“New communication techniques force communication professionals to focus on the individual consumer, and to create a comfortable “trusted” environment in which the advertising message plays a limited role”
Every marketer executes an analysis off current competition on a regular basis. The central question being: what or who are my competitors?
In the case of lets say - Coca Cola - you could say that competition is PEPSI, FANTA and 7-UP. Some would argue that when the time is there to consume Coca Cola others may choose wine or coffee thus expanding the definition of competition. You could also state that competition is every fluid that passes any consumers throat, making even water competition. Not an easy task competing with water!
What this says is that there is a maximum to a product a consumer can handle in a fixed amount of time. This also applies to media. Consumers have only a fixed amount of time to spend on media and news gathering.
Mobile phones and the internet were introduced as new media in the early ’90ties. The main differences with “old media” are the fact that they are personal and interactive. This may seem obvious, but the impact of these differences is immense. People were able to connect to each other in a different fashion in the invisible virtual world.
Young and old
The virtual environment has one aspect to it that makes it very different to get used to. Research shows that people of the pre internet generation have less affinity with the digital world than people grown up with mobile phones and the internet. These differences are very persistent. My daughter teaches my mother how to send an SMS message en again and again ends up sending it for her.
This difference in behaviour has been reason for marketeers and publishers to target new initiatives at the younger generation first.
This even accentuated the difference between young and old. Despite the “Internet Winter” in 2002 a new revolution unrolls itself meanwhile, incorporating young and old. Since these differences are diminishing I will leave this aspect out .
Virtual (=not real?)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Look up virtual in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The term virtual is a concept applied in many fields with somewhat differing connotations, and also, differing denotations.
Colloquially, 'virtual' has a similar meaning to ' quasi-' or 'pseudo-' (prefixes which themselves have quite different meanings), meaning something that is almost something else, particularly when used in the adverbial form e.g., "He's virtually [almost] my boyfriend". The term recently has been defined philosophically as, that which is not real, but may display the full qualities of the real.
Unlike in the physical world no roadmaps exist for the fast growing digital world, so who can tell what’s in it? Structure portals have grown in abundance, structuring the information on the net. Later search engines emerged, actively and automatically structuring information (but with a commercial motivation). Personal search agents are already available but not still not widely used.
As with the brain, virtual networks establish themselves. When a connection – or relationship – is satisfactory, the relationship will be used more frequently in the future, becoming a dominant path. This mechanism is based on a principle known as positive feedback. This principle is common in education, training and marketing. It influences behaviour in a positive way.
Once a path is dominant it will remain so since people are habitual and basically very loyal.
Still, the invisibility of information in new media requires a different approach towards customer behaviour. Customers have to de directed to or presented with the desired information. Other media are necessary to achieve the desired results.
Multi tasking
Media savvy people are able to use multiple media at the same time. This is like reading a book while listening to the radio. Recent research in The Netherlands executed by “Spot” shows that 64% of the time people are watching TV exclusively, while during the other 36% they have other activities besides watching TV. They state that other media have lower percentages of exclusive attention.
TV 64%
Surfing the Net 45%
Reading a magazine 39%
Mobile telephone 33%
Reading a News Paper 32%
Listening to the radio 7%
“Spot” is an organization that tries to attract as much advertising money to TV stations, so their research may be biased. Nevertheless, TV is as entertaining wallpaper, always there, while other media have a higher access threshold.
One has to ask oneself if multitasking is really possible. We all know how hard it is to do two things well at the same time. However clever, the brain has limited senses.
Since attention for a medium can also be expressed in media value (- or advertising income -) a market analysis for example for magazines should extend itself to all other media types available. Of course one could argue that the newly introduced media types are only frequently used by the younger generation. That it’s weight in the analysis should be seen in relation to its use. One has to bear in mind that the penetration ratio of these new types of media is gaining force rapidly.
There is a historical aspect to this all. Our society has developed rapidly after the Second World War We had to work together as teams to build up our lives on the rumbles of war. Broadcast behaviour and media were useful ingredients to find back our common identity. It took some twenty years and a new generation to realize that individual values like freedom of choice were at least as important as common values. It took a revolution of flowers in the western world to close the difference between generations. Nowadays individuality is common sense. Even young adults deliberately develop their own style and value sets. They even publish it in their own digital social networks.
I’m not educated to analyse sociological developments but there seems to be a strange correlation between the type of information distribution and the current social context. The broadcast media of the 50’s and 60’s and the social environment at the time, only one goal: rebuild society. The networked media of today and the individual perception of the younger generation have a more individual angle.
Broadcast media are losing their role as a trusted friend to media that are able to create more complex relationships such as the internet and especially the mobile devices. Let us compare media on the level of screens and see what role they play in people’s lives.
