Author Archives: Chris Stephenson

content creating, internet, planning, viewing

Building a Robust Ad Model in the Online Video Space

Msn_video_2 MSN’s video portal launched recently (source: Microsoft)

having only two days ago posted about how the content / conduit model of consumption is evolving, the good people of MSN yesterday visited citadel Vizeum to tell us about their new online video portal, which can be viewed here.

its a new contender in what’s an increasingly crowded market.  just as broadcast channels have grown in number so too has the choice of internet based on-demand channels.

Online_video_market

internet-based online channels (source: Microsoft)

it’s a far cry from the days when YouTube, blinkx and Google were battling with bootlegged Mpegs.  the market has gone mainstream, and in doing so not only have heritage channel brands (BBC, ITV, Guardian etc) entered the fray, but a wealth of premium content has been made available.

Premium_content
premium content (source: Microsoft)

but the key question for both content creators and conduits in this new market  remains – how does the commercial model remain viable?

consumers are proving less and less likely to pay for content – the recent announcement that the New York Times’ pay service TimesSelect has gone free being a case in point – and advertisers (rightly) are increasingly wary of divesting budget into more and more fragmented media channels (or conduits) online.

this is where the MSN video portal feels most accomplished; firstly, not only is the content is of the highest caliber, but it’s seamlessly integrated with a range of advertising spaces, not all of which are the viewing screen itself; on which compulsory ads are viewed in between every few slices of content.  in addition a 300 x 240 display ad pops out from the side, and a 300 x 60 sits permanently below the screen.

two observations.

one, it seems that the more things change the more things stay the same.  the old contract between viewers and advertisers (where viewers tolerate ads to get the bits they want for free) stands.  it turns out the new way of doing things is the old way of doing things; just with new language, different trading models, and – given the proliferation of ‘screens’ – more sophisticated media targeting and selection.

two, your ads sure as hell better be good.  as much as the model stays the same, the TV now has a mouse.  and whilst as long as brands that make entertaining content will add to the overall experience, a response-orientated insurance add will have people navigating away from the site (let alone the screen) faster than you can say brand response.

of course the increasingly-used alternative to all of this is to bypass the model and make the stuff people want, the content.  and again MSN seem have this in hand, talking to – and utilising the experience of – TV production companies about the creation of original content funded by advertisers.
Original_content

TV Production houses working with Microsoft

so if there is an eventual long-term shift in the business model, it’s most likely to be the move of investment to the producers.  interestingly, it could be the Endemols and RDFs of the world that build on their historical income from channels (conduits) with direct income from advertisers and their comms planning agencies.  interesting times.

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branding, engaging, planning

Making Good Stuff: Creating Content in the Flight to Quality.

Xfactor X-Factor – great cross-platform content is in demand

Jeff Jarvis, who blogs at Buzz Machine writes in the Guardian today about fundamental changes at Dell, in which the company adopted digital behaviours to more actively engage with their customers.  as a result of investing in everything from their own blogs, Wikis and forums, to IdeaStorm – a website where customers can tell Dell what to do –  the company’s new problem is "managing and spreading all this knowledge from consumers".  Jarvis comments that:

"Dell and its customers are collaborating on the creation of content, media and marketing – without content, media or marketing companies.  Advertising is no one’s first choice as the basis of a relationship … clearly, the direct relationship between a customer and a company is preferable.  but that direct connection cuts out the middlemen – that is the media."

now then, I’d be the last person to dispute the principle that marketers should invest in actively engaging with their customers, but whilst this may be the ideal for all brands its just not terribly feasible for many, if not most!

firstly, Dell – as a manufacturer of laptops – is an example of a brand with a product that requires active involvement on the part of it’s owner.  laptops needs to be updated and managed, software upgraded or fixed.  moreover, laptops will for many customers occupy a central role within their lives; laptops keep our content and provide access to communications.  they enable us to work and play.  not all brands are in this fortunate position.  everything about Dell products make them amenable to being engaged with.  most brands will struggle to occupy such fortunate a position

secondly, if we all engaged ‘hands-on’ with all the brands we ever consumed there’d be little time for us to do anything else.  we may very well co-create with and contribute to a company, but it’s only ever with a few of the brands that sit at the top of our trees.  there are hundreds of other brands with which we have ‘hands-off’ relationships; relationships that must be nurtured and evolve without the benefit of active hands-on consumer engagement.

our media model isn’t broken.  it’s just changing.  in the olden days there was lots of stuff – like TV shows or fashion shoots or a movie or
the latest single from Spice Girls or Take That (first time round!)

