Mass Communication – What?

For years we’ve been discussing ways to take radio across boundries and make aspects of the local station brand not just available, but as a “go to” at the top of your daily digital adgenda. In fact, the very first blog in the archives relates to exactly this and I think Ketchum’s research is screaming we need to take another look.    Garry Leigh     Snafu Consulting

Legacy Media and New Media Meld: Mass Communications Succumb to Communications by the Masses

According to the third annual U.S. Media Myths & Realities survey by Ketchum and the Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center, the melding of media means that content deliverables once owned by a specific medium are now found on nearly all platforms, creating a participatory and fragmented media landscape.
As Americans buy products, seek information, plan their social lives, and make personal and business decisions, the lines between media channels in the 21st century have become increasingly blurred, says the study report.

Along with a steep rise in the use of shopping Web sites among consumers, doubling from 2006 to 2008, 44% of those visiting shopping Web sites read consumer reviews and comments there, showing that these sites have transformed into virtual social gathering places and information destinations, rather than just a place to purchase goods.

Consumers are (frequently) placing more trust in the experiences of their online peers than they are on the retailer’s product descriptions. This participatory media landscape, says the report, means media audiences are having just as much influence, if not more, as the content providers themselves.

Nicholas Scibetta, Ketchum partner and director of the agency’s Global Media Network, concludes that “… not only are people posting their thoughts via consumer-generated reviews, but they are also responding to each other’s comments… (creating) pockets of social networks found all over the Web… conversations among readers, information seekers, and reviewers can be found from The New York Times and The Huffington Post, to YouTube, to the neighborhood blogger… with the widespread availability of such conversations, the lines that once separated mediums have now melded.”

Jerry Swerling, founder and director of the USC Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center, says “.. it’s a transformative time in which we are seeing outlets move from single-media to multi-media… “

Consumers are using a wider variety of channels than ever before. Newer channels, such as blogs and social networking sites, are gaining more and more traction. The survey found that 26% of consumers use social networking sites, compared to 17% in 2006. The usage of blogs nearly doubled (24% in 2008 compared to 13% in 2006).

Among influential consumers, the 10% to 15% of the population who initiate change in their communities, 32% read blogs written by journalists (vs. 8% of the general population), and:

43% read blogs by non-journalists, compared to     16% of the general population
70% of influencers use search engines, vs. 57%     of the general population
43% of influencers use video-sharing Web sites, vs.     25% of the  general population
29% of influencers use specialty information     portals (such as WebMD), vs.16% of the general population
Influencers also use more new media such as     videocasts (19%), RSS news feeds (15%), podcasts (12%), and mobile media (9%)
The use of more established media channels continues to wane. 65% of consumers use major network television news as a source of information (down from 71% in 2006). Local television news saw a sharper drop – 62% in 2008 compared to 74% in 2006.

Swerling concludes “… we’ve watched traditional mass communications give way to communications controlled by the masses… the melding of media is… demonstrated in the actions of legacy media, which are continuing to embrace and implement the principles of new media. Conversely, the journalistic principles that underline news organizations… accuracy, timeliness, objectivity… move to other delivery channels.”

For more information about melding media, please visit Ketchum here.

Is Your Company Run Right Or Left?

Now that the left brain linear thinkers have come in and rewired all of your systems for maximum efficiency and cleaned out all of the right brain people who are impossible to valuate and are thus expendable, what is left for your ability to maintain the creative connection between your brand and your primary consumer?  Placing a real value on that creative link is very difficult without some hard metrics and I think we are now getting closer to having the numbers which justify right brain approaches and staff.  HBR has articles going deeper on the topic and this article from MediaPost really does speak to the absolute necessity of not only maintaining but growing this creative connection for your brand.        Garry Leigh at Snafu
Media Metrics: Hate to Burst Your Bubble
by John Gerzema, Monday, December 1, 2008, 12:00 AM

As if sub-prime mortgages, failing hedge funds and institutional bailouts were not enough for 2008, there is yet another crisis brewing on Wall Street. Only in this case the assets cannot be traded away or hedged against inflation. The financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them think they are worth.

We examined brand and financial data from “BrandAsset Valuator” (BAV), the world’s largest study of consumer perceptions of brands. We’ve invested more than $ 115 million dollars and each year we interview 500,000 consumers in 44 countries. We’ve tracked consumer perceptions of around 40,000 brands since 1993.

And the numbers tell a story of Main Street offering a very different view of brands than Wall Street. While brand value increased 80 percent in three decades, among 2,500 brands we studied across 14 years of data: brand awareness declined 20 percent; brand quality eroded by 24 percent; trust in brands declined by a staggering 50 percent. And 85 percent of brands were either stagnant or declining in brand differentiation.

Looking outside our research, we saw signs of the Brand Bubble in other studies. Jack Trout and Kevin Clancy’s research for the Harvard Business Review found that 90 percent of 42 product categories had lost differentiation over time. Leonard Lodish and Carl Mela, also writing for HBR, reported that consumers are 50 percent more price sensitive than 25 years ago. Further signs of this worrying disconnect emerged as we examined the extent of the gap between business and consumer perceptions of brand value. Among Interbrand’s top 100 most valuable brands, 45 percent were actually declining in consumer perceptions according to BAV.

This isn’t a brand problem, it’s a business problem. Shareholder value is at risk. Today, brands account for 30 percent of the market capitalization of the S&P 500, or almost $4 trillion dollars. The 250 most valuable brands are worth $2.197 trillion dollars, which exceeds the GDP of France. Even the world’s top 10 most valuable brands are larger than the market capitalization of 70 percent of U.S. public companies.

