Effects of New Media in Current Trends
From Siki
Effects of New Media on traditional Advertising media
The 30 second commercial is becoming of decreasing value in the age of TiVos and VCRs. Madison Avenue (the advertising Industry) is being forced to rethink its interface with the consuming public. The industry is moving towards transforming brands and blurring the line between entertainment content and brand messages. The modern ideal consumer is active, emotionally engaged, and socially networked. Watching the advert or consuming the product is no longer enough, the company must now invite the audience inside the brand community. The new media culture has seen a breakdown in viewer loyalty. There has been a proliferation of media options- a move from three major networks to a cable environment with hundreds of more specialized channels and the introduction of alternative forms of home entertainment, including the internet, DVD and computer and video games. The amount of time people spent consuming the media each day grew initially as the range of media options grew, but this could only go so far. The average consumer chooses to watch 10-15 different media outlets. Broadcast programming demands a higher degree of loyalty compared with cable programming, but are now attracting a smaller slice of the pie as audience fragmentation continues. Advertisers are growing anxious about whether network programming can reach audiences, so they are now looking to diversifying their advertising budgets and extending their brands across multiple distribution outlets that they hope will allow them to target a diverse selection of niche markets. “Monolithic blocks of eyeballs are gone. In their place is a perpetually shifting mosaic of audience mirco-segments that forces marketers to play an endless game of hide-and-seek”, says a researcher from Forrester Research.
Next generation technologies such as DVR’s are enabling more and more consumers to skip commercials. Current users of DVR’s skip through commercials 59% of the time. As advertisers lose the ability to invade the home, and consumer’s minds, they are forced to wait for an invitation. They must now learn what kinds of advertising content customers will actually be willing to seek out and receive. Network executives must search for a solution, in the early 2000's product placement became the most popular alternative:
Mark Burnett the executive producer of Survivor and The Apprentice a pioneer in Product Placement advertising, introduced the cutting edge of experiments in brand integration. After finding networks highly resistant to his initial Survivor proposal, the producer agreed to help offset the anticipated costs of the production by pre-selling sponsorship, convincing companies such as Reebok to pay $4 million apiece for product placements during the series. His second series The Restaurant was fully funded by product placements from Mitsubishi, American Express, and Coors Brewing Company. With the Apprentice, Burnett charged up to $25 million per company for a significant product placement, and in the process the show became a test site for a range of different approaches of linking brands with series content.
Advertisers are now (in 2007)aware of how successful the internet is as a means of reaching specific target audiences and niche markets, and then being able to capitalize on them. There has been an erosion of mass markets, and an empowerment of consumers with an unrivaled ability to edit and avoid advertising. Traditionally audiences were passive consumers of advertising, but as New Media takes over consumers have more control and there is a consumer trend towards mass customization and personalization. There has been a shift away from broadcast TV as the anchor medium and towards experience based, access driven marketing as the ideal means of reaching the emerging generation of consumers. Coke.com for example, furthers aligns the soft drink company with peoples enjoyment of popular music, allowing for a range of different participatory and interactive options. Members can pay for downloads of popular songs or redeem coupons that allow them to download music for free. Members can also make their own music mixes, share them with others and receive ratings from other site visitors. Casual site visitors can participate in quizzes, games, and contests. All these things allow for a deeper sense of belonging into the world of Coca Cola. Coke music.com has become the third most popular Web site among teens, registering 6 million users who spend an average of forty minutes per visit. These users are building a sense of community through the coke Website and its interactive marketing.
Blurring the line between advertising and entertainment
With the breakdown in viewer loyalty through traditional forms of media, advertisers have been forced to rethink their interface with the consuming public. The industry is moving towards transforming brands and blurring the line between entertainment content and brand messages. The modern ideal consumer is active, emotionally engaged, and socially networked.
Advertisers are conducting advertisements in obsure locations where consumers are not expecting advertising, and then ensuring that the ads are high enough content that the customer is interested instead of feeling intruded upon, and therefore actually wants to witness the advertising. Advertisers attempt to reach their target audiences in ways that consumers do not even realise they are being advertised to, and make it appear more like entertainment. Some examples of this are giant video billboards, plasma screens at supermarkets, chemists, shopping centre passageways that advertise to you as you walk past, giving all first class passengers on a plane a toy mercedes c class with their meal, the massive promotion for Starburst’s golden key association with the Big Brother program and small quirky experiential campaigns like IKEA’s refurbishment of bus and tram stops into IKEA living room displays. We have even seen hand dryers that advertise in public toilets. They appear to be a regular hand drier until a person goes to use it and a TV screen flickers on and plays an advettisement for the duration that the hand drier is being used.
Another bizarre and innovative advertising vehicle is the "Talking Urinal". Taking "targeted advertising" to a new extreme, the American Country Music Television used a talking urinal drain cover to advertise its "CMT Greatest Outlaws: The Dirty Dozen." The way it works is that when a guy steps up to the urinal, he'll hear a sexy woman's voice cooing, "Don't miss 'Outlaws' on CMT. You seem to miss everything else!" The motion-activated device, called a "Wizmark," lasts for more than 10,000 flushes and features flashing lights, alternating pictures and a 10-second voice recording. This is one way to grab a persons undivided attention and create a very captivated audience.
