating. In 2009 we sent 104 billion text messages, 4 per day for every man woman and child. It’s a mobile medium that is here and viable for most clients now. It’s well worth considering if you aren’t using it.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
The Future of DRTV Continued
I am writing this blog from Amsterdam, and the global fundraising conference that is held there each year. Many of the 900 attendees use DRTV to recruit new donors, and there is much debate amongst delegates about falling levels of telephone response.
The world seems to have divided into two camps:-
- those who are just seeing falling phone response and despairing and
- those who are seeing phone response fall, but total response to DRTV rise
This latter group are integrating SMS and web response into their commercials. As a result they now typically see 30%+ of their income from DRTV come via web donations. SMS response can add 10%+ incremental response, and sometimes more than double response.
As media channels converge, and consumers spend more and more time consuming more than one channel simultaneously, measuring campaign results will become harder. DRTV plays a vital role on many clients’ schedules, reaching audiences that other media do not, and generating very cost effective response. It is vital that our measurement systems keep pace with changing consumer behaviour.
Mike Colling
Managing Director
The world seems to have divided into two camps:-
- those who are just seeing falling phone response and despairing and
- those who are seeing phone response fall, but total response to DRTV rise
This latter group are integrating SMS and web response into their commercials. As a result they now typically see 30%+ of their income from DRTV come via web donations. SMS response can add 10%+ incremental response, and sometimes more than double response.
As media channels converge, and consumers spend more and more time consuming more than one channel simultaneously, measuring campaign results will become harder. DRTV plays a vital role on many clients’ schedules, reaching audiences that other media do not, and generating very cost effective response. It is vital that our measurement systems keep pace with changing consumer behaviour.
Mike Colling
Managing Director
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
The Future of TV?
Over the last couple of weeks I have been pondering what the future might hold for the medium we all spend a day a week watching still. (I have to confess I have been prompted to these thoughts by the need to write a speech on this subject, promised to a conference next week!)
What have I found in my researches?
Firstly, TV is in rude health. Despite doom-mongers prophesising its impending demise viewing to TV is stronger than ever, and showing no signs of abating. If anything I suspect viewing levels will continue to grow going forward as we all read less and watch more.
Secondly, there is no evidence that TV viewing will be replaced by consumers watching video online. Whilst lots of people do watch video online (43% of us at last count) we don’t spend much time doing it (less than 1% of our media day).
My third finding is that we are about to see a huge amount of change in the TV landscape. The last few years have seen an explosion of channels (from 3 when I started to 650+ now), digitisation, the advent of the PVR, but, as the poet said “you ain’t seen nothing yet”
The big impacts, I think, will come from 3D and HD devices, on demand content (the launch of YouView from the BBC et al next year), searchable content and personalised interfaces (Google, Apple and others launching this year) and home media centres that will allow movement of content across devices (Virgin, BT, this year and early next).
So from a technology point of view we will see huge change. But what impact will it have?
Well for viewers I'm not sure the impact will be that great. In five years' time we may well be able to watch anything we want, anywhere, on any device. I suspect that for the majority of us our viewing habits will not change. Most viewing is a passive activity. We get home, slump in front of the set, and watch what schedulers put in front of us. Even when we have PVR technology for ease of recording and playback, or video on demand via iPlayer through our TV’s, less than 9% of viewing in those households is on demand or time shifted.
So, our viewing patterns won’t change radically in terms of what we watch. But I think the one change that might be drastic is how we watch TV. We used to watch in social groups, typically families gathered around a single set. That is a thing of the past. But we are fundamentally social animals and TV viewing is a social activity - conversations around the water machine in the morning about last night’s viewing convince us all of that. And the growth of social media, now almost 25% of all internet time, and engaging 40% of all of us each week, reflects that need.#
One of the big changes I foresee to TV viewing over the coming years is the convergence of social media and TV. We used to watch TV in physical groups, all in the same room. I see us watching TV in virtual groups, chatting in real time to friends or family about the programme we are physically, separately, watching. That has huge implications for advertisers, about which more next time ......
What have I found in my researches?
Firstly, TV is in rude health. Despite doom-mongers prophesising its impending demise viewing to TV is stronger than ever, and showing no signs of abating. If anything I suspect viewing levels will continue to grow going forward as we all read less and watch more.
