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11: Delivering Customer Communication Connections

(EN: dropping notes from the beginning of the chapter, in which the author began with a polemic about old-fashioned marketing practices and provided a jumbled and semi-accurate history of "the media" - it's been done before, and it's been done better in other sources.)

Within the past few decades, media have changed dramatically, primarily due to technology, which has had a significant impact on many of the traditional media. The author motions the iPhone as the latest gadget that embodies the extension of traditional media to a real-time, portable device, which also provides capabilities unavailable in traditional media.

Media fragmentation is also an issue. The author uses the example of television - most U.S. households had a choice of three channels in 1950, which has swelled to over 150 today. However, he concedes that other media are shrinking (radio stations, magazines, and newspapers peaked in the 1990's, and there are fewer now than there were then).

The Internet is largely to blame for the shrinkage in traditional media - though "the Internet" is a vague concept, as it constitutes a multitude of sources of information (web sites); varied formats of information (audio, video, text); delivered to multiple devices (desktop, laptop, notebook, tablet, cell phone, smart phone), all of which are sloppily heaped into the category of "digital media."

In general, consumption of media has increased significantly, but largely due to the increased availability (portability), and consumption rates for media have shifted over time to print, to radio, to television, to Internet, though the typical consumer uses the various media according to their own preferences (just because a person uses the Internet doesn't mean they have stopped watching television or reading newspapers altogether, though their consumption rates for the latter tend to decrease over time.)

Time-shifting and commercial-avoidance are noted as significant changes in consumer behavior. Specifically, digital video recorder technology enables consumers to record programs for viewing at a more convenient time, at which time the consumer will skip past commercials (the author also mentions that this was possible as far back as 1970, with the VCR).

(EN: the author does not mention the rapid growth of entertainment-delivery mechanisms that are commercial-free and provide the user greater control: the ability to access music and video programs on services such as iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, etc. I expect it may be because this was new at the time the book was written and/or the author felt it hadn't gathered sufficient steam, but a number of other sources see the consumer preference for a subscription-based commercial-free channels as a serious threat to the advertising-based model.)

The author resurfaces the notion of media multitasking. From the marketing perspective, it may be impossible to distinguish which medium has the audience's attention - which is key to planning effective communication and having a reliable measurement of its impact.

THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA-PLANNING MODEL

The author considers traditional models of media planning that, while ill-suited to the current state of the media, have been in use for almost fifty years, and represents the theory by which most individuals who are currently involved in marketing were educated and experienced, and to which many stubbornly cling.

The author quotes Jim Stengel, the CMO for Proctor and Gamble (which has long been a trendsetter in consumer marketing), who echoes sentiments such as "today's marketing model is broken," acknowledges taht "the consumers are in control," and stresses a need to shift away from sales-driven marketing to "building honest, authentic relationships with the people we serve."

(EN: My sense is that the author is not so much explaining the traditional model as going on a long tirade against it - which is of limited use - so I'll be skipping much of this section.)

The traditional metrics for advertising are reach (the number of people who receive a message) and frequency (how often they receive it), based on the premises of the stimulus-response model: given that a percentage of people will respond favorably, the larger the audience, the greater the number of sale; that a subject that receives multiple stimuli (your message anda competitors) will react to the most recent, that repetition of a message improves memory, increasing the likelihood of response; etc. In terms of profit, reaching more people more often creates more sales.

As such, the marketer sought to transmit his message through a channel that was most effective in reaching the desired market segment frequently, balancing the efficiency of cost-per-contact against the effectiveness of sales-per-contact, within the confines of a budget that was often set far in advance of the campaign.

Granted, marketing wasn't always done to create immediate sales: it might be done to make the user aware of the brand and/or the product, to create a positive impression, to reinforce their conviction, etc. However, this generally followed the same reach/frequency model. The author mentions the AIDA model - which is itself based upon the stimulus-response model the author has often railed against, but he concedes it is "nonetheless still a useful tool." In the traditional marketing plan, a campaign could be designed to walk the user through the four stages, toward making a purchase.

THE MEDIA CONSUMPTION PLANNING MODEL

The account for changes in media usage, the author proposes a planning model that considers the ways in which customers consume and interact with media today. In this model, the marketer considers the various media used by the target audience.

Primarily, the marketer seeks to learn all the media that are used, the time allotted to each, and the scheduling of that time. It's also significant to consider whether the medium is primarily a foreground or background medium at that time and what other activities the audience might be engaged in, given the environment of consumption.

It is suggested that the marketer seeks to determine which medium the customer uses most regularly and gives the most attention (EN: though it seems rational that a marketer might seek to target a background medium for certain goals or purposes).

