advertising, planning

Mediation’s (Completly Unproven) Rank of Media Channel Carbon Badness

Green_normal …is how John Grant described how best to approach the communication of greenness at an event hosted this week by the account planning group.

the ascent of greenness on the public agenda has been swift and universal; Grant quoted Phil Gandy from research company Landor who described it as "One of the most complete and speedy revolutions in consumer attitudes ever seen" (click here for press release).

Grant was discussing what advertising account planners can bring to the table in combating climate change, with specific reference to how brands successfully communicate and capitalise on – genuine – green credentials.

he’s blogging about his upcoming book – The Green Marketing Manifesto – at greenormal, from where you can link to his presentation (alternatively click here).

Grant outlined five principles when communicating a brand’s greenness:

  1. green is a principle, not a proposition
  2. be certain that your business and the green marketing itself will live up to  the standards which you set for yourself
  3. it’s a complex moving target
  4. it’s barely started
  5. there’s not one green marketing strategy, there’s many

but there was one particular aspect of marking green credentials that wasn’t discussed, one that’s already caused more than one of my clients to reconsider their own marketing activities; that of the media with which you communicate your greenness.

it’s one thing to be able to say that you’re a carbon-neutral brand, but to what extent can you say the same for your media schedule?  I’m planning on getting round to some more thorough investigation into this, but here’s my hunch for the run down of how media channels perform – from best to worst…

RADIO you’d have thought is the best performing channel.  the only product is radio waves.  so carbon release is restricted to content production and broadcast, and the electricity required by radio receivers.  that said the channel’s expansion into TV and online distribution could see this change significantly…

ONLINE intuitively ranks well.  no paper; just the electricity to run the machine and the servers to hold the content.  but what a lot of servers there are… a quick search led me to Martin Stable’s blog where he discusses this topic; he quotes an article in Wired Magazine entitled The Information Factories;

"Ask.com operations VP Dayne Sampson estimates that the five leading search companies together have some 2 million servers, each shedding 300 watts of heat annually, a total of 600 megawatts. These are linked to hard drives that dissipate perhaps another gigawatt. Fifty percent again as much power is required to cool this searing heat, for a total of 2.4 gigawatts. With a third of the incoming power already lost to the grid’s inefficiencies, and half of what’s left lost to power supplies, transformers, and converters, the total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts.

That’s an impressive quantity of electricity. Five gigawatts is almost enough to power the Las Vegas metropolitan area – with all its hotels, casinos, restaurants, and convention centers – on the hottest day of the year. So the annual operation of the world’s petascale search machines constitutes a Vegas-sized power sump. In the next year or so, it could add a dog-day Atlantic City. Air-conditioning will be the prime cost and conundrum of the petascale era. As energy analysts Peter Huber and Mark Mills projected in 1999, the planetary machine is on track to be consuming half of all the world’s output of electricity by the end of this decade."

Wired Magazine, October 2006

I’m ranking CINEMA next.  big screen so lots of power but usually lots of people so – applying the same logic as car-sharing – the ability of cinemas to people-share see’s them rank above…

…TV.  according to the Carbon Trust the average UK individual, in watching the average TV set, contributes 35kg of CO2 per year to the atmosphere.  nice to know but not sure how it compares to other media.  watch this space.

Paper_dumpI’m ranking PRESS next.  lots of recycling but still lots of paper used and not necessarily recycled.  I may be misjudging the medium as the electricity use is restricted to the point of creation, although this may be balanced by the carbon output of distributing millions upon millions of newspapers and magazines each year.  Images of London freesheets being dumped in bins (above) don’t help the medium’s case too much either.

which brings me to my – unproven – biggest schedule culprit; posters.  according to Postar there are 123,949 poster sites in the UK.  thats a lot of paper being printed on every two weeks.  82,054 of those posters are illuminated – so thats a shedload of electricity keeping them alight.  despite some panels using solar power to illuminate them, I still doubt the capacity of posters to defend themselves in the court of carbon emissions.

Scrolling_backlight So there it is.  my unproven ranking of media channels.  the upshot?  if you have a carefully and elegantly crafted green message, think twice before you book that press and scrolling backlight schedule!

Disclaimer: this could be completely wrong  …but I’m on the case re constructing a more thoroughly research ranking.  promise.

