this week on the Addington Bugle-sponsored PHDcast we talk the future of retail and Christmas ads. obviously. it being five weeks(ish) out from the big day thoughts turn to Santa’s sack, goodwill amongst people, and GRPs – after all who wouldn’t want a healthy carryover of adstock into the week before Christmas.
and so it came to pass that this was the week that Aussie retailers launched the slings and arrows of their Chrimbo adverts. first up we have Coles and Woolies going head to head withCurtis Stone basting food pornin the red corner, and in the green corner newcomer Jamie Oliver throwing a BBQ for Aussies in London (a deliberate choice of location we’re sure).
meanwhile the department stores give us the art of giving from Myer and, well, I’m not sure what from David Jones (B&T go with ‘a DJ’s branded Christmas cracker exploding to reveal a colourful array of gifts’, which is good enough for me).
of course the daddy of Christmas ads is John Lewis, who (as you’ll already know as the YouTube video is past 6.1m views already) this year unleashed a Lily Allen soundtracked Disney-inspired tale of the Bear who gets woken by a Hare for Christmas.
its amazing. of course. but where John Lewis genuinely stands out is not the creative solution, but the media infrastructure build around their story. the Lily Allen soundtrack (which has the chance of keeping a reality-TV winner off the Chrimbo #1 spot), the interactive eBook narrated by Lauren Laverne, the digital Christmas card maker, and of course activation of the ideas in stores … all add up to a genuinely integrated effort to deploy a story into the pre-Christmas season rather than just an ad.
its a valuable and timely lesson in the power of story; told elegantly, across multiple platforms, both broadcast and demanded, which stretches from awareness and salience all the way through to retail engagement – and all without a hero product shot in sight.
for both sides the equation is clear … for CBS, how much do I need to extract from TW (and other distribution points) to cover with margin the cost of content. for CBS, how much can I justify paying for content given the revenues I can generate via people paying for access to the channels on my network? what else is clear is that we can expect many more of these battles to come.
there are two constants … content and people. and its the changing and evolving relationships people have with content that’s causing disruption, instability, and war: War between the factions that create content and those that distribute it. the current siege of Time is only the current battle in the early years of a war that has a long way to go.
the origins go way back and the early battles have already been played out. battles like the UK’s independent production sector versus the country’s commercial channels, or the ongoing rumblings between music labels and Spotify. and at the start of last year Rupert Murdoch – via Twitter obvs – dramatically accused Google of being the ‘piracy leader’ of silicon valley.
the war will only get hotter from here on in. to understand why you need only follow the money. PWC’s annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2013-2017 uses like-for-like, 5-year historical and forecast data across 13 industry segments in 50 countries to compare and contrast regional growth rates and consumer and advertising spend. this is the picture it paints for the coming years:
“Consumer demand for entertainment and media (E&M) experiences, fuelled largely by the adoption of broadband and connected devices, will continue to grow and we expect this growth to follow a similar trend to GDP development across the forecast period 2013-2017. However, given the shift towards digital media — typically lower priced than its physical counterpart — we anticipate spend to lag behind GDP growth.
The global E&M market will grow at a CAGR of 5.6% over the next five years, generating revenues in 2017 of US$2.2tn, up from US$1.6tn in 2012. Within this overall figure, all three sub-categories — advertising, consumer spend on content, and access — will continue to grow, but at varying rates.”
two really – really – important points. one, because of the shift to digital media, spend on E&M will lag behind GDP growth – the pot is shrinking in relative terms. two, whilst spending is anticipated to increase, the future isn’t evenly distributed:
“Consumer spend shifts from content to access: The rapid growth in spend on access means that there will be a shift in the share of overall global E&M spend from consumer spend on content (from 47% of the market in 2012 to 41% of the market in 2017) to consumer spend on access (from 24% of the market in 2012 to 30% of the market in 2017).”
