On Friday last week I gave an hour long lecture to 3rd year management students at Southampton University on the subject of Digital Marketing and how it’s evolved from my own perspective, 14+ years into a career in the business.

After the event I was interviewed by Karen Woods, a freelance journalist working for the University, and she recorded this interview.

I waffle a bit, and I am really not used to being recorded so excuse it if I say some things that are a bit weird and fumbled

Generally I am happy with what I said though – it seems to make sense after 2 re-listens

Howard

-

I love the bloke at the end who comes in and says “Are you making a movie?”

Couldn’t have written it better!

Something I’ve discussed before here, but the connected TV concept being pioneered by Yahoo!, from their widget platform, working with the likes of Samsung and Sony, is starting to hit the mainstream.

Case in point – Sony’s new range of TVs have a user interface which will be very familiar to anyone with a PSP or PS3, and an ethernet plug right there in the back of the TV itself.

Connect them up, and using the XMB (as the interface is known) you can get content from Yahoo! right there on top of the TV image, or watch IPTV content from the likes of YouTube, CNN and so forth instead of anything being “broadcast”.

The name Sony like’s to call their people who work in this field (Convergineers) says it all.

Convergence isn’t something that’s “coming soon” any more.

It’s now.

Howard

–

Recently I keep coming up against a seeming growing obsession with proposing TV ads as legitimate content for digital communication. It burns me up.

I see it in retail stores, on tube media, online and more recently I’ve been exposed to lots of situations where in the process of proposing digital content people (non-digital mind) instantly default to “hey, we could use the TV ad on there”.

Why do people insist on seeing the moving images of TV as being suitable for any and all screens someone might be exposed to?

Tube screen? TV ad.

Instore plasma? TV ad.

Interactive kiosk. Use the TV ad.

Plasma screen. What about (hey you guessed it) TV ad.

But the same logic is invariably not applied to all other consumer touchpoints. Do we see a poster site and say, hey lets take stills of the TV ad and print that!

Or an advertorial and take the TV script. No we don’t and why?

Cause it’s not relevant message for that media at that stage of the consumer journey.

TV has an ever growing tenous role with the growth of digital, but if we do see it as relevant then only at a single  point (hey on TV!), and assuming that it’s universally relevant and pertinent content for an audience to be rolled out at all screens a brand owns is surely flawed?

Lets take, oh i don’t know a plasma at retail. TV won’t provided enhanced perceived value at that point of purchase. That push to buy.

Medium and moment should decide the message and content.

Screen does not = TV!

Paul

Someone I know recently moved into a new role split across two agencies.  Once of the agencies is below the line, the other well above the line and they are going to be working with both. 

What interested me in this move was that one of the big reasons why it was so interesting to them was that they wanted to get solid industry experience in an ATL environment, something this person had not had before, and they were very keen to take this up.

ATL is an interesting thing for me, as I’ve often chatted to people about how those in the TV side of the ATL world have not really been exposed to the benefits and features that we in the digital world have taken for granted for some time now – and yet this is going to change for them almost overnight at some time in the very near future.

A big thing for me, and something I’ve been talking about for a fair few years, certainly since 1999 (I distinctly remember a heated debate at an agency bash in Covent Garden when the digital team were speaking with some of the TV creatives and it almost got out of hand), is that when TV starts to get delivered over an IP network, TV people are going to be suddenly thrust into the world we now inhabit and will have a massive learning curve to grab hold of. 

I know of many large integrated agencies around London who are, at this very moment, cross training a lot of their staff in all aspects of marketing, digital and not digital, to make sure everyone knows and understands how to work together.

I don’t think any of us, back in the day, imagined that IPTV would mean anything like P2P and Joost, or the BBC iPlayer (NO MAC VERSION!!! ARGHHH!) but even so, the way TV advertising is going to change, and therefore the TV people change with it, is a massive leap forwards.  I know it’s not mainstream yet and we’re still glued to our Sky+ and Freeview boxes, but it can’t be too far off now.

I personally think TV is going to be a very exciting place to be in the next few years as those people grab hold of the space we inhabit.  I mean, let’s not beat around, TV still takes a whopping great percentage of the ad spend in most client’s budgets, and it’s still seen as a very effective medium by many a marketing director.  We should not ignore this, and the fact that they will soon be playing in the same space as us is something we all have to think seriously about.

This kind of leads me on to a point I also discussed with some people recently – the fact that in agencies we still have specialist people in relation to digital – Head of Digital, Director of Digital, Digital Strategist etc..  The list goes on.