Screens
This matrix below lists types of screens versus distance which results in a span of attention (media value).
The same exercise is valid for paper means of presentation.
Poster – leaflet – catalogue - news paper – magazine – ‘blog’.
The reader’s attention extends itself over a longer period of time towards the end of the chain. I intentionally added the blog type at the end of the chain because I believe there is no paper alternative replacing or out-smarting the current day magazine on short notice. Two reasons follow;
The paper magazine as it is today is at the end of its life cycle. Only price and distribution are discriminators. Old brands lead the market and new introductions fail in rapid succession, but magazines and new paper are here to stay they will have to find their place and synergy with other media.
Browse vs. read
The difference between browsing vs. reading must not be left unnoticed. There is a relationship between the quantity and depth of information that is transferred from medium to user and the medium used. It is not easy to read long articles on a computer screen or the internet. It is virtually impossible to browse and understand a scientific dissertation on a mobile phone screen.
Although my lists of screens and paper media are incomplete they draw a picture of a long historic development that will come to an end shortly. The noun ’media’ became regular in speech and journalism in the 1920’s. The etymology of the word media, where intermediate is meant, is off course much older.
Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source media
"newspapers, radio, TV, etc." 1927, perhaps abstracted from mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising), pl. of medium, on notion of "intermediate agency," a sense first found 1605.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
The claim of marketeers is that they sell products by drawing customer’s attention with the use of communication media. They have to influence the customer’s behaviour towards that specific end and will use the most effective way of communication.
They will invest in three main issues; First they’ll maximize the number of eyeballs or viewer ratings. Secondly they’ll try to maximize the span of attention (in actual minutes or in visit frequency). Thirdly they will send the appropriate message.
Types of marketing
The figure below relates types of marketing to the span of attention in the same way I related screens to the span of attention.
The introduction of new media on a historic scale show that until the beginning of the twentieth century media were only paper and mainly used for information exchange. The use of newspapers was reserved for the upper class. Marketing became evident when newspaper makers found themselves in a world full of competition and had to find new revenues. Although the word marketing is as old as the Middle Ages. The profession originates from the early 1920’s. Could there be a relationship between the use of the word media en the birth of a new profession?
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
mar·ket·ing /ˈmɑr kɪ tɪŋ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mahr-ki-ting] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.
the act of buying or selling in a market.
2.
the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
[Origin: 1555–65; market + -ing1 ]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
Now a days consumers are confronted with a wide range of information sources to choose from. The sources chosen are often habitual. Older people refer to newspapers while the younger generation relates to digital sources. The first mass newspapers emerged with the new printing techniques around 1900. Magazines followed shortly. Of course newspapers and magazines have been in existence long before that, but here I would like to apply the mass type of the product. (The first magazine was Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731.)
Introduction of new media has come to an end. Modern media can reach anyone, anytime and anywhere. What more can an info carrier achieve. From now on innovations will take place in the areas of context, media synergy and consumer participation. In other words; functionality – software – application?
Customers have to divide their attention between media. Their time is limited to an absolute maximum and they have a lot to choose from; News paper, Radio, Film, Book, Telephone, Television, Magazine, PC, Mobile Telephone, Internet, Personal Media Centre, PSP and so on…
This means that all these media have to compete for a share of attention or a share of mind. Compete with water so to speak. This also means that new competitors will come out of the wall they are never your regular competitors, because your competitors will likely follow your strategy..
Mega Consumer Trends
Marketing research defines six mega trends for the next two decades or so. Here they are;
o Back to the roots (time for your self)
o Clanning (participate, self confirmation)
o Being alive (consciousness, health, life)
o Cocooning (protection and comfort)
o Egonomics (consumers seeks recognition)
o Vigilante consumer (in search for value, guard quality, represent customers , environment)
These trends all show that the consumer is in the central position. They chose when and where to consume and under which circumstances.
According to trendwatching.com trends for 2007 are;
o Status lifestyles (show – off )
o Transparency Tyranny (bad producer behaviour will be punished)
o WEB + (consumer generated web environments web 2.0 etc may be up to 5.0)
o Trysumers (try before you buy)
o Global brain (join forces, social networking etc.)
These trends all show high consumer involvement. Share of mind is key in modern publishing and/or marketing. Publishers and marketeers need to innovate or they will lose their grip on consumer behaviour and thus on their own media value.
A whole new attention related economy will develop.
Summary
Means : Do follow technology trends and place them in the appropriate life cycle. Don’t fall for fashionable solutions but look at the true value of infrastructures. Web 2.0+ will be the driving force behind new introductions of network based applications, independently available of place, time and device.
Message : Marketing and communication initiatives should always aim at customer participation. Treat customers as equals. They are media sensitive and ask for proof. Make them belong. Don’t show off!!