Media_conduit_one

consumers accessed all that stuff thru conduits called media channels – so advertisers invested in the media channels that were most able to deliver either lots of – or the most relevant – consumers at the end of them.  the bigger the conduit, or the fewer conduits reaching a consumer, the more the conduits were worth.

advertiser money rode the back of this content and attached their brands to it.

nowadays essentially three things have changed…  firstly, there’s a lot more conduits – media fragmentation.  secondly, there’s a load more stuff – mainly because of the increase in conduits, the largest of which has been the internet – a global library of stuff ready and waiting on demand.

but the third and most significant factor – and the one to which Jeff Jarvis refers – is the changing relationship between consumers and stuff…

Media_conduit_two

what’s not happening is the disintermediation of the conduits.  there is still relatively little stuff that consumers directly engage with – the majority of media time remains within the confines of the media conduits.  the real story is of conduit control…

PVRs, Google (thought I’d get thru a post without mentioning them but no luck!), Podcasting – all examples not of consumers abandoning the media conduits, but of consumers controlling them – accessing and organising them to their own ends.  why?  because of the explosion of more stuff thru more conduits.

more stuff via more conduits  >>>  more control over content  >>>  the inevitable result of which is that advertisers are looking to get closer to the stuff at the end.  and this is where it’s getting fun!

a former associate who works at a London ad agency was explaining yesterday over lunch that one of the key strands of a campaign they’re planning won’t be a TV ad but a TV series.  they’re pitching a 22 episode season in order to tell the brand story they wish to convey.  investment still goes into the media model – it’s just into the ‘stuff’ bit as well as the ‘conduit’ stuff.  content still gets made, advertisers still spend to attach themselves to the stuff, and consumers still get great content that other people (brands) pay to make.

when viewed in this way the conventional ad takes on a whole new meaning.  it’s a little bit of stuff in itself.  how can we as agencies help our clients make more and better use of these little content canapes?  how can they sit alongside their meat and two veg season-long siblings that we’re increasingly looking to create?  but most importantly how can we make them stand out?

Emily Bell made reference to this in her MediaGuardian column today.

"In the world of web content, which has been fuelling the
content innovation fire, there is a new trend called ‘the flight to
quality’, which describes the process of refining something to the
point where you are producing the best object, clip, article package,
conversation on a theme or topic or object that the rest of the web
wants to point at."

it won’t be enough to create stuff.  it’s got to be the best of stuff.  but we’re fortunate on two fronts; one, London agencies are the best in the world at creating great content – they’ve just got to change their scope from 30" to 30 mins!  two, the production houses are waiting for our ideas.  Lorraine Heggessey, former controller of BBC1 and chief exec of talkbackThames in today’s Independent media section explains that "as she grows the company, [she] is constantly searching for new formats that have the potential for export".  that sounds like a gauntlet being laid down.  I hope it is, and I hope more advertisers and agencies have the gumption to pick it up and run with it!

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praising, viewing

In praise of, happy birthday and a big thanks …to Channel 4

twenty five years old today, a big happy birthday to Channel 4 …and a big thanks for – in no particular order – Queer as Folk, Chris Morris, Father Ted, Jon Snow, Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Countdown, R O’B & his Crystal Maze, Zig & Zag and The Big Breakfast, Spaced, Treasure Hunt, Friends and many many more.

Media Guardian have assorted a collection of great and good clips here.

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internet, social networking

The Value of Facebook: Knowledge and Power in the Age of Online Accountability

Chris_dewolfe_rupert_murdoch_john_bFrom left to right: Chris DeWolfe, Rupert Murdoch, John Battelle (Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)

it turns out I’m worth £160.  or to be more precise, what I (and people like me) click on when I’m logged on to Facebook, is worth £160.  a bit of number crunching…

  • Facebook wants to float on the stock-market.
  • Facebook (what with the overheads of servers, bandwidth and 300+ staff) can’t afford to.
  • so they need capital investment.
  • it was today announced that Microsoft have bought a $240m stake in Facebook
  • a stake (which I calculate = 1.6%) that values Facebook at $15bn (£7.3bn).
  • I am one of 47 million Facebook users.
  • I’m worth $15bn valuation / 47m users = $319.
  • or around £160 (based on $2 : £1 ratio)