How long do we see this happening?  Surely we’re all going to end up as just marketing experts in the long run?  We don’t split creative teams up into PRINT CREATIVE or TV CREATIVE etc., but for some reason we still specialise in digital. I know a lot of this has to do with the current level of skills and experience but this surely won’t always be the case.

I firmly believe that ten years from now the role of Director of Digital will cease to exist and that separate digital teams within integrated agencies will have disappeared.

“New media” isn’t new any more.  “Digital marketing” will become just plain old marketing.

Howard
–

Blogged with Flock

Tags: digital-marketing, digital marketing, digital, marketing, above-the-line, above the line, atl, tv, advertising, iptv, future

Kazaa and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have started a new venture entitled The Venice project.

Keeping relatively quiet about it so far, their web site states that they are "…working on a project that combines the best things about
television with the social power of the internet – a project that gives
viewers, advertisers and content owners more choice, control and
creativity than ever before."

Still in a limited beta mode (hey, it’s web2.0 – it’ll always be in beta right?) the system is apparently to be a downloadable application which will deliver near TV quality programming over the internet to you, in return for around 1 megabit per second in bandwidth.

More information about the new venture was offered out via an interview with Om Malik, where Friis added "We are building an ad-based system, and it is close to the television
model. We will do revenue share with the content providers. With our
system, people can be targeted with the right kind of ads. We are
respecting the copyrights."

So, as the collapse of boundaries between platforms continues we see that on one hand, the audience truly does to fragment more and more – one of the big concerns with digital that most marketers have at the moment – but with this service it looks like the Skype boys could strike it lucky.

There could well be two models for content distribution in the future – directly paid for content, be it over iTunes, satellite TV, cable or the Internet, and free-to-view content, paid for indirectly by advertising.  The choice will be down to the user – pay and get rid of the ads, or watch for free and put up with ads.

No matter how much I love the Internet and this industry in which we work, I also love my TV, and this post on techcrunch sums up a lot of my feelings about this new concept… "If Niklas and Janus have been successful in securing rights to network
shows, we’re about to be introduced to something which is very likely
to result in me cancelling my cable television subscription once and
for all."  What do the TV companies care if their stuff is delivered over the web or over a cable/dish?  it’s the same for them – all they care about is the ad cash!

We’ll be keeping our eyes on Venice for some time to come no doubt, but just a thought…

…perhaps this gives hope to those out there who are hanging on for dear life to the traditional, above-the-line 30-second tv or cinema clip, by giving them access to the advanced tools we on the digital side take for granted nowadays (tagging, targetting, 1-2-1 communications, etc.) whilst keeping, to a certain extent, their broadcast techniques in the frame for a while longer?

Howard

–

Read full story here

Is Google throwing a smoke screen? Because I think that "TV" does have plenty to fear.

"Mayer said Google had failed to foresee the huge popularity of
user-generated content – its original model for online video emphasised
"premium content" which viewers would pay a small fee to access. The
success of YouTube over the past year – rapidly eclipsing Google Video
in popularity – took many by surprise."

My prediction is that in the future, ALL content will be delivered "On
Demand", via TCP/IP, by whatever types of wires, or wireless connection goes into your house. TVs
will be a computer monitor, and a freeview box or cable box, will be a super sky+ also known as a computer.

Whether the company that owns those wires will also be the
deliverer of the content, remains to be seen… I hope not.

Jonathan

www.gotuit.com
"makes loading, buffering, and waiting to watch videos online a thing of the past.  Gotuit viewers enjoy seamless navigation between videos and an intuitive layout that gets them to the good stuff—instantly.  The Gotuit viewing experience is the closest thing available to watching television online.

At no cost to users, Gotuit.com features an extensive library of professional content covering Music, News, Sports and Entertainment.  Visitors to Gotuit can view programmed playlists, create their own playlists or share videos from leading content providers such as Universal Music, Reuters, Associated Press, AccuWeather, Planet X and more.  In addition, Gotuit offers Hollywood trailers, celebrity news, and a vast collection of short films within its Entertainment category.

“As we continue to witness the explosion of broadband video content, there is a fundamental shift underway regarding how consumers expect to watch and interact with video delivered through the Web,” said Will Richmond, president and founder of Broadband Directions. “Gotuit.com organizes and presents content in a manner that makes it easy for consumers to quickly find what they want.  In doing so, Gotuit has clearly raised the bar for broadband video experiences.”

