Tag: advertising

Sustainable Communications vs Media Exploitation – a Manifesto

I’ve been working in media and communications strategy for over 11 years now and I’ve been writing this blog for about 3 or 4 years on and off and I’ve never thought to write a manifesto; Something that puts in writing the basic principles of what I believe to be best practice in our industry and the fundamentals against which I hope to measure my own actions.

There are a few reasons why I haven’t done this:

1) It never occured to me before

2) Even if it had I wouldn’t have expected anyone to have any desire to read it

3) I didn’t really ever consolidate these “basic principles” in any way that didn’t involve a beer fuelled chat with media buddies in the pub.

Well that’s changed recently and here I am trying to set out my manifesto because:

1) It’s occured to me to do so

2) It doesn’t matter how many people read it, but many thanks if you are

3) I think that our industry really needs to start looking at the consequences of our behaviour and start to invest in the future.

The source of this manifesto (well it’s more of a mission statement really) came from a conversation with the Chief Architect of Bing in the UK, Dave Coplin. We were discussing recent developments with Bing’s equivalent of Streetview and he was outlining his strategy for ensuring that the privacy of individuals was protected as far as possible, whilst maintaining maximum utility for users (which could potentially invade their privacy.) What became clear is that he considered ” a right to privacy” (in the digital media world) to be an implied contract between individual and service provider. People actually give up their right to privacy all the time as long as they are getting clear value in return and they are in control of what happens to the information they divulge. What became clear in our conversation was the care and attention that Microsoft were investing in ensuring that the “contract” with consumers was always preserved -that they always knew what they were giving up and what value they were receiving in return.

The words “value exchange” are bandied around an awful lot, but in Dave’s eyes it was fundamental to Microsoft’s entire relationship as a media owner with consumers.

This formed the spark for the philosophy and manifesto that I’m about to deliver so here goes:

Here’s what I believe:

1) Human attention is a valuable natural resource, allowing us to learn about the world around us, adapt our behaviour for optimal utility of that world and to evolve our attitudes for maximum enjoyment of the world

2) Human attention is NOT an infinite resource, there is only so much new information we can take in at any time and only so many things that we can be persuaded to care about

3) All marketing and communications require that we capture that human attention

4) Human attention naturally concentrates and clusters around certain content and media because of the value it contributes to their lives, NOT because of the amount of advertising they find there

5) Just like any natural resource, over-exploitation of the human attention to media will inevitably lead to the dilution and eventual destruction of that attention and make it impossible for us to harness it any way, positive or negative.

(Yeah I love that pic!)

6) It should therefore be the responsibility of advertisers to not just exploit a medium for the audience that it attracts, but to invest in that medium with sustainable communications to ensure that it continues to deliver value to consumers and in turn provide a continuing resource for brands to communicate to those audiences.

Some advertisers might claim that they already do this – by paying to advertise in a medium they say they are investing in the quality of content that medium can provide.  And maybe that used to be true. Maybe some consumers do watch advertising in the knowledge that they are entering into a contract with the media channel to “pay” for the content they choose to watch by also watching content that they would rather not. However I think we are deluding ourselves if we think this is true of most advertising messages.

As advertisers we “buy” an audience that media owners “sell” to us. Because of that we think we have a right to put pretty much anything we can get away with in front of that audience and we approach every consumer contact with the question  “what can my brand get out of this?”.

A perfect example of this is the recent news story that Ford had “secured” a corporate page on Google+. What I found remarkable about this was that a) Ford had ignored Google’s request for advertisers to back off until they had worked out how to showcase corporate accounts and b) No-one seems to have a clue what Ford are doing there and what they hope to get out of it. All that they seem interested in is the fact that there are 10 million+ people already signed up and that it is currently unexploited so they get to be first. No-one knows how people are using Google+, what it is all about and what they can get out of it, but Ford are happy to steam in and plant their corporate size 9 footprints over everything.

This shouldn’t be surprising. As soon as an emerging technology develops into something that looks a bit like a “medium” then every client I have wants to know “How should I be using it?” There is an assumption that if there is an audience then we should be exploiting it. The same happened with Twitter and I can’t even think about doing a campaign without being asked “what will my facebook page look like”.