I’ve made a big assumption: that most of the value of Facebook is locked into it’s user-base, and – more crucially – what it represents.  which seems to be a fair assumption.  the high valuation of Facebook certainly isn’t down to the physical assets of the company.  but nor is it due to the simple aggregation of it’s 47million-strong global audience.

the value of Facebook is information.  not on who or where they are (although thats important).  rather its information on what it’s users click on.  more numbers I’m afraid:

  • if the av. Facebook user gets served 6 ads per day,
  • then each month Facebook serves 47m x 6 x 30 ads.
  • thats 8.5 billion data points every month.

it’s this data that’s so valuable to Facebook, and to Microsoft should they get their hands on it,  because sales operations will use that information to understand who clicks on what, when, and how often.  targeting gets better, which improves response rates and efficiency of ad-serving.  which given the numbers involved (and Google’s head start in this area) isn’t a bad return on a very minor investment in the company.

as a point of comparison, Maxim USA was recently sold for a rumoured $250m.  based on a readership of 16m (source: Dennis publising), that equates to $15.63 (or around £7.80 per user) – around twenty times less the equivelant for my Facebook valuation (£160).

the point of course of all this is that according to a Guardian article Friday October 19th, Facebook is expected to bring in just $150m of revenues, so – assuming all users are equal – I’m generating around £1.60 for the company a year.  the fact that in their valuation I’m worth more than one hundred times that, is testimony to the value of data, and the accountability to advertisers that it affords.

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Uncategorized

Seeing the Good for the Trees

Buy_one
Innocent has come a long way since I first encountered it on sticker posted over an underground LEP back someime around 2002, and not all of the brand’s journey has been smooth.  despite endearing initiatives such as the granny-knit bobble hats for charity (which I blogged about here back in November), there have been wobbles – the tie up with McDonald’s being perhaps the most notable (great debate from back in May here).

Innocent is a brand which – ironically – is most open to John Grant’s second principle of green branding, which I blogged about here.  Grant’s principle states that in marketing a brand you have to "be certain that your business and the green marketing itself will live up to  the standards which you set for yourself".  the reason that Innocent attracted so much criticism was that the McDonald’s move was in direct conflict with the brand engram the company has so carefully built.

Innocent more than most brands has to be whiter than white, so I’m always more than a little interested when I encounter a new green-orientated initiative from the brand.  I noticed one such initiative – ‘Buy One Get One Tree’ – on my kitchen bench last week.  a fellow Burgoyner had purchased a big carton of Innocent.  an act which had entitled him to plant a tree.

Innocent_forest

it’s a great initiative.  everything from the pun (BOGOT) to the virtual forest online which allows to to plant a tree on someone’s behalf.  and they’re clearly conscious of their transparency issues; the website contains a plethora of background information on how it works to who it benefits via which credible organisations they’re tied up with to make it happen.

it’s a great example of what Jim Taylor (he of the Space Race book) calls instore-out planning (as opposed to outstore-in).

the principle suggests that rather than creating advertising designed to drive people to a generic product on shelf, by reversing the model and using unique, differentiated, and changing products on shelf as the starting point for communications, you not only get more interesting end-point advertising (for example an ad that in this case says "thanks for helping us plant 100,000 trees") but arguably links much more strongly back to the product…  it shouldn’t have missed anyone’s attention that you can only plant a tree on the Innocent website once per purchase, via a unique code that’s written on the carton.

this is an initiative which has sales-generation and increased frequency of purchase at its heart.  but there’s nothing wrong with that.  they’re a commercial organisation in a capitalist economy, and if increased frequency of sales allow them to get 100,000 trees planted sooner rather than later, then all the better for it.