shift is spending, in real terms, away from content and into access to that content (spend on advertising is holding stable). we’re getting used to paying not for content, but instead for access to that content. whether its Spotify versus iTunes, or HBO’s Emmy and now Cannes credibility, it’s the distributor-networks that are currently strategically placed to gain the most.
but the thing is that the really big changes haven’t even started yet … there’s still a ton of inertia in TV advertising investment – big brands still, I think overly, rely on TV networks to get 30″ messages in front of people. reach is important, but its a necessity not a strategy for communications planning. brands have played for a long time now in being content creators, but they’re only just learning the power of being their own distributors …
new deals, new bargains, new negotiations … emerging between people and how they get access to content. if the old currency was attention through broadcast interruption, then the new currency is data through increasingly direct connections with people. the war was heating up without most major brands shifting even the smallest fraction of resource from broadcast advertising to creating and distributing content directly to people. the dual consequence – more competition for time spent with content and further reduced ad revenues – will see more than the three-day siege of a cable company.
there will be winners and losers, but perhaps the most notable victors in the coming war will be brands. marketing teams that successfully establish and then maintain direct relationships with existing and potential customers by creating and – crucially – distributing compelling and entertainment content.
cry havoc people … the dogs have slipped.
featured image via AP, and the following for no other reason than because I can 😉
morning PHDcast listeners. Nic was in the hot seat this week for the not-the-ooh laa la edition of the PHDcast. bien sur 😉 … awesome job Disco
much of the debate this week was in and around TV watching – how it’s changing and what the implications are, especially for brands. I wrote about some of the aspects of this in my post on Friday, but it’s worth dwelling on a point Stew makes at the twenty minute mark around people watching programmes not channels. I think that’s true but I also think its not quite as clean cut as that, and as the CBS / Time Warner stand-off enters it’s second day – leaving 3 million American’s without shows like Hawaii Five-0 (I know) – it’s clear that there is much more to come as the distribution wars heat up.
also on the cast we got round to talking about the Magnum Pop-Up Experience hitting Sydney. following the success of the store in other cities, the ground floor of Westfield in Sydney’s CBD has for the last three weeks been the latest place to get the pleasure pop-up. you get to design your own magnum … white, milk or dark chocolate plus plenty of toppings, all for a mere $7.
as I say on the cast, it’s a phenomenal example of a brand pulling the trick of landing marketing that gets people to pay for its own existence. andthe fact that people are queuing up for it is proof positive of the indulgence for which the brand is known.
two seemingly contradicting reports landed this week which paint very different pictures of the state of play in the evolving world of screen usage and content watching. they both came via Stew … thanks Stew!
first up, the BBC reports the suggestion by Ofcom (the UK’s Communications regulator) that living room TV is “making a comeback”. if a 3% increase in the number of adults who watch their main TV set once a week (91% up from 88% in 2002) represents a comeback, then yes … its a comeback. well done, nice work, props etc.
also this week Omnicom’s (or Publicis Omnicom Groupe’s I suppose) Media Pulse reported a study by GFK which “suggests that millions are moving to the Internet and free over-the-air (OTA) reception … about six percent of U.S. households have completely dropped cable and satellite TV in favor of streaming-only—a trend that’s been named ‘cutting the cord'” (Source).
a new golden age of broadcast, or a digital multi-screen take-over?
both, obvs.
its no secret that screens are proliferating, Australia is at the vanguard of the changes. an Australian Multi-Screen Report from earlier this year from Oztam, Regional Tam and Nielsen indicated that 27% of Aussie homes now have each of the four screens (TV, PC, tablet and mobile phone), up from 16% last year. Smart phone uptake is up 13% YOY to 61%, tablet penetrationdoubled 2012-2013 to 31% and PVR penetration now sits above 50%.
despite all that though, the same report calculated that time spent with screens are still massively weighted towards TV. the average Aussie watches 92 hours and 29 mins of TV per month, versus 8 hours and 53 mins on the other three devices. TV’s comeback is perhaps overplayed because there’s nothing to come back from … time spent with TV, despite pretty much a decade of PVRability, has remained pretty much consistent.