I also look  at the dead and dying media brands that have failed to keep up with the ever increasing demands of advertisers and investors and so have been abandoned by the wayside. Internet brands such as Myspace that has effectively been ditched – at a loss of half a billion dollars –  because no-one could work out how to make it work for advertisers.

I start to feel an element of responsibility for this. If every  new medium is disected and assessed solely based on it’s ability to generate advertising income then potentially viable media products and businesses that could have had another business model are simply allowed to fade away.

Now maybe this isn’t a problem whilst there is a steady flow of sacrificial lambs for us to exploit, plunder and destroy, and maybe it is fine when consumers don’t have a choice whether or not we target them, but I believe the days of being able to exploit media with impunity are numbered. Consumers have more and more tools that enable them to choose whether to engage with advertisers or not and the longer we abuse their good will and force interruption to their media consumption with unwelcome messages, the quicker they will learn how to switch us off. Indeed there is legislation coming which will force consumers to make that choice (see anti-cookie European legislation)

So here’s where I start my campaign for sustainable communication (I got here eventually!).

I believe that the most successful advertisers in the next 20 years will be those that understand that we have a duty to respect the contract between advertisers and consumers and deliver true value in our communications.

We need to ensure that we are investing in successful media, not just by buying media space, but by delivering content and messages that in and of themselves increase the value that consumers take out of that media space. Rather than saying “what’s the next big thing” all the time, we should be saying “how do we make the current big thing work better for consumers” so that we don’t have to start all over again when we have bullied them out of the media that they used to love.

For my part, whenever I am asked to consider a new media opportunity, I am going to endeavour to start with the question “How can I make that media better for the consumers who are consuming it” rather than “How can I make a quick buck here”. And let me be clear – another generic TV ad with animated animals or a beautiful woman selling perfume does not make my experience of that medium better. Most ads that your average advertiser likes are frankly wallpaper for your average consumer.

Over the next few weeks and months I will be adding examples of campaigns that are either examples of great sustainable communications or worrying examples of media exploitation.

Please feel free to send me any good examples of either.

As a starter for 10, please check out the mediaweek award shortlisted Panasonic Advertiser funded programme “How to take stunning pictures”. This was a piece of TV content on channel 5 that out-performed it’s alloted programming slot and was hugely popular with consumers and client alike. In addition Panasonic were able to clearly convey their commitment to helping the average photography enthusiasts get the most out of amateur photography. And it sold Panasonic Lumix cameras – lots of them.

In #myextrahour I’ll disect this new twitter campaign

I returned from new York last Sunday to discover this campaign from Europcar had cropped up all over London.

For those of you not in London, the basic premise is that Europcar’s new service “FreeDeliver” will save you time, essentially giving you an extra hour in your day to do with as you will. I first saw this campaign on a fairly standard panel on a train and noticed at the bottom it suggested that I should twitter what I would do with #myextrahour.

My initial reaction was somewhat cynical “Really? People are going to bother tweating about Europcar? and are Europcar’s audience really on Twitter anyway?”. I believe that social media can be a powerful force in the right campaigns, but it has to be an organic process. Surely the UK public aren’t going to fall for this are they?

But the general commentary amongst my peer-group was pretty positive and when I looked into it, this was a well structured media campaign. The static posters drove people to twitter, but in turn their tweets were being displayed on Digital 6 sheets and billboards across London allowing consumers to broadcast their ideas for how to spend their spare time. I also thought that this was a pretty brave approach and at least they are trying to do something a bit different. It definitely stands them apart from their competitors.

But then my cynicism kicked back in and I decided to follow #myextrahour to find out what people were saying. I discovered that people tweeting it divided up into 5 groups

1) People who work for Ogilvy (the creative agency running the campaign) complying with the spirit of the campaign and suggesting activities for the extra hour that ranged from the banal to the inane
2) People who work in social media and web marketing hooking up with Ogilvy in a mutual love-in and orgy of self congratulation
3) People who suggested defacing the campaign in their extra hour
4) People trying to get past the moderator and get profanity onto a London Billboard
5) One guy who was using it to send people to a competitor site (enterprise) and lots of people re-tweeting the “Corporate Twitterbot FAIL” that ensued.

oh and 6) Europcar

In total since Saturday there have been about 60 tweets, and I can’t find one that is from an actual member of the public who has engaged with this campaign in a non-cynical and genuine way.