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advertising, branding, engaging, planning

The Information R/evolution and it’s consequences for Advertising and Brand Communications

this wonderful piece of content, entitled Information R/evolution, is by Michael Wesch of the Kansas State University.  it explores the basic tenants of information and how they have fundamentally changed as information has moved from paper to digital storage.

for more on this subject they point in the direction of Clay Shirky”s work, as well as David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous.

the principles of how consumers aggregate relevant information to their own ends is especially true for the business of brand communications.  it has become a given that the double revolutions challenging advertisers and their agencies are (1) a digitally driven explosion of content and (2) technologically-driven consumer control over that content.

advertisers hoping to push through this double whammy of virtually infinite (and expanding) content and consumer control over it by force of sheer strength (and budgets) will learn to their cost that information and its storage – no matter what its source – no longer permits such behaviour.

the role of many brand communications in the early 21st Century is to package brand messages in such a way that they not only avoid being filtered out, but are actively invited and aggregated by consumers around themselves (and each other).

what the above video communicates so well is a poignant reminder that underpinning much of the current change in the business of brand comms is the simple transfer of information to a digital realm.  whether it’s an essay, blog, advert for a fizzy drink, CD single or TV episode; the fundamental rules of how they are delivered and consumed are being re-written.  some key questions then arise for those creating brand communications to ask themselves:

1. am I creating something people want to have or experience?
2. does it change or add benefit to their lives?
3. can it be easily found and consumed at any time?
4. does it articulate and reflect my brand?
5. could a competitor have made it?

advertising is information.  the nature of information is changing.  our advertising and brand communications must evolve in order to remain relevant and effective in a changing world.

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internet, user-generating

Blessing the Boot and the Spreading of Ideas

One day to go. One game left to play. One victory required to retain
the Rugby World Cup. No one’s ever done it. Tomorrow England could
change that.

It’s not something anyone predicted. Talking to ITV
after the quarter final, Jason Robinson commented that only thirty
people believed they could do it. Those thirty people were the squad:
the same squad that didn’t score a try against South Africa when they
met earlier in the contest.

The fact that this same squad is now one victory away from history bears testimony to the power of self-belief…

And
the sentiment seems to be spreading. A glance at the papers shows the
extent to which this other side of sporting performance – mental
training and belief – has come to the fore.

A profile of
Wilkinson in the Guardian quotes Steve Black, his coach at Newcastle,
who describes how “he has managed to keep going despite all the
setbacks and injuries because he has never stopped believing in
himself”.

But this belief is now spreading beyond mainstream
broadcast media, and that’s where it’s gaining real momentum. More than
a few viral links have arrived in Vizeum’s collective inbox over the
last few days, by far the most surreal of which was the Chipmunks
singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot which you can experience above.

Actually
that’s not strictly true, the most surreal was an invite to bless
Johnny’s boot. Virtually of course. As I write, his boots have been
blessed 208,384 times… you can bless it too, just click here.
The Chipmunks aside, what the bless the boot site demonstrates, is how
this increasingly emergent concept of the mental aspect of sport and
sporting performance can overcome a lack of flair, youth, and previous
results.

It is – of course – testimony to the internet that ideas like blessing the boot can spread so quickly and to so many people…

But
to spread they have to be pertinent to the moment, engaging, and
something that you want to pass on. All three of those things are
orientated not around brands but around consumers, something that
brands could and should consider when creating communications.

Of
course not all virals are positive. One soul within the Vizeum ranks –
who shall remain nameless – sent an email making reference to England’s
over-reliance on a kicking game. But that person is South African, so
is clearly getting more than just a little nervous about that
particular aspect of the English game…!

The England team’s
greatest strength is its mental fortitude; and it is this inner-power –
above everything else – that has carried them to where they now stand.

NB
just checked again, that boot has now been blessed 216,125 times.
Either I’m a very slow at typing, or that idea is spreading. Fast.
Bring it on!

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advertising, branding, engaging, planning

Why Great Ads Are Great, But Not Great Enough

a strange thing has started happenning.  I’ve started watching ads.  Sky+ no longer gets to do it’s thing…  it started a few weeks ago, with THAT gorilla ad.  we wanted to know what all the fuss was about, so we re-wound and watch it.  then we watched it again.  thats what seems to have started it all. then last Friday Ugly Bettty was interrupted by the spanking new effort from Fallon for Bravia…  if you haven’t seen it, watch it now…

Play-Doh is a pleasure to watch.  repeatedly.  and thats a heck of a lot more important that how it compares to it’s predecessors.  an argument was made to me yesterday that viewer expectations of the series are now so high that Bravia / Fallon can’t hope to meet them.  that’s unfair; I can’t imagine a level on which Play-Doh doesn’t engage and entertain the viewer.  this emerging trend of me watching ads continued more recently with eBay’s effort.