Once this is determined, the message can be crafted, keeping the principles of relevance and reception. Even if the channel and schedule is planned well, a badly crafted message may be ignored or avoided if it does not suit the interests of the audience.

The author concedes that this model is still a prototype, but suggests that research findings are encouraging.

DAY-IN-THE-LIFE MODEL

This model, which has been in use for "several years," analyzes the daily routines of the target market to identify points at which the consumer is expected to encounter various media, which requires a thorough review of research about the market segment.

It begins by creating a narrative of the mark's activities, from waking to sleeping, and creates a timeline of activities, then notes what media may be used or encountered along that timeline. The author suggests that this approach is based on brainstorming and requires "a special kind of media creativity, vision, and imagination." (EN: gut feeling and blind assumption, perhaps?)

An example is given of the Rheingold Brewing Company, which discovered that many of its target market (young consumers) were often active in certain parts of the city at night, after the shops were closed, and as such struck upon the idea of placing advertisements on the shop-front roll-up shutters, and commissioned graffiti artists to design the advertisements. (EN: No comment on the effectiveness of this, but the author suggests it was effective in getting a message in front of a hard-to-reach target segment in an unobtrusive manner.)

BRAND CONTACTS MODEL

Another model attempts to compile a list of brand contacts - instances in which the customer has been (or will be) exposed to information about the brand. Like the day-in-the-life model, it tends to be very imaginative and hypothetical, but it is necessary to be so to identify the unknown (brand information that can reasonable by expected to have been received from other sources over which the marketer has no direct control).

Brand contacts may come from planned messaging, the media, friends and peers, store clerks, and a multitude of other sources, and a list can be compiled to be as comprehensive as possible.

Given the list of all brand contacts, the next step is to determine which of these is most influential to consumer behavior, based on intuition and customer opinion research. (EN: I'm a bit leery of research into customer research on this matter. A customer might not have a clear memory of which contacts were most influential, or they may be prone to confabulate, so outcomes may not be entirely accurate.)

Regarding message content, this model stresses that any new information initiated by the company will be received in the content of present impressions of the brand. The desired message may be complementary or contrary to the customers' previous experience.

CHANGING THE VIEW OF MEDIA

From a marketing perspective, the media is traditionally viewed as a reliable communication channel that delivers a message, exactly as intended, to a mass audience in a one-way fashion. Most of the traditional media continue to operate in this same fashion, though the mass audience has become more fragmented and less passive, and is evolving to a more personalized experience where the audience has greater control over the content and scheduling of the media they consume.

The author reiterates that 'traditional media will no go away," citing that traditional media such as newspapers continue to exist in spite of the emergence of different ways to get information: radio, television, and the Internet have not put them out of business, but merely provided the user with more media options.

(EN: Until just the past few years, I'd have been inclined to agree - but my sense is that it's a matter of evolution. Many newspapers have seen drastic reduction in demand, to the point where they are struggling to stay in business, and my sense is that it's a matter of time before they fold. Commercial radio is not far behind them. The perspective I'd advocate these days is that old media are dying - at a slow pace. It may take a few decades, but eventually, the newspaper will be as quaint as a town crier. In the present day, they still have value for the residual audience who have not moved on to other products, just as a company may still profit from a product that's in the declining phase of its lifecycle - and with the same knowledge that it is eventually going to be abandoned by the market.)

While the author maintains that traditional media will persist, he concedes the emergence of a wide array of personal, interactive media forms. These media vary widely, but seem to be characterized by four distinguishing characteristics: they enable the consumer to time-shift (choose viewing time rather than attending to a broadcast schedule); the consumer has greater control over what he receives (he chooses programming); the user has the ability to bypass messaging; and the new media tend to be interoperable (the user can choose a device for a given message).

To this, add the increasing trend of ad-stripping (new media enable a user to consume entertainment media such as music or video in a commercial-free format), programming control (the user chooses which tracks to hear on their iPod, rather than tuning into a broadcast that is set by a radio station), and the ability to interact (the user may respond to an advertising message immediately, using the same device).

The author also touches on the notion of synergy: just as people consume multiple forms of media, so should companies seek to reach them in whatever forms of media they wish to use. It is more in the nature of serving the consumer's interest to accommodate their desires to consume messaging in their channels of choice.

MOVING FORWARD TO A NEW MODEL

The author reiterates that traditional media planning models are no longer sufficient and will become increasingly less relevant, and that while new models are emerging, none of them seems entirely perfect, though they each show promise in certain respects.