This a) makes me happy because I was right and b) makes me sad because I was right.

I just don’t think that a brand like Europcar which has no defined brand identity or personality (or none that exists outside of their own marketing team) can drive a social media movement in this way and expect people to actually bother engaging. We are a cynical bunch, particularly in London and we won’t be told what to think, what to share or how. Fundamentally people don’t have an overwhelming urge to engage with advertising campaigns and to get them to do so you need to deliver a great deal more value to them than this campaign does.

Whenever I look at campaigns like this I revert to my standard motto which is “what does the consumer actually get out of this”, and in this case, I really have no answer.

I also think that if you insist on trying something like this you need a much clearer call to action and use a media that can really bring “an extra hour” to life in an emotionally engaging way. This seems to be crying out for a full-on “Bisto” style emotional TV treatment that might just cut through our cynicism, bring a moment of laughter, joy, nostalgia, etc into people’s lives and maybe, just maybe get people to share some truly inspirational and worthwhile thoughts.

Marketing Assumptions – making an ass of you and mption.

I was involved in a discussion today about a client of mine that shall remain nameless, but has caused me to think about some of the basic assumptions that we tend to make in the marketing and particularly advertising industries and whether or not they are still (or were ever) true.

I was told today in a fairly categorical way that there are 3 basic things that every brand needs to do

1) It needs to make itself visible
2) It needs to make itself findable
3) It needs to stand for something

The assertion was that if a brand was not delivering on one of these areas then it would be fundamentally failing. This point was particularly being used to push home point 3) i.e. that we needed to do some Brand led advertising to establish the “positioning” of our brand in the category.

Initially it was quite easy just to go along with this as it supports pretty much all of the campaigns I have ever worked on, but then I started to ask the simple question “Why?”

Once I started to do that I realised that there were very successful and growing brands that “failed” on one, two or even all three counts.

I considered the energy category in the UK (I happen to work on one of the leading brands) and realised that the number 2 brand which has come out of nowhere in the past 5 years is Scottish and Southern. Scottish and Southern have virtually no brand advertising, well certainly none that I’ve ever seen, they don’t sponsor anything that I’m aware of either. And they don’t “stand for” anything that is differentiated in any way, their product is identical to everyone elses, Yet by simply focusing on getting their costs down and taking advantage of the online brokers, they have managed to steal a huge amount of market share. So of the 3 “must-do’s” they actually only do one and are very successful in doing so.

I then thought of a brand that actually has managed to be incredibly successful without making any effort to succeed at any of the 3. You all wear it and Bloomberg rated it as one of the top 30 most influential companies in the world a couple of years ago, you’ve even seen it on this page, yet there is a significant chance that you’ve never heard of it – YKK (stands for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha) are the initials that adorn most of the zippers in the world, but as far as I’m aware, they’ve never had a brand advertising campaign, they don’t have a brand positioning and I can’t even see a search strategy when I type zippers into Google, but I believe that they are one of the most prolific brands in the world.

And before you say “they aren’t a brand, they are just a product” then why are they now facing a counterfeiting problem with people making fake YKK zips.

Now you could argue that YKK stands for quality and Scottish and Southern stand for cheapness, but that could be just our marketing heads trying to force these brands into the models that we understand. I’m pretty sure that YKK never sat down and created a brand “onion” or compared themselves to a famous personality, they just got on with making good zips and getting clothing companies to put them on their products (Oh and a bit of illegal price fixing along the way leading to a €150million fine from the European courts!)

Anyway, the point is that we so quickly jump to answers in our industry that we simply don’t stop and ask “Why?” enough. Sometimes it is because we think that the client doesn’t know the answer and sometimes it is because we know that they do and we won’t like it. I don’t think that’s good enough. If we really want to make a difference for our clients and the brands we work on we have to start to challenge the fundamental assumptions sometimes and it just takes one word.

It’s Easy!

