Marketers are faced with several questions that will define their success or failure in 2008 and beyond. How will they continue to successfully market their brands, products, and services in a world where their historical media strategies are progressively less valid and consumers are increasingly more fragmented in their media consumption? And, how does the marketer integrate emerging media platforms – such as digital signage, mobile media and the Internet – into their strategies as technology allows messaging closer and closer to the point of purchase? Most importantly, what is the new 21st Century Media Mix?
The 21st Century Media Mix is an exciting, game-changing reality that will drastically alter the media landscape going forward. Shifts in consumer behavior, technology, and the Internet are the primary drivers that have unleashed the proliferation of new media formats, social networks, out-of-home communication platforms, mobile media, and time-shifting devices such as DVRs. Many marketers and advertisers are already realizing that these shifts will require revolutionary changes in thinking about their media mix – are you one of them?
Looking Back to Move Forward
The 20th century saw the most extensive advances in media since the invention of the printing press, and set the stage for what is currently described as the communications revolution. The invention of the linotype in the late 1800’s allowed the proliferation of daily newspapers, but the most significant advances began with the adoption of radio and television. Although radio networks have been in existence since the 1920’s, television networks didn’t exist until 1948 when coaxial cable began connecting major TV markets. With this connectivity the ’broadcast media’ era was born.
During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, television viewers experienced another first with the introduction of news programs on four television networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and DuMont followed by an array of other programming such morning shows, late night shows, soap operas, and game shows. As television progressed, marketers flocked to television because it was the most effective media to deliver their message. Television became the most important piece of their ’media mix’ and is where they began to pour their dollars. Nielsen and other measurement/research companies drove continued support for television through various types of analysis. Television became dominant because it gave marketers a cost effective, mass reach media to communicate with consumers.
With this acceptance of television, creative moved from the sponsorship model to brand advertising, and the TV ‘advertising spot’ was born. The television spot was meant to deliver a brand message to as many of the target consumers as a company could afford; during this ‘mass communication’ period, share of voice (i.e. a brand’s share of the category’s total TV spend) was a reasonably strong indicator of market share. For 40 years this model has continued to build and improve on itself as more sophisticated methods of measuring audiences and new media theories have emerged. However, at the same time, the cost of television has increased at over three times the rate of inflation, TV advertising production costs have soared, and most importantly, the entire infrastructure of the advertising industry has become very television centric.
The Rise of the Internet and Personal Digital Media
In 1994, the World Wide Web entered the picture and has now permanently changed the media landscape. Consumers now can control their media flow and can elect to see media when, where, and how they want. They have virtually unlimited choices besides ‘traditional’ media. They now sift through and choose content, to which they ascribe their own, personal rating system. If a medium does not reach the consumer’s time-value threshold, another choice is simply a click or device away. Traditional media, although still pervasive, are rapidly becoming choices that any person can assemble or change in the blink of an eye, and they can “Tivo it” just as quickly.
The age of broadcast media is being displaced by the age of ‘Personal Digital Media’ (PDM). PDM is completely owned by the individual and is persistently fluid, allowing the individual to interact simultaneously with the web, social networking, real-time communications, digital out-of-home media, and traditional media. The real-time, multi-tasking media consumer has arrived, and media will never be the same.
PDM progressively undermines the premise of current television and other traditional advertising formats and makes them less effective. Today, a consumer can access more information about a product in a few seconds than can ever be conveyed in a TV spot. Consumers seek recommendations through social networking, check product reviews and ratings, and find best prices – in minutes. Today’s consumers do not want the brand image pushed on them or defined in someone else’s terms. They simply want to know what the product is and why they should care about it, and to then be left alone to seek out additional information. The days of ’tell them and sell them’ are drawing to a close.
Embracing the 21st Century Media Mix
The transition to the 21st century media mix will be a process that challenges virtually everyone involved. Digital media advocates will claim that the shift is too slow, as traditional media supporters defend their piece of the advertising budget - claiming continued effectiveness, value and necessity. Both claims are true in the aggregate, but false in the specifics. There is no blanket formula by which this transition should be managed, as it is extremely product and brand specific and should not be generalized. But, change it must and change it will, driven by factors that include, but are not limited to:
Brand Positioning
Marketers need to carefully assess the breadth and depth of media that will best connect with their current and potential customers. One of the great benefits to introducing digital media into the mix is that marketers have the opportunity to engage people more effectively and diversify the messages they deliver.
Demographics
Who’s buying your products today versus who is a potential purchaser tomorrow? Generally older, brand-loyal consumers don’t look for the breadth of media that younger purchasers require. However, younger, potentially unbranded consumers are typically ‘digital natives’ and are substantially less exposed to brand messaging in traditional media. Marketers who fail to understand and communicate with their new, emerging consumer base in ways appropriate to them may experience a significant loss of brand equity.
Life Pattern Marketing
Intercepting people during their daily routines allows marketers to connect with consumers near the point of decision. Seventy-five percent of all purchasing decisions are made while people are tuned in and engaged. Digital out-of-home media, the Internet and mobile media are examples of where this is the case. These technology-driven media now allow marketers to get closer to this decision process with their brand and promotional messaging.
Benefit-Cost Ratio
As traditional media becomes less relevant to a brand’s communication strategy, many of these same mediums seek to offset losses by raising prices. In 2007, we witnessed this in television. As audiences dropped, television networks attempted to raise prices. ‘Pay more, get less’ is an interesting approach but unsustainable in the long term. Marketers have figured out that Personal Digital Media delivers a higher benefit-cost ratio through competitive reach and frequency at significantly lower cost.
The recent Digital Out-of-Home Media Awareness and Attitude study compared the consumer awareness of a number of media mix models. By combining digital out-of-home with other media, there are very compelling media strategies for achieving the high reach and awareness historically delivered by television. For example, by combining digital signage with the Internet, marketers can achieve awareness levels at nearly the same level of television.
Embracing the 21st century media mix means realizing that digital out-of-home media will become an increasingly important way to reach your target demographic. Whether you need to create greater brand awareness or increase your sales, the facts show that digital media networks are part of the new media mix. As stated by Suzanne Vranica, a marketing and advertising reporter for the Wall Street Journal, on January 2nd, 2008:
“Among the developing trends to watch this year:
1. Advertisers want a ’media-agnostic’ approach–one that picks whatever medium is best for the ad campaign;
2. Television screens are increasingly popping up in grocery and department store aisles, elevators and even gas pumps;
3. A growing number of agencies are having researchers spend long periods of time with consumers to find out more about how they live…. ”
Marketers took a decade to embrace broadcast television, two decades to embrace cable television, but less than a few years to embrace the Internet. The 21st Century marketer needs to explore, embrace, and facilitate new media strategies that digital out-of-home media, mobile media, and the ever-increasing number of Internet-based and digitally delivered media now enable.
So the revolution is on – a growing number of marketers and advertisers are embracing the 21st century media mix. There isn’t a week that goes by where we don’t read a headline about a brand’s significant shift in media spending. What does your media mix look like?