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advertising, engaging

Advertising Isn’t to Blame for Commercial Radio’s Woes

Radio_mast_3 Fru Hazlitt, the new MD of GCap last week gave a keynote speech at the Media 360 event to assert that bad ads were causing listeners to abandon commercial radio.

whilst Hazlitt stopped short of threatening to pull ‘poor’ ads from schedules, plans were announced to set up a listener poll to rate the quality of ads.

there’s a big assumption here – that bad ads = disgruntled listeners = defection = strong BBC.  and thats a big assumption to make.

whilst it’s true that commercial radio is suffering against a consistently strong BBC, and that the lack of ads on the latter certainly plays a part in it’s success; what this assertion ignores are other potentially strong factors that have combined to produce a strong BBC…

no channel is feeling the effects of a changing media landscape more than radio.  the combination of the i-pod generation carrying their music libraries wherever they go along with the wide and often free access to music offered by the internet has left some stations struggling to maintain their relevance.

it was this aspect that the speech last week ignored.  in a world where music is available on demand, three things become key to a radio station staying relevant

  • unique content (stuff that you can’t listen to or get from elsewhere else eg talk radio)
  • newness (eg tracks or bands you may not have heard before)
  • great packaging (eg respected DJs, innovative formats)

it is across these aspects that the BBC has arguably out-performed commercial radio.  from the strength and breadth of non-music offerings (Five Live being a case in point), to innovative and less-mainstream stations (of which 6 music is arguably the strongest), the BBC is doing more than capitalizing on listeners frustrations with advertising.  commercial radio on the other hand – in the main – continues to peddle mainstream music music without the necessary investment in either innovative formats or value-adding presenters.

there are exceptions, GCap’s Xfm continues to outperform rivals with a combination of credible new music and innovative formats (see X-posure for evidence), recently winning the last FM analogue license in South Wales.  but this week will see GCap ‘overhaul’ the brand, with changes expected in DJ line-up and music formats.  perhaps it will also introduce viewer ad-polling as part of the review.

advertising may be part of commercial radio’s woes, but it’s far from the only one.  and there’s a lot radio station owners could do to help their cause before alienating and then potentially culling their biggest source of income.

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internet, social networking, user-generating

Welcome To The Post-Information Age

where content is free to create, distribute and consume
where everyone is a journalist
where everyone is watched
where everything is recordable and recorded
where everyone can contact anyone
where social networks rival commercial broadcasters
where value is in knowledge not just reach
where everyone can be seen and heard
where authourity records and reassures citizens
where citizens question the assertions of authourity
where opinions are facts and facts are opinions

as the saying goes; ‘beyond good and evil…’
just one word of caution…  be careful what you say.

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internet, user-generating

The Content Creation vs Consuption Ratio

Michel_creationofadam
a study today by Hitwise – sent to me by Steve, a guy I work with who blogs at Open House – has identified the degree to which people consume rather than create user-generated content in a Web 2.0 world.  analysis of online surfing data by Bill Tancer showed that only 0.16% of visits to YouTube were by users seeking to upload rather then consume content.  similarly only 0.20% of visits to Flickr are to upload pics.

this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  the history of media (and indeed the history of our culture and society) is one of content being created by the few and consumed by the masses.  we can speculate to what extent all early homo sapiens were intuitive cave painters, but early on it was established that a few created cultural and social content for the mass.  from Michaelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling to Josh Schwartz’s OC (the last episode of which was tragically broadcast in the UK last week – it had so much more to give!), the few have always created for consumption by the mass.  the figures today simply reflect that universal constant.

this cap on creation was historically down, I suppose, to two factors: firstly ability – not everyone is a Gaudí or Tolkien.  but secondly it was determined by an individuals capacity to create and the resources available to them.   Classical artists were commissioned and funded by the Christian Church, Schwartz was commissioned and funded by Warner Bros.  creation comes at a cost (be it resources or time), and not everyone can afford.

the latter of these influences has been eradicated by a combination of the fall in the cost of production and production tools, and the ability for the first time – courtesy of Web 2.0, for an amateur to distribute that content  on a mass scale.  today’s figures can’t and shouldn’t undermine that…  Web 2.0 allows anyone to create and distribute movies, pictures, art and opinions.  the effect on our culture and society is already being felt and will only increase.

but crucially the former cap still applies.  despite what most of us would like to hope, not many of us has the potential to create content which will be as universally lauded (or as profitable) as a Donatello or a Shakespeare…  a fact of life for which I suspect commercial media distribution networks are more than a little thankful.

the original Hitwise article can be read here.