knowingly retro, clean and fresh, and containing a wonderfully insightful moment where one of the characters looses a bid, this marks a strong start for what is hopefully set to become a long-running platform for the brand…  eBay has a world to play with, ads created in isolation should only be the first and shallowest expression of that world…  this is begging to be transmedia-planned.

another new effort comes from the Post-Office.  the ants – thank God – have gone and been replaced by a sitcom assortment of characters.  again there’s knowingness in the derogatory reference to sub-standard carpets, and then Joan Collins crops up.  all very random but it works…  but it could be argued just making an ad is a very shallow window on this world and brand.  I would love to see what could be done with this concept extended into 5-8 min sitcom-style shorts online…  a Victoria Wood meets Gervais / Merchant approach could create some genuinely entertaining content (above and beyond which the ads could reference, again a nod to transmedia-ness)…

but the trend isn’t restricted to TV.  a lovely press ad for the Peugeot 407 caught my eye recently too…

Peugeot_dps_2the flowchart on the left is genuinely fun and invites you – by playing thru a decision-making tree – to think about what’s important when buying a car.  a simple idea that’s entertaining whilst remaining embedded in the product…  and there’s an intriguing url – http://www.407trustyourinstinct.co.uk/ – which depressingly is not a smarter deeper reflection of the ad but lots of pictures of cars, a product not a brand experience.

and I suppose that this is the nub of all this…  brands are ideas.  and ads are the multitudes of individual expressions of those ideas.  but to end there, with a great ad, is simply no longer enough.  media offers more, and brands deserve more.  the opportunity is not just to make great ads like the above, but to do the smart interesting stuff with and behind them that a 21st Century media landscape permits…

whether it’s communicating the mythology of making the ad a la Play-Doh, or creating and bringing a world to life like eBay (storybooks, documentaries anyone?); or potentially making entertaining content (Post-Office sitcom please), or something as simple as taking that Gorilla ad that sparked this bout of ad-watching, and changing the smallest thing to make the biggest difference…  the below played out just before 8pm on Saturday 13th October, a few minutes before England played France.  if you didn’t catch this watch the ad again – the gem crops up just at the end.  enjoy.

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advertising, planning, regulating

Childsplay

Zipngeorge “the only consequence of the regulations will be a hit on the commercial incomes of channels targeting young people. the only consequence of that will be a decline in the quality of the content on those channels. which is in no one’s interest.”
Posted by chris stephenson on Sunday, 19 November 2006 at 23:18

More hours + less investment = lower quality.  Should have been an easy equation to forecast.  Not so for Ofcom, who last week published a report into the state of children’s TV.  Apparently it’s bleak.  Whilst the hours of dedicated kids TV have trebled over recent years (with the emergence of dedicated children’s channels), investment across the public service broadcasting channels, has – according to Ofcom – declined somewhere in the region of 20%.

Channels create programmes that people want to watch.  They can then charge advertisers to reach those audiences.  This funds programme making.  And round we go. It should be so easy, Childsplay even.  But no.  By pandering to the notion that advertising has the ability to magically make kids – or anyone for that matter – buy things (if only it were that easy!), and by therefore barring a significant proportion of advertisers from investing in the kids TV market, Ofcom has by its own actions significantly reduced the amount of investment commercial channels can obtain from advertisers.

Ofcom are ignoring the fundamental commerciality of the market.  Worse, they seem to be implying that they should be able to re-engineer the situation with further legislation:

Mr Thickett, who is overseeing the report, points out that "Ofcom has powers to make recommendations but our power is only to look at the market as a whole … we have no powers to prevent them [broadcasters] doing what they feel they need to do."

Broadcasters feel they need to reduce investment not despite, but because of Ofcom’s actions.  Broadcasters are reducing the investment in kids TV precisely because of the pressures of the commercial marketplace, pressures that have been exacerbated by the junk food ban.

Advertisers still target kids via media investment.  But the marketplace has forced advertisers to divert investment away from TV into other media channels – channels that have no PSB remit in delivering quality educational kids television.

Are kids getting thinner?  I doubt it!  Will the government – thru Ofcom – continue to pander to the needs of a nanny state and target advertising?  Very possibly.  Alcohol advertising ban anyone?

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