New media niches

I flew from Amsterdam to Pisa last Friday, on Transavia, the Dutch equivalent of Ryanair. Not remarkable in itself, but what was remarkable was the experiential media opportunity in flight. A cosmetics company had created a sampling opportunity, complete with data capture, using the in-flight service team to offer their wares. They had read their audience perfectly. The passengers were almost exclusively young mass-market families going to Italy for some cheap sun. The yummy mummies were in holiday mode, and ready for some pampering and prepared to spend. A brand making a fuss of them, in a time where their only alternative was to pay attention to the demands of their children was welcomed with open arms. It’s not often that I say “I wish I had done that” but in this case I did! A bright media planner somewhere had identified a niche where no other brand would impinge, and where their brand could really engage with its audience. If it’s your plan and you are reading this, then send in your CV. Mike Colling Managing Director

Selling on social media – right or just plain wrong?

A snippet of Facebook news caught my eye this morning. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a complete Facebook detractor. Anything that captures the attention of circa 40% of us for an hour a day (double the time we spend reading newspapers or magazines) has got to have value. But, please, not for shopping. ASOS is the mail order company for this generation. I started my direct marketing life working with catalogue companies like Grattan. Huge books that landed with a thud on the door mat! ASOS have brought their digital skills to this market, and to datem have stolen it with great success. But, as with all growth stories they have just reached their “bridge too far”. They have recently taken down their Facebook shop, and triggered debate as to whether this is the end of “F-commerce”. But there shouldn't be any debate, and there should be no “F-Commerce”. It’s an oxymoron. Facebook is Starbucks or your old man’s pub. It’s a place to hang and gossip. It’s not a place to be sold to in. Sure, add social commentary features and reviews to your Ecommerce site, so users can praise you. But please don’t invade personal space to sell. When will we ever develop a digital etiquette? Mike Colling Managing Director

The third place in media

Starbucks is often referred to as “the third place”- neither home nor work, but a neutral place in between. A place of utilitarian comfort, where urban consumers can both relax and connect. We have a growing sense of that third place arriving in the media landscape. For the last 50 years there have really only been two media strategies: service search or ambush. The former drove the establishment of classified sections, and with the advent of digital media the behemoth that is Google. As advertisers we serve consumers that self-identify by their immediate needs. The latter has been the mainstay of all other media revenues since advertising began. Whether it’s a carved graffiti directing sailors to the brothel in Ephesus, or 400 TVR on ITV, we use content to attract consumers to our “ambush” marketing messages. And consumers, with few exceptions, are happy with this Faustian bargain. But a third way is emerging within the emerging “media third place” and that is the App. Apps can have the content that entertains and engages as does mainstream media, but the functionality and detailed information that classified provides. Most of our clients have a continuity revenue model at the heart of their business. Whether its regular donation, sustained subscription or repeat purchase, each has a relationship with an organisation that goes beyond the merely transactional. And that third place, the App, seems to have a new role in serving that need and creating new growth. Mike Colling Managing Director

Paper or Pixels

Hot on the desk is the PADD (Print and digital data) survey from the NRS. Long discussed this is the first formal measurement by the NRS of readership across both paper and digital versions of their titles. To a very large degree a lot of the learning here has been presaged by Touchpoints, who have been measuring readership on and offline for several years. But it’s the first time our gold standard readership currency has published joint figures, so it’s worthy of note. The numbers on national press hold no surprises. Biggest gainers from adding digital are The Guardian - web adds another 65% to their daily readership, and 119% to their monthly reach. At the bottom of the newspaper pile we find The Daily Star, chalking up just 1.3% gains from their website. Much more interesting are the magazine results. Firstly we see a bigger impact across the board. Of the 110 odd tiles measured 2/3rds of them recorded net gains by adding web of more than 30%. And at the top end, really big gains - 984% being the record to date. And secondly, and I think more interesting - we see a marked difference between the business models off and online. BBC Easy Cook, who topped the rankings with a massive 984% gain, has bbcgoodfood.com as its web partner. Now to call bbcgoodfood.com a magazine is stretching definitions more than a little in one sense, but it does reflect the major reason why the magazine is purchased - for recipe ideas and support and services that the consumer needs in the most efficient way possible. The second major trend is the partnering between offline magazines and online ecommerce sites. In some cases the magazine came first (eg Boots Health and Beauty and Boots.com) but in others (eg Asos) the magazine is the “new” media channel. I rather suspect that we may see more of the latter as our pure play digerati learn the lessons that Google has learned and turn to old fashioned print for marketing. We think that this is an area worthy of more debate, and it will form part of our next seminar “The future of print: paper or pixels” on October 10th. If you would like to join us then call Cathy Lawler on 020-7307 6104 for a place on the guest list. Mike Colling, Managing Director