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advertising, engaging, planning

TV and Online – Forever Frenemies

Tv_online
in a post on The Black Box Fallacy, in which I referenced Transmedia storytelling, I concluded by noting that;

‘whats going to be fun is to see to what extent commercial advertisers
use transmedia storytelling.  at the moment a campaign idea tends to be
executed across different channels.  there’s little consideration given
to how what is produced can be contextualised from the off.  and
there’s massive opportunity for the advertisers – and indeed the
agencies – that learn how to do this best first’

I recalled this whilst watching two recent examples of advertising campaigns.  both of which are pieces of communication with two very different expressions in TV and Online channels.  in both cases TV merely provides the precursor, the call to action being to go online…

Army_jobs_home_2

the first is for Army Jobs, where a series of video clips show different aspects of Army life.  in each example the execution is cut short – the ending… is to be found online.

here you not only get to view all the video’s in a dedicated player, but can also – by addressing a series of questions in the Pathfinder – identify which aspects of Army life would be most appropriate for you.

it’s all very slick and involving, making the visit from the TV execution more than worth the effort, whether you’re interested in a life in the Army or just curious to see how the stories end.

the second example is beyond surreal…

yup.  it’s the R&D team who developed the Peanut Chunky inviting you to punish them if you don’t like what they’ve come up with.  whether you did or didn’t like it is irrelevant, as when you get to the website you’re given the option to punish them or…  punish them…

Peanut_chunky_home

another very slick online experience not only shows you what happens when the staff are inflicted to a cactus bath or lobster down the pants.  but in an added trick some of the juiciest content is locked.  you unlock it by sending video clips to friends…

Peanut_chunky_two

the most interesting thing about both of these campaigns is that the online content could have quite happily existed without the presence of a TV ad.  but TV brought efficient mass reach – as well as a wealth of credibility – to the invite to engage with both of these brands.

both channels benefit hugely from the other.  at it’s most basic, if either brand schedule had prioritised one channel over the other (or sacrificed a large chunk of the budget in one channel to do a broadcast job in the other!) it wouldn’t have worked.  but more importantly it shows integration within or across creative agencies that will be not just beneficial but crucial in the future implementation of digital (across all channels) media schedules.

is it Transmedia storytelling?  no… that would require different and dedicated content across different and dedicated channels bringing a concept to life in very different and relevant ways.  but its two big and very slick steps in the right direction.

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advertising, researching

Implicit vs Explicit Memory

this ad for Virgin Trains nearly didn’t get made.  which would have been a great shame.  it nearly didn’t get made because its the kind of ad that fails pretesting with consumers.  it fails because when we are asked directly about something we recall explicit not implicit memories.  the theory goes like this…

How_stimulus_is_recalled_one_3our initial gut feel or reaction to a stimulus is stored implicitly, once we consciously process that stimulus – ie think about it – we form an explicit memory of that stimulus.  when we are asked to articulate our perceptions of something (eg an ad) its our explicit memory that we recall.  because of this conscious processing it’s open to counter argument – something Virgin Trains wanted to avoid coming out of a wave of negative publicity.  they couldn’t attempt to change people’s heads without first changing their hearts.

after consumers were talked thru the script, they recalled their explicit perceptions of Virgin Trains, which were inherently negative.  they couldn’t articulate their gut feel – ie their implicit recall, which duckfoot were able to prove was very positive.  this is how they did it…

Duckfoot_memory_test

the response to part 3 was – as expected – negative.  and the ad may have been killed there and then.  but by repeating part 1 duckfoot were able to identify the implicit memory of the ad, and its affect on the perceptions of Virgin Trains…  in theory 1 and 4 should be the same, but they weren’t.  the stimulus had fundamentally changed the subjects’ implicit perceptions of Virgin – for the better.  and so the ad got made.  and we all got to see it.  which is nice.

it’s also worth noting that back in 1977, Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino showed how implicit memory also leads to the illusion-of-truth effect; which suggests that subjects are more likely to rate as true statements that they have already heard, regardless of how true they are.

in short, the very act of saying something in an ad and having consumers implicitly hear it is enough to lead a consumer to recall that statement as true.  so a medium like TV, which is often processed with low involvement and therefore stored straight to implicit memory, is great at making viewers think something is true, whether it is or not!