Reach for the Sky


So Halo Reach came out today at midnight – the final episode in the Halo Franchise to be made by Bungie (the original game’s creators). Now (a) I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that before – about 3 times since Halo 3 was launched and (b) Microsoft will be still making Halo games, so fans of the series don’t have to stress too much, but nonetheless, this is a pretty huge game launch and by all accounts the game lives up to the hype.

The hype has been pretty standard fare, lots of online trailers and screenshots in the gaming press and websites, the trailer hit TV about 2-3 weeks ago (in the UK at least) and they’ve had the now obligatory midnight launch with people queueing around the block to be one of the first to own it. It’s a marketing strategy that I would have written as fast as you could say “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2”

This piece of publicity however was a bit different. This Halo game is supposed to be great but essentially the same as all the other Halo games, so they are making a big deal out of the fact that the Spartan soldiers now have JETPACKS!! Yes you heard me correctly JET….. PACKS…… The only thing cooler than games about futuristic 7 foot tall space warriors to a teenage boy is a game about a futuristic 7 foot tall space warrior that wears a fricking jet pack. Frankly I don’t know what took them so long.

The one thing that every kid wants is a jet pack – well actually we just wanted to be able to fly, but when we realised that we weren’t going to magically develop superpowers a jet pack was the next best thing. Even though (and maybe because) they are a basically pointless and incredibly hazardous form of transport, we want them. And just because I’m now 33 doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t sell my grandmother into slavery to get one (a bargain frankly).

So this stunt in Trafalgar square was the perfect stunt to launch the game

A great idea for a stunt until you realise 2 things

1) Westminster Council aren’t going to be overly happy about you launching a highly dangerous jetpack into the busiest square in London – so if they give permission it will be for you to have a 7 am launch

2) If you do it at 7am about 3 people will actually see it.

Oh well, maybe 3 more people will see it now if they read my blog.

I still want one. And I’m buying Halo: Reach tonight! Not sure I’ll bother with the “Legendary Edition” though

Reasons why videogames are always going to struggle as an advertising medium

I just stumbled upon this brilliant blog piece by Michael Drucker Why Your Loved Ones Hate Videogames and I realised that nearly all of his reasons why my wife/mum/boss doesn’t understand why I play videogames are the exact same reasons that most of my colleagues/clients will struggle to understand how to use it as an advertising medium

Please do read the original article if you are a gamer – it will help you understand the attitude of your partner. In this piece however I want to examine these reasons and what they mean for clients/colleagues and how we can help present gaming as a medium they can understand

Reason 1: The Media

If you are not a gamer then the majority of your opinion on gaming is formed by the media, and the media need newsworthy dramatic stories. If you look in the right places then gaming can provide that in spades. Look at Manhunt – a game about making Snuff movies, or Grand Theft Auto – a game about running over prostitutes isn’t it? And didn’t those kids somewhere in America go on a rampage after playing Call of Duty? These things do exist, and they make for sensationalist news stories and you never hear the other side of the story, so it is natural to believe that gaming is all about that, just like Daily Mail readers believe that all Asylum seekers are bogus job stealers and every Big Issue seller makes £3000 a month.

Understandably, clients don’t want to associate themselves those kind of themes and those kind of news stories and so their natural instinct is to reject the idea of advertising in games.

What can we do about this?

In an ideal world we’d find a way to get our media to run positive news stories about gaming, but truly newsworthy positive news-stories about games are no more common than the equivalent story about TV programmes or the positive power of radio on people’s lives. The simple fact is that most gaming is just good entertainment and there’s not much news in that. One possible approach is to find a celebrity angle – Nintendo have created an entire marketing campaign around the idea that Ant and Dec, Nicole Kidman and all of Girls Allowed all happily play Wii together. The problem here is (a) people don’t think of Nintendo Wii when they think of gaming and (b) those ads are so nauseatingly fake that not even your gran believes it.

What we actually need is more real quotes from normal, well adjusted role models talking about their love of Guitar Hero or Splinter Cell. Those people are definitely out there, we just need to get them to admit it. If you find a quote or a story, capture it, compile it and send it to your clients. Eventually they will get the point.

Reason 2: Games are about killing people.