Why does the Brand Bubble exist? I believe the changing nature of media and technology has caught brand management off guard, while at the same time the importance of creativity has risen among consumers, raising their expectations of brands.

Blowing Up

In the span of just six years brands have come up against a convergence of forces.

First there’s the fragmentation of everything – of channels, choice, modes and mediums. The highest rated show in America, All in the Family, had a 34.0 HH rating in 1972, compared to 14.6 for American Idol in 2008. This means not only are there a myriad of new competitors, it’s no longer possible to build a brand on the back of mass media, the way we did in previous decades. Brands must now aggregate audiences through micro-communities and tailor their appeals through bespoke channels.

Second, because of social media (collaboration, communication and sharing, social networks, applications and consumer generated media), consumers trust each other more than brands. A Mediaedge:cia study found that 76 percent of people rely on what other people say versus 15 percent on advertising, and 92 percent of people now cite word-of-mouth as the best source for brand information. Universal McCann found that 74 percent of global Internet users write reviews online, while 75 percent of people consult blogs before they buy, according to Bazazarvoice. Brands have nowhere to hide.

Third, personalization (of products, experiences, mass customization and micro-addressability) means there are no USPs anymore. A brand has a myriad of potential appeals and avenues to be personally relevant. This new paradigm is still difficult for many marketers to grasp, but micro marketing will be paramount to future competitive advantage.

And finally, portable content (RSS, podcasts, video, widgets/gadgets, mobile, slingbox) creates a redefinition of place. Enabled by unlimited storage capability, content is now instantly accessible and easily shared, meaning that consumers no longer distinguish an off- and online world. Marketers have not caught up to understanding this fluidity. Active listening and response is difficult in most organizations that are not yet “marketing nimble.”

All of these forces accelerate the decay in brand equity. As the power has shifted from institution to individual, brands are commoditized in compressed periods of time. Consumers are simply quicker to punish uninteresting and stagnant brands.

The Rise of Creativity

At the same time these forces have also unleashed a marketplace thirst for creativity. Today, consumers are not only citizen journalists, they’re amateur filmmakers, art critics, design mavens and content syndicators. In this creative renaissance, where consumers expect even inexpensive products to be “cheap chic,” they demand that brands continuously surprise and delight them. That’s why brands with what we call “energized differentiation” (continuous movement, momentum and direction) – outperform the S&P 500 by almost 30 percent in our modeled fund.

What’s interesting is these energized brands are blue chips like P&G, GE and Colgate, who are innovating beyond advertising, such as in product development, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. And there are low interest category killing brands like Geico, Simple Human and Method, who are effective at layering messaging and creating an ethos out of a seemingly commoditized product. There are high-energy brands effectively utilizing design and environments such as Pinkberry, Muji and Uniqlo. And there are brands like Zappos, Innocent and Ikea, for whom creativity in attention to corporate culture and core values resonate with consumers, who see them as more innovative and offering higher quality products and services.

The Brand Bubble is very real and yet, at the same time, it is avoidable. As researchers, economists and planners, our team concluded that brand value is dividing along the lines of creativity: A smaller number of highly creative and innovative brands are creating disproportionate value in our study. What’s their secret? Each is unleashing a continuous stream of marketing creativity, product and service innovation, design, advertising, social media mastery, media experimentation and CRM. They teach us that today, everything is marketing and only creativity matters if a brand is to hold its value in this rapidly transforming and unforgiving marketplace.

Media Battle?

Traditional vs. Emerging?

(as published this week in Consultant Tips on AllAccess.com)

In digesting some new research from Sapient on social networks, mobile, search and other forms of emerging (or non-traditional) media, and building marketing plans to utilize them, I was reminded of my first days in broadcasting back in the 1970s. Questions I never got adequate answers to then remain today, 30-odd years later. What measurements best sum up our interaction or relationship with our audience … and are they remotely accurate? Arbitron, Pulse, callout, Predictor, focus groups, results at remotes … come on, my compensation is tied to a metric and I need one that works. Of course, none of these have really been able to gauge the special bond that occurs between core listeners and all that makes up their favorite radio stations. The most successful and memorable stations go beyond anything measurable and into simply sharing in, and of, the day-to-day life of a listener.

There are no metrics for trusting Kidd Kraddick’s opinion on whether I should volunteer my precious time this weekend to help a cause benefiting people I’ve never met in a town I may never visit, but he communicates the need for a Habitat Home in New Orleans so strongly that I do change my schedule and thereby change my life for the better forever. Time Spent Listening, P1, core listener, cume, cost per point, reach and frequency, number of clicks, time spent per page, unique visitors, number of hits … none have any relevance in this equation. Explain to a buyer or help them explain to the client what this bond is, and why it blows research out of the water.

Now, add the ability to build out the personality of a station with other forms of entertainment via our site or other social networking sites. In fact, let the listeners build a mash-up or two relating to their experience with the station — it’s music, our town, the personalities — and then let them save it to virally spread to their friends, thus giving it a personal endorsement, and you have the strongest marketing campaign possible, but one impossible to measure.

It started with a relationship developed through traditional media, moved to social networks, mobile and probably e-mail, plus was downloaded to at least one, if not several devices for continued interaction in the future. That’s spectacular by any measure. Let’s not think of this as Traditional vs. Emerging but rather Traditional + Emerging = more and deeper engagement with our medium via other media. We are the common thread in the fabric of the daily life of a connected listener — and if that’s not the goal, the form of measurement is irrelevant and so are we. It’s time to get engaged. Your listeners already are.

Garry Leigh