Gotuit’s Patented Technology — A New Way to Search “Inside” Video
With Gotuit’s patented search/navigation technology, viewers can not only easily find the video they want to watch, but can also search for specific points inside a video.  Viewers can create a “personal highlight reel” containing segments from multiple video assets that are then combined together as a single video.  For example, an avid football fan can search inside an entire game to find only the plays in which their favorite player was involved. Gotuit allows viewers to get to the specific content they want more quickly, allowing viewers to spend more time actually watching video and less time searching for it."

Jonathan

Ofcom have produced a report that highlights how media fragmentation is affecting a generation who have grown up expecting to have the world at their fingertips through the Internet, and are increasingly finding that traditional media isn’t giving them what they or want.

The report has been commented upon by BBC News who have come to the conclusion that the so called "Networked Generation" is using online media more and more and leaving the old world behind.

"Sixteen to 24 year olds are spurning television, radio and newspapers in favour of online services"

Shock!

"The 2006 Ofcom report also found that increasingly households are turning to broadband and digital TV".

A startling piece of insight.  Who would have believed that people are switching to broadband and digital TV in this day and age?

In seriousness though, there are some interesting facts in the report.  Firstly, there are apparently 1.8 million people in the UK who are now using a VoIP service, such as Skype, to keep in touch.  I can see this myself, let alone 16-24 yr olds, as a lot of my friends, many of whom I would never class as being very web savvy, have switched over to Skype as recently as a few weeks ago to speak to each other, especially when long distance is involved and it is effectively free. (Admittedly the tipping point for this was a close friend in Japan installing Skype and a lot of others following to keep in touch – had this not occurred I don’t think they would have been so keen to find out about the service).

The second interesting thing is in regard to social networking sites.  Apparently a massive 70% of the 16 to 24 age group have used a social networking site such as MySpace or Bebo (not saying how many regularly use it of course – I guess that could be a lot lower), compared with just 40% of the rest of the country.  The report goes on to say that 20% of them have their own blog, which might be, I suppose, contained within their MySpace usage.  This is a huge number of people regularly using the online space.

Focusing on the topic news itself, Kay Withers, a representative from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) is quoted as saying:

"We want to find out what it means to turn away from newspapers and public service broadcasting, and to find out the types of news sources they are now favouring."

Which is an interesting thing to say. It assumes that the biggest impact the move into online media will have is in the news and current affairs area as opposed to anything else, such as entertainment or general communications.  The easy answer for someone like me would be to say that blogs and other forms of citizen journalism are drawing in the crowds as a result of increased trust due to the transparent nature of the new media but, in reality (and I have no data for this) I suspect that teenagers simply aren’t interested in the news.  I personally don’t know many of them who would gladly read the Guardian or switch onto News 24 to catch up with the latest on the Lebanon crisis.  Could it not be that these people are still too young, simply interested in having a good time, to be bothered with traditional media?  That will come later, when they have a mortgage to worry about etc. etc. (OK – sounding old now) and the biggest impact that they are having at the moment is in terms of light entertainment which is, for marketers of a more traditional TV led ilk, the interesting fact?

The IPPR go on:

"This could have a major impact on media regulation, public policy and on the political world too."

For this I offer one possible future (I am sure there are others) – there will be no regulation!  The whole point of "new media"/citizen journalism/blogging/web2.0/etc. is that it’s de-regulated or, at best, self-regulated. That’s the beauty of it. That’s why it’s so attractive in the first place, by bypassing the regulatory bodies, by placing the means of production and distribution into the hands of the consumer it frees the audience and the producer at the same time.  Public policy and the political World will have to adapt to the new generation, not the other way around (and that’s the way it should be after all!).

Of course I fully believe, and hope, that this trend in a move towards purely online (if not "digital" media, for it will be offline too before long if you consider offline to be "in your pocket") continues to grow at the pace it does, but I think the picture needs to be looked at in a wider context than simply saying kids don’t like old media in such an easy move.

If you consider Adam Curry’s 5/50 rule, which theorises that within 5 years 50% of the content will be generated by consumers, then the move over to those sources by the audience is a natural path for them to follow.

What the report does highlight very well is the increased fragmentation of the audience share.  The graph below goes to show this, and that’s probably the most interesting thing we can observe as marketers.

No single media is going to do the trick any more.  It’s a mixed bag out there, and only getting more complex and the trend is to move away from the platforms that have for so long been the bread and butter of the industry – TV and print. As TV, Radio, and eventually magazines and new papers, move over to purely digital platforms that allow for the same kind of interactive marketing as the platforms like the web and mobile currently provide we will be forced to adapt our thinking to take control (if possible) and advantage of the freedom/complexity that this fragmentation provides.

The graph has the same basic trend for all segments of the audience, the truth is, as always, that kids are doing it more quickly.

Howard
–