This point is obviously related to Reason 1, but as an advocate of gaming we have to be honest with ourselves. There are an awful lot of games that involve significant amounts of violence. “First Person Shooters” ” Hack and Slash” “Beat ’em ups” are just a few of the most popular genres of videogame that focus on violence. Non-gamers therefore think that people who enjoy such games must harbour some deep seated desire to enact those murderous activities for themselves – and to be honest, when you hear some of the kids on xbox live I sometimes wonder myself.

Michael Drucker (the inspiration for this piece) makes two strong analogies. When a gamer “shoots” another gamer or computer controlled character it is like playing “tag”. It is about testing your skills and reactions against those of another player. Kids in a playground don’t wish that the other kids died when they tagged them and neither do Call of Duty afficionados. To a gamer this is obvious, but to someone who hasn’t played these games then you can understand their discomfort at seeing people re-enact episodes of extreme violence.

What can we do about it?

We need to demonstrate the wide range of motivations that people have for playing games which include

Competitiveness
Structure for success
Expressing Individuality/Creativity
Buzz – Adrenalin
Relaxation
Escape
Entertainment
Exploration/discovery
Social currency

These motivations are incredibly useful for many of our clients brand campaigns and something we would want to harness. If we can demonstrate that these motivations are central to videogaming and that it is not just about killing people then we will be a long way towards getting mainstream acceptance for the medium.

Reason 3: Games are for kids

a) Yes some games are for kids – see Mario, Sonic, Wii Sports etc
b) Some games really are not for kids and if parents are letting them play them they are bad parents – see Gears of War, GTA IV, Bioshock, Limbo etc.
c) Sometimes grown ups play the games that are meant for kids, just like grown-ups enjoy watching anything by Pixar – because they are just great and have been created by visionaries

The fact is that games are no more “just for kids” than TV is just for grown-ups. The medium is incredibly diverse with an audience to match. Just like we wouldn’t recommend advertising beer in Ben10, so you probably don’t want to advertise Cheesestrings in Medal of Honour 12.

What can we do?

Firstly we need to be vigilant in recommending the right vehicle for the right product. If you mismatch the audience for the product you are trying to sell and the audience for the game then you won’t generate the response you are looking for and your client will consider the campaign a failure.

Secondly we need to keep rolling out the ever increasing number of statistics that show the rapid growth of videogames amongst non-traditional audiences. Farmville is played by your mum, Angry Birds is played by everyone.

Reason 4: Games are complicated to play.

I’m stealing directly from Michael here

This is how gamers see game controllers

This is how your clients see game controllers

A gamer finds interacting with a gaming world to be second nature. They are usually able to play a brand new game within seconds of picking it up – usually without even looking at instructions. In this mental state they have plenty of time to immerse themselves in the gaming world and enjoy everything that they are seeing and anything that is new. If a non-gamer however spends all their time trying to remember which button to press to stop looking at their toes or is struggling to drive in a straight line, then they can’t possibly appreciate what else is going on in the game and so the idea of absorbing an advertising message seems ridiculous to them.

What can we do?

This is the hard one. How do you explain to someone what the mental state of a gamer is to someone who has no hope of ever entering that state themselves? The closest that I can come is to compare it to something like driving. To a non-driver the idea of controlling pedals, gear sticks, steering wheels, indicators at the same time as orienting yourself with 3 different mirrors seems incredible, but to the experienced driver it is so natural that they can move between cars with virtually no trouble whatsoever. We don’t express surprise that drivers can notice road-side advertising whilst they are driving or that they can listen to and enjoy the radio, so we just need to persuade our clients that playing games is just like this.

A Copy however colourful is still a copy

Saw this today on Adverblog.

This video visualises the effect of Dulux’s Let’s Colour project.

I started off wanting to like this, in fact I started writing a post about how much I loved it. Dulux are tangibly making a difference to people’s lives by erasing the drab and grey from the lives of poor, run-down communities and replacing it with vibrant colour. That’s got to be a good thing right?

But as the 2 minute video progresses, I find myself feeling more and more cynical about it. Here are my 3 key reasons

1) This feels like Dulux’s attempt to do a “Cogs” , “Balls” etc and make up for the fact that Sony made an ad for TVs that was all about Paint!