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advertising, planning, researching

Some Engaging TV Research

Thinkbox_engagement ethnographic observation in 22 homes formed the basis of the first phase of thinkbox’s Engagement Study, which when followed by interviews established six key influences on the degree to which audiences engage with TV ads.  in collaboration with ACB Research, have established an ‘engagement index’ based on the following factors:

Attention
Ad Exposure
Memory
Attitudes
Self-regulation
Self-referencing

…all of which determine the extent to which the content of an ad is processed, and to what degree it is therefore recalled to the brand engram (and ultimately – although this will be investigated at a later stage in the Payback Study – to what extent it influences purchase intention).

some of the key findings from the research were that:

  • TV is central to people’s lives, and the majority of viewing remains communal; 70% of viewing time was typical of "our time" as opposed to "in-between time" or "my time"
  • ‘engagement’ can be defined in a range of ways, some of the most observable being strong interactions like playing ‘guess the ad’ to responding to music cues
  • overall, around 17% of viewing could be typified as ‘strong’, 51% as medium (taking notice in some way), with 32% of viewing showing no observable response or interaction
  • negative engagement does not equal bad engagement – the Frosties ad (below) being a prime example of an ad that was hated but which got the product discussed (in not a necessarily negative way) as a result
  • attention is not always vital – eating increased the engagement index
  • shared engagement is powerful, and both the extent to which an ad is implicitly recalled as well as emotionally engaged with is re-enforced by sharing the experience with others
  • the power of emotion; ‘affective’, ‘cognitive’ and ‘sensory’ ads have higher recall indexes
  • less than 10% of ad breaks are affected by some form of ad-avoidance
  • 5% of commercial breaks were viewed with a laptop present and being used in the room

here’s that Frosties ad:

the first phase was then followed by 3,000 online surveys, which formed the basis for the creation of five segments:

  • ‘Ad Enthusiasts’ (30%) – love ads and TV generally; they have higher than average recall of ads but less ‘favourability’ and purchase intent
  • ‘TV is my friend’ (15%) – TV viewed for companionship, generally live and watch TV alone; heavy users of TV, but advertising has less affect on favourability compared to other segments
  • ‘Ad-averse’ (18%) – TV isn’t important or relevant in their lives; despite the name, ad exposure was seen to be more likely to affect favourability / purchase intent
  • ‘Creative Connoisseurs’ (19%) – appreciate quality of programmes and ads; actually showed the lowest recall generally
  • ‘Thank you for the Music’ (18%) – TV isn’t that important, but they take in and recall more readily slogans and tunes; much more likely to be partially attentive – brand recognition didn’t equate into an effect on favourability or purchase intent

what matters now of course is what we are able to do with the research.  getting it onto touchpoints will be a great first step, allowing planners to explore these audiences in the context of other TV info as well as other media.  but ultimately the extent to which planners and buyers distribute spots amongst programmes – and indeed within the ecology of the break – will depend as much on the current context of the TV trading model as it will new news about how we can segment different audiences subject to how they engage with the nation’s favourite pastime.

that said, what this thinkbox initiative does comprehensively is add much-needed ammunition to the why spend on TV? debate.  TV advertising revenues are decreasing because of fragmentation and the need of marketeers to fund internet activity on a media schedule.  but – let’s be honest – TV is also suffering because it’s become less fashionable for TV to be the answer.  we all believe TV advertising works, all thinkbox have to do is prove it…

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advertising, engaging, planning

Thinking Inside the Box

Thinkbox_dispatcheslast Friday saw tv marketing body thinkbox present findings from it’s Engagement Study, a project to understand how different audiences interact with TV and as a result how advertisers can best use TV to reach those audiences.

interestingly the first question they needed to address is what is engagement?  thinkbox turned to a definition coined by their equivelant body in the States… that "engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context",  which despite being very TV advertising focusses, seems as good a definition as any.

learnings were then presented from the project, including a TV audience segmentation the study has identified, as well as some extreme types of behaviours demonstrated across the segments.  I’ve outlined the findings of the research in a seperate post here.

a brilliant presentation by Dr Ali Good from duckfoot research then discussed explicit vs implicit memory, and how media and advertising research is great at measuring the former but not so good at the latter…  so he took the audience thru a technique for exploring implicit memory, via a great case study for Virgin Trains’ Return of the Train ad.

the last aspect of the morning was a discussion led by Sue Unerman of Mediacom on what all this research means for advertising and specifically media planning.  ten questions ranged from "is it better to be noticed or ignored?" to "are we fiddling while Rome burns?", taking in everything from bemoaning the disapearance of jingles to the role of media vs creative planning strategies on the way.