so what gives? … lots of TV viewing, lots of increase in penetration of new devices, and a whole lot of multitasking and multi-screening. the real limiting factor in the entire equation is nothing to do with screens or even what’s on them … its human attention. it was Kevin Kelly who observed in Wired magazine that “the only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention” (source) … it doesn’t take a huge leap to come to the conclusion that the real victim of screen and content abundance will be not brands per se, but those that rely solely on the broadcast interruption advertising model.
more of that on the PHDcast this week, but what all of this points to is the need for connection planning (on screens and beyond) to be done upstream in any brand planning work. integrated content solutions have to quickly become the modus operandi for how we develop communications. broadcast interruption will remain part of that integrated solution for a long time yet to come, but it can no longer be the totality of the solution.
which is why we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the future.
I’ll leave you to ponder that, and the thought that, far from living room TV making a comeback, its advertising that needs to make the comeback. in the evolving world of screens, only one screen rules them all – whichever one you happen to be watching at any given time. there’s a clear and present opportunity to bridge attention deficit with a new generation of integrated, connected, device-specific content. it’s time for us all to step up to the plate.
another week another PHDcast and this week is the hoo hah edition (you’ll see) …
we talk all about binge viewing on TV, from Lost to Game of Thrones; how are programme makers creating (and distributing) content so that we’re encouraged (tricked?) to watch incessantly? how are viewing habits changing and what are the opportunities for brands to monetise the behaviour?
we also talk about how brands welcomed baby Prince George to the world. from Oreos and Starbucks to P&G and the Sun (or Son) … how did brands capitalise on the cultural hoo hah (I know) that was the birth of the third in line to the throne?
all that plus Nestle use electroencepholographs to prove that taking a break is good for you (I know), and new research from MI9 …
here’s Nic channeling Demi Moore, specifically in Ghost … obvs. have a good weekend everyone …
another Friday (almost) means another PHDcast from PHD Australia
in the week that saw Australia wake up with a new Prime Minister, we talk about the social / broadcast media interaction that played out on Wednesday night. how could and should broadcast media keep pace with fast-moving events as the play out on twitter? and what is the role for brands in events like this?
there are also implications for media investment on TV and other channels, with airtime around the election becoming scarce. I spoke with our own Maree Cullum to get her advice for clients on how to help their campaigns weather the election storm.
also this week Channel Ten announced that Joe Hildebrand is joining the line up for Adam Boland’s new morning show on the channel. we talk about the challenge and opportunity for Ten’s new morning show, and the context and situation for breakfast television in general.
if that wasn’t enough, we get into the ‘can / should media owners produce ads for clients?’, the Readership Works introduces us to Emma – the name of their soon to be launched readership survey, and evaluate the plan to pump the smell of coffee into cinemas for Nescafe Blend 43.
here are the glasses-tastic Toby, Nic and Chris – your podcast team today with the exception of Stew, who missed the photo opp and Maree who’s Melbs – that’s it … catcha next week for more PHDcast
yey, another week another PHDcast from the good people of PHD Australia. this week we’re focusing on TV – the last few weeks having seen the finale of The Voice, and the return of Masterchef and The Block. we talk formats, performance and the current state and future of big reality format TV.
we also talk about Ten’s back to the future audience strategy and the challenges faced by the broadcaster. they want to be seen as the home of event TV … but to what extent can the recent cricket deal, existing content and formats deliver this for the network?
and if that wasn’t enough there’s a quick run around the future of TV … connected TVs, on demand and IPTV, second (and third) screening, addressable advertising and social TV.
enjoy.
PS. if you haven’t seen it totes check out our very own worldwide executive planning director Mark Holden on the future of TV. it rocks.
featured image: iMedia screen, featuring an SBS promotion
MEDIATION 