2) Even if it hadn’t been done before in the advertising world, it is just copying ventures that already exist in the real world:

a) I was reminded of a civic venture by the Mayor of Tirana (Capital of Albania) where they sent an army of painters out to brighten up the morose communist era concrete grey.

b) When looking that up, I also found the Favela Painting project which was initiated by Dutch artists Haas & Hahn in collaboration with the Brazilian Government (and AkzoNobel – a commerical paint company) to engage the inhabitants in transforming the squalour of their slum. When you see the sophistication and ambition of this project, the Dulux activity in Rio starts to look a little shabby.

Frankly, I’m sick of seeing creative agencies seeing a great idea on the internet and then passing it off as an original thought. I’ll add this to the box that has the Aero bubbles skateboarder and the Berocca treadmills in it.

3) Finally, this “transformation” has been undertaken with little care for the potenial underlying beauty that could be lost under a coat of emulsion. The final segment of the video shows the effect of the project on Jodhpur, India. Jodhpur is hardly a city that could be called drab. It might be poor, but there is such variety and colour already naturally there that it seems an awful shame to paint over it in vast swathes of purple and so to lose the wonderful details and turn it into a bit of a Disneyfied India.

It’s a shame, because I guess hearts were in the right place for a lot of people on this, but it feels a little too self serving and not original enough to convince me that Dulux actually care.

Saying all that, it will probably work because not everyone is as cynical as me. Most consumers don’t know about Albania or the Favelas and they will just see the transformative power of Colour. They probably will say “Isn’t that a bit like the Sony Rabbits/Balls/Paint ad” though

Brainwriting – when a brainstorm is just too slow

Having worked on 20th Century Fox for the past 2 years I’ve run a huge amount of brainstorms. Last week I was set the challenge of running a 5 hour brainstorm in which I had to generate ideas for 5 different films (with 12 sub challenges). I just wanted to share some of the learnings from the session.

With 12 challenges in 5 hours, I had less than 25 mins for each question which was always going to be tough, so rather than run a standard “Stand at the front and write stuff down” session, I decided to use a brainwriting technique that I had adapted from one I read about online (see herefor details of the basic technique).

My Adaptation of the technique is focused on getting people to improve a build upon ideas in order to deliver workable detailed solutions rather than wooly fantasies. It is described in detail at the bottom for those who are interested – it is really quite simple – a bit like those games you played as a kid where a group of people had to write a story but you had to take it in turns to write a line.

I found that this approach was incredibly effective for the first half of the session. When it was working properly, we had 15 different people all creating or improving upon ideas all at the same time. Compared to a standard brainstorm when only one person can talk at any one time and only one person is writing, this was an incredibly efficient use of people’s time.

This technique also avoided any negative influences such as the dominant personalities that love the sound of their own voices or the recessive personalities who might have great ideas but don’t like to voice them. It also means that people don’t judge the ideas on issues of practicality, instead they are encourage to make the idea workable.

A Note of warning however, this technique worked really well when the group had compelling stimulus and some clear hooks on which to generate their ideas. For the later part of the session, we were all a bit stumped for ideas to solve the problem and so getting 15 people to work in isolation really didn’t help as people needed much more hand-holding. So make sure that you are comfortable that it is a rich source of ideas.

A Second watch out – Don’t try to answer 12 questions in 5 hours! We probably answered 6 effectively, 3 half heartedly and 3 not at all. A Shorter brainstorm with fewer challenges would have been a much more efficient use of people’s time.

The Technique

1) THE TASK Set out the key problem as defined with the client
2) EXPLODE THE TASK: Take one attribute of the problem and as a group “explode” it. So if the problem is “How do we make this feel like a premium experience” then to “explode” it you should ask a question like “How do other categories create premiumization within their portfolios” or ” what is it about the current experience that feels less than premium”. Basically you need to get the group to start to think laterally about the idea.

3) A FIRST APPROACH: Keeping the results of stage (2) on the wall/flipchart then you can start the Brainwriting stage. Hand out a piece of paper to each person. Then give them 1-2 minutes MAX to write down just ONE good idea to address the TASK.