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converging

The Black Box Fallacy

Black_box there’s a very compelling theory that at some point all our media will be accessed through a single black box.  a box that will deliver our TV, gaming, email, movies and web surfing all to one (or multiple) screens through a single access point.

it’s very compelling because it sits so neatly with our concept of convergence; with the idea that technology will be developed (and indeed already exists) to deliver a range of content to our TV screen.  the much-anticipated PS3 not only does games, but does HD DVD and can wirelessly access the internet to boot.  Sony doing internet, Microsoft doing TV etc.  convergence right?

wrong?

the more you think about it the more you realise that there probably isn’t going to be mainstream adoption of a little (or big) black box.  firstly, there’s no historic evidence for it; as Henry Jenkins notes in his book Convergence Culture;

"I am seeing more and more black boxes.  there are my VCR, my digital cable box, my DVD player, my digital recorder, my sound system, and my two games systems, not to mention a hug mound of videotapes, DVDs and CDs, game cartridges and controllers, sitting atop, laying alongside, toppling over the edge of my television system"

he’s not alone.  we have all experienced not the convergence but the proliferation of black boxes.  even when a device can do multiple tasks, it doesn’t necessarily replace a separate device dedicated solely to that task.

but the second reason why the black box theory is a fallacy is that context in which we consume stuff changes.  my wants and needs as I type this were very different from my wants and needs last night when I was watching a movie.  Jenkins quotes a Cheskin Research report * as pointing out that:

"The old idea of convergence was that all devices would converge into one central device that did everything for you … What we are now seeing is the hardware diverging while the content converges

… Your email needs and expectations are different whether you’re at home, work, school, commuting, the airport etc., and these different devices are designed to suit your needs for accessing content depending on where you are – your situated context"

"Designing Digital Experiences for Youth", Market Insights Series, Fall 2002 pp. 8-9

there’s a fundamental difference between access (hardware) and content, and where there is evidence for convergence is with the latter…

the above is from the Animatrix.  one imagined world; with a multitude of different content; but all designed to be accessed differently across different channels; movie’s at cinemas, DVDs at home, MMOG via PC.  its a big early commercial example of what Jenkins has termed Transmedia storytelling, Faris Yakob  wrote a great post about it here.

it is content that converging.  so that we can access it whenever we like on whatever terms we choose.  its for this reason – its worth noting – that we have seen technological convergence outside the home in the form of the mobile phone (which is also a camera and MP3 player and soon TV too)…  we have a luxury of choice inside our homes – PC for working, TV for movies – that we don’t have outside.  hardware convergence happened on phones because the contextual need for the convenience of one device, was more important that the contextual need for different devices to be designed for individual tasks.

of course there will be some hardware convergence, but there is unlikely to be a killer-ap black box adopted by the mainstream.  the fact that technology exists is no reason for it to be adopted.  we stubbornly continue to allow human context to determine how we adopt and use technology.  good job too.

whats going to be fun is to see to what extent commercial advertisers use transmedia storytelling.  at the moment a campaign idea tends to be executed across different channels.  there’s little consideration given to how what is produced can be contextualised from the off.  and there’s massive opportunity for the advertisers – and indeed the agencies – that learn how to do this best first.

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advertising, branding

Products are over. What idea are you selling?

Abercrombie_one
there was a queue to get into the new Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store in London yesterday.  at least a couple of dozen excited young things were happily waiting their turn to get the opportunity to spend their pocket money in America’s latest retail export.

the launch of the store (the first outside the Americas) has generated significant word of mouth and editorial coverage despite a limited media spend.  the discussion has come about not from the clothes on the shelves, but from the beautiful young things stacking them.

much of the discussion has been negative; the brand shamelessly exploits the idea of the body beautiful – typified by David and Peter Sheath from Swansea who meet and greet the bright young things in nothing but low hung jeans and flip-flops.  it would be easy to dismiss such coverage as a PR failing, but its almost certainly quite the opposite.

in A&F’s pursuit of communicating their brand of beautiful bright young men, they are selling much more than a few preppy clothes.  they’re selling an idea.  you’re understanding of the brand isn’t about clothes at all…  but rather – perhaps – the very nature of beauty.  and whether your take on this is aspirational, envy or just bemusement – what’s important is that you almost certainly will have a take on it.

when brands stand for something, they compellingly invite us to have an opinion.  and in doing so they win some headspace.  and that’s rather valuable.  A&F’s body beautiful is in a very real sense the anti-real beauty campaign from Dove.  if you haven’t seen their Evolution creative execution, watch it now…

both these brands stand for something.  and both – whilst the success of A&F in the UK is to be seen – are doing rather well as a result.  this is telling in a week that saw the retail chain Next  announce that like for like sales were down 7.2%.  selling products – certainly for many high street retailers – isn’t enough any more.  there’s too much on and offline competition to rely on the products to do all of the talking.  brands that stand for something – that sell an idea – get noticed.  thats why there was a queue to get into the A&F store yesterday, and thats why anyone working on a brand that doesn’t know what it stands for, should be very nervous.

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