Media : To generate enough eyeballs different media or communication strategies must be used to generate media synergy within one communication concept.
Every marketer executes an analysis off current competition on a regular basis. The central question being: what or who are my competitors?
In the case of lets say - Coca Cola - you could say that competition is PEPSI, FANTA and 7-UP. Some would argue that when the time is there to consume Coca Cola others may choose wine or coffee thus expanding the definition of competition. You could also state that competition is every fluid that passes any consumers throat, making even water competition. Not an easy task competing with water!
What this says is that there is a maximum to a product a consumer can handle in a fixed amount of time. This also applies to media. Consumers have only a fixed amount of time to spend on media and news gathering.
Mobile phones and the internet were introduced as new media in the early ’90ties. The main differences with “old media” are the fact that they are personal and interactive. This may seem obvious, but the impact of these differences is immense. People were able to connect to each other in a different fashion in the invisible virtual world.
Young and old
The virtual environment has one aspect to it that makes it very different to get used to. Research shows that people of the pre internet generation have less affinity with the digital world than people grown up with mobile phones and the internet. These differences are very persistent. My daughter teaches my mother how to send an SMS message en again and again ends up sending it for her.
This difference in behaviour has been reason for marketeers and publishers to target new initiatives at the younger generation first.
This even accentuated the difference between young and old. Despite the “Internet Winter” in 2002 a new revolution unrolls itself meanwhile, incorporating young and old. Since these differences are diminishing I will leave this aspect out .
Virtual (=not real?)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Look up virtual in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The term virtual is a concept applied in many fields with somewhat differing connotations, and also, differing denotations.
Colloquially, 'virtual' has a similar meaning to ' quasi-' or 'pseudo-' (prefixes which themselves have quite different meanings), meaning something that is almost something else, particularly when used in the adverbial form e.g., "He's virtually [almost] my boyfriend". The term recently has been defined philosophically as, that which is not real, but may display the full qualities of the real.
Unlike in the physical world no roadmaps exist for the fast growing digital world, so who can tell what’s in it? Structure portals have grown in abundance, structuring the information on the net. Later search engines emerged, actively and automatically structuring information (but with a commercial motivation). Personal search agents are already available but not still not widely used.
As with the brain, virtual networks establish themselves. When a connection – or relationship – is satisfactory, the relationship will be used more frequently in the future, becoming a dominant path. This mechanism is based on a principle known as positive feedback. This principle is common in education, training and marketing. It influences behaviour in a positive way.
Once a path is dominant it will remain so since people are habitual and basically very loyal.
Still, the invisibility of information in new media requires a different approach towards customer behaviour. Customers have to de directed to or presented with the desired information. Other media are necessary to achieve the desired results.
Multi tasking
Media savvy people are able to use multiple media at the same time. This is like reading a book while listening to the radio. Recent research in The Netherlands executed by “Spot” shows that 64% of the time people are watching TV exclusively, while during the other 36% they have other activities besides watching TV. They state that other media have lower percentages of exclusive attention.
TV 64%
Surfing the Net 45%
Reading a magazine 39%
Mobile telephone 33%
Reading a News Paper 32%
Listening to the radio 7%
“Spot” is an organization that tries to attract as much advertising money to TV stations, so their research may be biased. Nevertheless, TV is as entertaining wallpaper, always there, while other media have a higher access threshold.
One has to ask oneself if multitasking is really possible. We all know how hard it is to do two things well at the same time. However clever, the brain has limited senses.
Since attention for a medium can also be expressed in media value (- or advertising income -) a market analysis for example for magazines should extend itself to all other media types available. Of course one could argue that the newly introduced media types are only frequently used by the younger generation. That it’s weight in the analysis should be seen in relation to its use. One has to bear in mind that the penetration ratio of these new types of media is gaining force rapidly.
There is a historical aspect to this all. Our society has developed rapidly after the Second World War We had to work together as teams to build up our lives on the rumbles of war. Broadcast behaviour and media were useful ingredients to find back our common identity. It took some twenty years and a new generation to realize that individual values like freedom of choice were at least as important as common values. It took a revolution of flowers in the western world to close the difference between generations. Nowadays individuality is common sense. Even young adults deliberately develop their own style and value sets. They even publish it in their own digital social networks.
I’m not educated to analyse sociological developments but there seems to be a strange correlation between the type of information distribution and the current social context. The broadcast media of the 50’s and 60’s and the social environment at the time, only one goal: rebuild society. The networked media of today and the individual perception of the younger generation have a more individual angle.
Broadcast media are losing their role as a trusted friend to media that are able to create more complex relationships such as the internet and especially the mobile devices. Let us compare media on the level of screens and see what role they play in people’s lives.
Screens
This matrix below lists types of screens versus distance which results in a span of attention (media value).