4) The ANGLE: Once stage 3) is finished get them to pass the idea to the person to the right of them and allow them to read the idea they have received. Then go back to the results of stage (2) and pull out an example of a brand or a category that excels in solving the problem that you have. Spend a few minutes discussing how that brand/category works and then ask the question “How would X improve the idea that you have in front of you”. Then give the group another 2 minutes MAX to improve and build upon the idea that they now have in front of them. It is important that they do not try to create new ideas at this stage, but focus on making the idea in front of them better, whilst focusing on the angle that you have selected.

Repeat stage (4) upto 2 or 3 times each time passing the idea along and introducing a new angle.

5) Go round the table getting people to summarise the idea and developments. You will find that you have a surprisingly high number of well worked through and imaginative ideas. This is also the opportunity for the group to build on the ideas that they hear.

Finally – ensure you have some kind of filtering process in place to whittle down the ideas to the best ones. I’ll talk about this again in the future, but it is vital

A Brave new virtual advertising world?

So I was invited last night to a round-table discussion with some senior bods from the Microsoft. The topic was the future of gaming and advertising. To start with we had a bit of an overview on how advertisers have used games as marketing vehicles to date. Mark ?? took us through the three stages of development so far

Stage 1 – the Experimental wave – advertisers tried to integrate their brands into games in a number of different ways – from sticking logos on bananas to creating whole Xbox games around a Burger King character. No-one really knew what to expect from it and were just happy to learn. There were no standard ad formats, everything was custom.

Stage 2 – “The best of both worlds” wave – The Games console’s presence in the lounge and upgrade to HD meant that advertisers could take ad formats from both the web and TV and showcase them in a high gloss, highly engaged and self selecting environment. This delivered incredibly high levels of interaction and “click through”

Stage 3 – (And I was hoping for something really exciting here but was dissappointed) Rich TV – Mark described this as TV with 5 special attributes – On My schedule,

Mark then went on to talk about Natal and how it could be a game changing device in allowing consumers to engage with brand communications on their own terms.

This all sounded fine, but they never really got beyond this idea that advertising in games could be anything more than rich interactive TV.

I’m a big believer in the potential of games as media channels for any number of different audiences, I didn’t go to the round table to be convinced of that. However when I tried to really probe where they felt the future of the medium was, I was just referred to the existing formats that they are using in Xbox live.

When I asked how they were using consumer insight into the role of gaming in their lives as a way to make advertising more relevant I just got blank looks. As far as they were concerned it was a simple formula – Audience+Engagement= You should advertise here! The idea that we would want some real understanding of how a brand could complement and enhance the gaming experience by leveraging gamer insight seemed to baffle them.

This is a real shame: I think that microsoft are a very interesting company as a potential media partner and they have some fascinating technological developments that could massively improve the opportunity for brands to engage consumers, but until they stop using Sales people to develop the offering (who only seem to want to sell virtual poster sites) we are going to struggle to create the step change for these new technologies as communications vehicles that I think they deserve

A New TV World

I recently saw a presentation by a major multi-channel TV broadcaster on  how new technologies are affecting TV viewing habits in the typical digitally enabled family.

Whilst the content of this presentation was useful I did not feel that it really got to the heart of the changes that are happening at the moment and will continue to happen at an increasing rate.

The main point that the presenter wanted us to take out was that “Live broadcast TV is not dead and in fact continues to form the foundation of all AV viewing”

The two main pieces of evidence for this were:

1) Anecdotally, many consumers don’t want the hassle that comes with computers to accompany their TV viewing. If you can’t just switch it on and go, then they won’t bother.

2) According to BARB more than 80% of viewing is still done “live” and only around 20% is timeshifted

Now I have issues with the conclusions derived from this evidence. The first point just means that the technology hasn’t quite got to the stage that consumers are comfortable with it, but that is just a matter of time. The second point just seems to avoid the issue.

I’m not going to sit here and ring the death knell for Broadcast TV. Too many other people are doing it and I think they’re wrong too. Since the earliest forms of media, it is incredibly rare for one form of media to be killed by another. New “formats” may have made old formats obsolete – DVDs have killed VHS, paper killed parchment, but that’s just storage really. The media form is the content itself and paintings weren’t killed by photos any more than the TV “killed” Cinema or internet will “kill” TV.