Secondly, there is no evidence that TV viewing will be replaced by consumers watching video online. Whilst lots of people do watch video online (43% of us at last count) we don’t spend much time doing it (less than 1% of our media day).
My third finding is that we are about to see a huge amount of change in the TV landscape. The last few years have seen an explosion of channels (from 3 when I started to 650+ now), digitisation, the advent of the PVR, but, as the poet said “you ain’t seen nothing yet”
The big impacts, I think, will come from 3D and HD devices, on demand content (the launch of YouView from the BBC et al next year), searchable content and personalised interfaces (Google, Apple and others launching this year) and home media centres that will allow movement of content across devices (Virgin, BT, this year and early next).
So from a technology point of view we will see huge change. But what impact will it have?
Well for viewers I'm not sure the impact will be that great. In five years' time we may well be able to watch anything we want, anywhere, on any device. I suspect that for the majority of us our viewing habits will not change. Most viewing is a passive activity. We get home, slump in front of the set, and watch what schedulers put in front of us. Even when we have PVR technology for ease of recording and playback, or video on demand via iPlayer through our TV’s, less than 9% of viewing in those households is on demand or time shifted.
So, our viewing patterns won’t change radically in terms of what we watch. But I think the one change that might be drastic is how we watch TV. We used to watch in social groups, typically families gathered around a single set. That is a thing of the past. But we are fundamentally social animals and TV viewing is a social activity - conversations around the water machine in the morning about last night’s viewing convince us all of that. And the growth of social media, now almost 25% of all internet time, and engaging 40% of all of us each week, reflects that need.#
One of the big changes I foresee to TV viewing over the coming years is the convergence of social media and TV. We used to watch TV in physical groups, all in the same room. I see us watching TV in virtual groups, chatting in real time to friends or family about the programme we are physically, separately, watching. That has huge implications for advertisers, about which more next time ......
Monday, 6 September 2010
The Dawn of Daybreak
Watched the dawn of Daybreak, the re launch of GMTV, this morning. First reaction, there was a lot of purple in the studio. Instead of the old GMTV style of someone talking to you at the kitchen table we were transported to a view of the city of London. I wonder what people in Liverpool think about this?
Adrian Chiles' grumpy act is fine when talking about West Bromwich Albion but will probably fail to appeal first thing in the morning. Accusations of transferring the One Show to ITV have already been made but that’s not the real problem. In fact that wouldn’t be too bad. The show is likely to fall between two stools. One the one hand BBC Breakfast, where high quality journalism, flows effortlessly in a likeable fashion and Sky News Sunrise which has a slick global aura about it. I’m not sure where Daybreak sits.
With ratings plummeting something had to be done, but maybe, all was needed was some editorial guidance. There is nothing wrong with a populist approach –look at the Sun. The difference being The Sun has top class contributors. Daybreak still has a star in Lorraine Kelly but they need more talent in depth.
Richard Madeley, who knows a thing about this type of TV, is pretty pessimistic about its success. Sadly I share his pessimism. Adam Crozier has gone for the Sven Goran Erickson solution when he ran the FA. Hire someone who is expensive but with a proven record, and we all know where that led us.
Ian Prager
Planning Director
Adrian Chiles' grumpy act is fine when talking about West Bromwich Albion but will probably fail to appeal first thing in the morning. Accusations of transferring the One Show to ITV have already been made but that’s not the real problem. In fact that wouldn’t be too bad. The show is likely to fall between two stools. One the one hand BBC Breakfast, where high quality journalism, flows effortlessly in a likeable fashion and Sky News Sunrise which has a slick global aura about it. I’m not sure where Daybreak sits.
With ratings plummeting something had to be done, but maybe, all was needed was some editorial guidance. There is nothing wrong with a populist approach –look at the Sun. The difference being The Sun has top class contributors. Daybreak still has a star in Lorraine Kelly but they need more talent in depth.
Richard Madeley, who knows a thing about this type of TV, is pretty pessimistic about its success. Sadly I share his pessimism. Adam Crozier has gone for the Sven Goran Erickson solution when he ran the FA. Hire someone who is expensive but with a proven record, and we all know where that led us.
Ian Prager
Planning Director
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