TV’s may be staying dumb and not getting much smarter

Last week’s global conference on the future of “integrated TV” in Amsterdam saw an interesting reversal of one stream of conventional wisdom on the future of television
Manufacturers in particular have long believed that it is the destiny of the television set to become “smarter”, with full super-fast broadband access, and with a range of accompanying “apps” that enable deep exploration of fab facts associated with the broadcast stream. They also see the main television screen as the focal point for “social TV”, ie real time messaging with your friends and family via Facebook or IM.

Three things are conspiring to frustrate this vision of the future.
Firstly, the refusal of “live TV” to go away. The number of minutes we spend watching TV is still rising (up to 242 minutes per day) , 85% of which is live TV. This is a figure that has remained stubbornly the same for the last 5 years, despite the fact that 50% of us now own DVR’s. We want to watch TV live and now, and not have the effort of controlling it.

The second reason the TV is for TV and not other things is that it’s often not just our choice. More than 50% of viewing is still “shared” viewing with others in the room. If our wives want to watch Eastenders what chance do we have to play with the Top Gear app?

And the final reason for the likely failure of the smart “big screen” is the rapid advance of the smart “medium” screen.

11% of us now own tablets, up from 2% a year ago. And 17% of us say we will buy one in the next 12 months. Zero to 30% penetration in two years is good going.
The big surprise on tablet usage is the amount that is in the home (87%) and when watching TV (68%).

All of a sudden there is a personal, alternative screen sitting on our audience’s laps that they can turn to in order to explore, respond, or just chat.

And that’s just what they are doing. Our betting - learn about tablets rather than smart TV’s, that’s where the testing efforts should go.

Mike Colling, Managing Director

Media inflation - dead or alive?

For the majority of my media career both advertisers and agencies accepted that the price of media rose inexorably each year, sometimes at the inflation rate of a small South American country.

But since the twin influences of rampant increase in supply with digitalisation of media and the slowdown in total ad spend, growth since the credit crunch has seen effective deflation in media prices for the last few years. To paraphrase “you have never had it so cheap” … or at least not for more than a decade.

But there is one notable exception to this - and that’s the price of search. Here inflation is not only alive and well, but running at rates seen in the Weimar Republic.

Why do we, collectively as an industry, allow ourselves to pay more and more for what is essentially a coupon?

Search facilitates, it adds no value. It owns no content, it creates no reach of its own, it merely facilitates a journey that is started with engagement with a “proper” media channel. It also creates little long-term value for marketers - just look at the loyalty of customers who come to you via search vs those from other channels.
Yet we divert more and more money from channels our customers spend hours with rather than seconds with. Why?

The advertising and marketing community has the creative talents that can match those showcased in the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. Surely we can harness some of that creativity to find ways to better value each stage in the journey, and invest appropriately?

Mike Colling, Managing Director

Olympic results - a game of two halves

Avid readers of this blog (all of you!) will know that I have been a little obsessed with warning that immediate response to media activity would be severely depressed by the Olympics.

“The world will be out to party” was how I referred to it back in May!
Well, with the typical smugness that accompanies “I told you so”, “I told you so”!
The majority of clients still using mass media to recruit mass audience customers have seen a fall in response of between 30% and 50% over the last week.
Hooray! We can still predict accurately.

What’s really interesting though is that this is a game of two halves. Olympic fever is much more pronounced in London and the South East than in the North and Scotland.
And the impact is seen much more on offline than online media. So much so that we are seeing search results improve (albeit marginally) week on week in the North and Scotland whilst declining by 20%+ in London

Even with TV audiences in the 20 million bracket this is clearly not an evenly distributed madness. It appears that London is the kitchen of this particular party!

Mike Colling
Managing Director