The same exercise is valid for paper means of presentation.
Poster – leaflet – catalogue - news paper – magazine – ‘blog’.
The reader’s attention extends itself over a longer period of time towards the end of the chain. I intentionally added the blog type at the end of the chain because I believe there is no paper alternative replacing or out-smarting the current day magazine on short notice. Two reasons follow;
The paper magazine as it is today is at the end of its life cycle. Only price and distribution are discriminators. Old brands lead the market and new introductions fail in rapid succession, but magazines and new paper are here to stay they will have to find their place and synergy with other media.
Browse vs. read
The difference between browsing vs. reading must not be left unnoticed. There is a relationship between the quantity and depth of information that is transferred from medium to user and the medium used. It is not easy to read long articles on a computer screen or the internet. It is virtually impossible to browse and understand a scientific dissertation on a mobile phone screen.
Although my lists of screens and paper media are incomplete they draw a picture of a long historic development that will come to an end shortly. The noun ’media’ became regular in speech and journalism in the 1920’s. The etymology of the word media, where intermediate is meant, is off course much older.
Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source media
"newspapers, radio, TV, etc." 1927, perhaps abstracted from mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising), pl. of medium, on notion of "intermediate agency," a sense first found 1605.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
The claim of marketeers is that they sell products by drawing customer’s attention with the use of communication media. They have to influence the customer’s behaviour towards that specific end and will use the most effective way of communication.
They will invest in three main issues; First they’ll maximize the number of eyeballs or viewer ratings. Secondly they’ll try to maximize the span of attention (in actual minutes or in visit frequency). Thirdly they will send the appropriate message.
Types of marketing
The figure below relates types of marketing to the span of attention in the same way I related screens to the span of attention.
The introduction of new media on a historic scale show that until the beginning of the twentieth century media were only paper and mainly used for information exchange. The use of newspapers was reserved for the upper class. Marketing became evident when newspaper makers found themselves in a world full of competition and had to find new revenues. Although the word marketing is as old as the Middle Ages. The profession originates from the early 1920’s. Could there be a relationship between the use of the word media en the birth of a new profession?
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source
mar·ket·ing /ˈmɑr kɪ tɪŋ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mahr-ki-ting] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.
the act of buying or selling in a market.
2.
the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
[Origin: 1555–65; market + -ing1 ]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006
Now a days consumers are confronted with a wide range of information sources to choose from. The sources chosen are often habitual. Older people refer to newspapers while the younger generation relates to digital sources. The first mass newspapers emerged with the new printing techniques around 1900. Magazines followed shortly. Of course newspapers and magazines have been in existence long before that, but here I would like to apply the mass type of the product. (The first magazine was Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731.)
Introduction of new media has come to an end. Modern media can reach anyone, anytime and anywhere. What more can an info carrier achieve. From now on innovations will take place in the areas of context, media synergy and consumer participation. In other words; functionality – software – application?
Customers have to divide their attention between media. Their time is limited to an absolute maximum and they have a lot to choose from; News paper, Radio, Film, Book, Telephone, Television, Magazine, PC, Mobile Telephone, Internet, Personal Media Centre, PSP and so on…
This means that all these media have to compete for a share of attention or a share of mind. Compete with water so to speak. This also means that new competitors will come out of the wall they are never your regular competitors, because your competitors will likely follow your strategy..
Mega Consumer Trends
Marketing research defines six mega trends for the next two decades or so. Here they are;
o Back to the roots (time for your self)
o Clanning (participate, self confirmation)
o Being alive (consciousness, health, life)
o Cocooning (protection and comfort)
o Egonomics (consumers seeks recognition)
o Vigilante consumer (in search for value, guard quality, represent customers , environment)
These trends all show that the consumer is in the central position. They chose when and where to consume and under which circumstances.
According to trendwatching.com trends for 2007 are;
o Status lifestyles (show – off )
o Transparency Tyranny (bad producer behaviour will be punished)
o WEB + (consumer generated web environments web 2.0 etc may be up to 5.0)
o Trysumers (try before you buy)
o Global brain (join forces, social networking etc.)
These trends all show high consumer involvement. Share of mind is key in modern publishing and/or marketing. Publishers and marketeers need to innovate or they will lose their grip on consumer behaviour and thus on their own media value.
A whole new attention related economy will develop.
Summary
Means : Do follow technology trends and place them in the appropriate life cycle. Don’t fall for fashionable solutions but look at the true value of infrastructures. Web 2.0+ will be the driving force behind new introductions of network based applications, independently available of place, time and device.
Message : Marketing and communication initiatives should always aim at customer participation. Treat customers as equals. They are media sensitive and ask for proof. Make them belong. Don’t show off!!
Media : To generate enough eyeballs different media or communication strategies must be used to generate media synergy within one communication concept.