But the claim – “80% of viewing is still live in PVR households” – rang completely false with me.

Having had Sky + for nearly 2 years now, I could no longer imagine being imprisoned by a broadcast TV schedule and being compelled to watch 3 minutes of TV advertising for every 15 minutes of content. My estimations of my own TV viewing were that I watched approximately 80% timeshifted and 20% live.

In mini survey across the office I found that on average people with PVRs claimed to watch in the ratio of 60:40 for recorded:live broadcast content respectively.

This is clearly at odds with the official data and my survey of a few dozen people clearly is no match for the mighty BARB, but this backs up every conversation I’ve had with anyone who has a PVR.

When I asked what kind of programmes they watched when live, it became a bit more clear why the claimed behaviour is perhaps different from actual recorded behaviour.

4 Types of TV

4 distinct types of programme came out of the survey – 2 that are typically viewed as recorded and 2 that are viewed “live”

The two types of recorded content were

1)Long running “appointment to view” series, often high quality US drama/comedy imports – e.g. Lost, Desperate Housewives, The Wire, and also Soaps. – “I don’t want to miss my favourite show”

2) Films/long form one-off documentaries etc – ” I want to start watching when it is convenient for me, not on the exact hour”

The two types of “live” content were

3) Live “event” type programming – News/Sport/Reality TV finales etc – Basically anything where it would be old hat by the following day, so needed to be watched as it happened

4) Background/Filler/browsing TV – magazine style shows -the latest re-run of Top Gear on Dave, Saturday morning Cookery shows etc – stuff where it really doesn’t matter if you miss 5 minutes here or there and it doesn’t suck you in so you’re happy to switch off part way through

My personal theory is that people don’t accurately claim point 4) in their total claimed viewing.  If they forget about this then they only actively remember about 2/3rds of their viewing which explains the under-claim against live TV

Of the 4 different types of programming, I would suggest that in a PVR household only number (3) actually has advertising that regularly gets watched live by an attentive audience. For 1 & 2 consumers are likely to fast-forward over ads and in point 4, they are just getting on with other things and just passively consuming the TV in background.

Whether or not the ratios of recorded to live are being accurately picked up, this analysis poses some interesting questions about how advertisers buy and how broadcasters sell their schedules in the future.

a) In a PVR household what is the relative value of Sponsorship idents to spot advertising in a show such as Lost? In a future world where PVRs are the standard (not that far away) Is there any value to the middle of 6 30″ spots in an ad break that is being fastfowarded?

b) Should we use the same copy in a break in the X-factor as we do for a break in Top Gear re-runs – One is likely to be consumed actively where one is much more passive – more like radio…

My suggestion is that broadcast TV is not dead, but it is to maintain anything like it’s current share of ad revenue it needs to significantly re-think it’s sales model and ad-agencies need to re-think how their ads engage their audience

For new high-quality serial and one-off content (1) and (2) (Movies and dramas etc) the sponsorship credit should be the highest value item in the schedule. If spot advertising is allowed at all, it should be one advert only to a maximum of 40″ which broadcasters then charge a premium for. If we make the ad-break so short that it is more hassle to fastfoward over it than to watch it then we’ll actually get significantly more high quality ad views.

For “event” TV (3), we could probably use the existing style of ad break model, and utilise our strongest and most entertaining creative to keep consumers engaged throughout the break. It might even be necessary to insist upon limited frequency per execution and a minimum “enjoyment” standard to preserve the value of the break

For “background” TV (4), we might have to re-visit the creative style of the advertising and take some learnings from radio about how messages can be absorbed more passively.

This may mean that some campaigns need at least 3 different pieces of copy plus sponsorship idents in order to cut through, or alternatively advertisers can choose to focus in different areas depending on their strategic communications objectives.

It also means that the supply of broadcast minutage is seriously depleted, but each minute massively increases in true value.

This is obviously an idealised model and is based upon a scenario where PVRs are in a significant majority of homes, but whatever a new model looks like, it’s starting to become very clear that we just can’t buy and sell TV in the way we’ve always used to. In an uncertain world the one thing that is certain is that staying the same is a route to obscurity.