Modern Media Thinking
It’s 2018 and marketing has changed forever.
People all over the world use their smartphones all the time. And many of the places they spend much of their time didn’t exist 10 years ago. GAFA is central to peoples’ media habits just about everywhere.
Money is (finally) following audience. The use of tech to facilitate advertising is going mainstream — with programmatic or automated ads already the vast majority of digital spend and growing rapidly in OOH and OTT TV
And despite a loud luddite chorus, big brands and small start ups know they can drive excellent business results through smart digital marketing, as the blending of data and creative improves the user experience.
But it could be so much better. We all know the problems; annoying formats, ads you see again and again, too much clutter. And supply chain issues with fraud, brand safety and transparency persist.
What is holding us back? In our opinion Media Thinking needs to evolve.
It’s the 50th anniversary of the birth of planning. Over that 50 years we have seen the balkanisation of disciplines and Agencies — from Advertising to Media and Creative. To DM and SP. Then Digital which broke into Performance, Search and Affiliates. And more recently Mobile, Programmatic, Content, Influencer etc.
Looking back to the birth of modern planning at JWT and BMP in London in the 1960s, media planning was fused with brand thinking. Stephen King asked Precisely what do we want who to do differently as a direct result of the advertising? And used a set of questions to shape strategy; Where are we? Why are we here? Where could we be? etc
Then Media Planners like Mike Yershon collaborated with the best creative talent to change how media worked. In the 90s the next evolution was driven by more Brits. Michaelides & Bednash and then the Naked crew taught us that everything is media and invented Comms Planning to change the industry again. But these businesses don’t exist today as the Big Media Agencies offered their own (watered down?) version for free.
Today, we face the most complex media landscape ever and peoples’ behaviours is changing in parallel to constantly evolving technology, Think of recent profound changes like the Selfie, Media Binging, Second Screening and Voice.
The list goes on but it seems media thinking is a lost art. Most Big Media Agencies revolve around their buying prowess and planning gets lip service but limited status; when you give something away for free it’s clear it’s not valued.
We believe Media Thinking now needs to be (re) elevated to a much higher status. Knowing how to get the most from GAFA requires the smartest thinking. Therefore we see a need to forensically understand the whole customer experience — from organic search and social through ads and the apps all the way to the checkout process. Enough of the Balkanisation — we now need polymaths.
Modern Media Thinking must focus on three things;
Real insight into consumers and the way they live their life today.
A strategic understanding of the clients business and its economic model
Deep domain knowledge of the platforms
From this we get Signals — real data on what people are actually doing — and these Signals are the raw material for Modern Media Thinking. It is digital body language that helps us really understand people.
Signals show us who are existing customers through first party data. We can also find who is searching for the brand and who is talking about the brand — positively and negatively. How long they watched the ads for. Who has looked at the category on Amazon and (using location data) who has visited the stores. Signals give us a wealth of insight.
The ways to think about customer experience are evolving too. The funnel is a useful metaphor but quite limiting. The loyalty loop popularised by McKinsey is better and we also now use the Value Cube that Seth Godin introduced. Thinking about turning Strangers into Friends is a great metaphor for considering how media and messages need to be optimised.
Signals enables us to understand exactly where people are in the buying process and this leads us to think that a new model may be useful.
Advertising still treats people as strangers and the CRM is based on the notion that people want a relationship with brands. We don’t believe that at all. But we do see that people are happy to enter a Dialogue with brands.
This Dialogue is based on;
Recognition — Who are we talking with? What do we know about them? Are they strangers or old friends?
Understand — What do Signals tell us about them? Are they ready to buy or still evaluating? Which of our ads have they already seen and how did they react?
Relevant message — Knowing what we know what do we want to say to them?
What do we Learn from their reaction to the message?
Fueled by Signals, Dialogue is a model that lets us treat people as individuals and drive media and creative choices informed by the learnings from the Dialogue. The ability to tailor creative according to data is a core enabler of Dialogue.
We believe this approach has the dual benefits of ;
Making the brand more important to the individual — through a higher share of attention — driving loyalty
Making the individual more important to the Brand — through a higher share of spend — driving profit
Dialogue informs every interaction and each phase of the customer experience. Each Dialogue improves our understanding and makes the next one more powerful
It is Modern Media Thinking designed for the Programmatic Age.