As with all advertising, different products suit different mediums, urinal advertising may not be considered appropriate for all brands and products but as Wizmark President Richard Deutsch, who recently patented the device said "We think urinal ads have the potential to be great for public service announcements for drinking and driving or safe sex,". "Beginning with early attempts at writing one's name in the snow, there has already been an element of recreation associated with urination for men." says Richard Deutsch.
Later versions of the Wizmark in public toilets allowed the urinal to be turned into a veritable shooting gallery, giving points to guys when they hit specified targets. During the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany, Soccer fever couldn't be escaped anywhere. Miniature soccer goals were placed on green urinal deodorizer blocks in several pubs urinals. Moth balls were placed in front of the miniature soccer goals. The sign above the urinal says:
"Soccer is good everywhere, but it is much better on ESPN channels". The creator of this quirky game of urinal soccer comes from Duda Propaganda, Sao Paulo, from Brazil.
The current trend in advertising seems to be trying to find obscure sites to place advertising and make it novel and entertaining so that consumers are amused. New media has forced a more intense focus on making sure relevant information is placed in the right space for the right people to see it, whether that is through the use of old or new technology. User choice has prompted movements towards better strategy and content.
Advertising Trends in 2007
As our media culture converges, our advertising industry is reshaping also. We have seen a huge shift from the traditional forms of advertising (TV, print and radio) to internet advertising: Web banner ads, Websites and Viral advertising. TV advertising is an extremely effective mass media form and will continue to be for a foreseeable future but internet advertising is becomming increasingly popular to advertisers. With the advent of home video and pay TV the predominance of mass broadcast television is under threat both as an advertising medium and as a form of social communication. In Australia, even before the introduction of pay TV, broadcast television audiences had begun to decline due to the high penetration of home video. (Cunningham pg 139) In June 1997 pay TV begun accepting advertising. The amount of competition which this will represent ultimately depends on the rate of take up on pay TV. It si expected at the moment by advertisers that it will tun out to be a cost effective medium for reaching “niche” markets.
The Current dimensions of the television advertising industry: Television Advertising, both free-to-air and pay TV is about one quarter of mass media advertising by expenditure and is the only medium that achieves close to universal reach. Pay TV advertising is growing fast in Australia. However at the moment pay TV penetration is much higher in the U.S.A (where it reaches 65% of households) than in other Western countries (where it reaches 20-30%). In December 2006 Television looked as if it were about to experience its first ever sustained period of market share loss at the global level. However statistics have improved since then now forecasting that global ad expenditure be only 0.2% lower in 2009 than 2005. The measurability of the internet as a media makes it easier for advertisers to experience innovative e-marketing tactics that will prove a better Cost of Acquisition than other media. However, in most developed countries, internet marketing and advertising spending is around 5% only, while TV, radio, and the print are more.
Newer forms of advertising are: ~Cinema advertising (commercials preceeding movies) ~Internet advertising consisting of Web banner ads, Websites and Viral advertising (via email). Internet advertising is at present small but substantial 1.9% of mass media expenditure. It has had huge recent growth up to 2002 but has had 9 % annual growth at present. 2007 Press release from Zenith Optimedia states that the internet will grow six times faster than traditional media (television, print, radio) between 2006-2009 and increase its share of the ad market from 5.8%- 8.7%.
The Forseeable future:
Apart from the internet, only Cinema and Outdoor advertising are expected to grow faster than the market. Cinema advertising is growing fast, while outdoor advertising is increasing as more money is invested in better displays and research.
These facts show that advertisers are eyeing the internet and have decided to invest more in their online products than the traditional media form of print. Advertising expenditure is still growing in both traditional and new media, except newspaper expenditure is currently stagnant as readers and advertisers migrate to the internet. The Zenith Optimedia report showed that the share of total adspend on newspaper advertising is 29.8%, 29.1%, 28.3%, 27.6% and 27% from the year 2005- 2009 consecutively.
The introduction of digital video recorders (DVR) and personal video recorders (PVR) that allow people to record television programs onto a hard disk, essentially allow people to skip TV advertisements. This has lead to the speculation that TV advertisements could be abolished and replaced with advertising within the shows themselves. An example of a TV show with highly saturated product placement is “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” where the characters advertise products by using them during their make-over processes.
Another newer form of TV advertising which is being done more and more is a Banner or Logo Bug where the ad overlays the bottom of the TV screen, blocking out some of the picture. These are often used for advertising TV shows on the same channel, for example while the credits roll at the end of one show, a banner ad for another show takes up to 25% of the screen attracting attention.
For the foreseeable future, an additional 2.0 to 2.5 per cent of all Australian households are likely to continue to sign up for a subscription television service each year and consequently pay television is likely to become an even bigger competitor to the free-to-air broadcasters for viewer time and television advertising expenditure.
“Former Harvard Business Review author Snider wrote that Advertising as we know it will become technologically obsolete. It will never completely disappear, but it will be of decreasing importance in the way that consumers get information about products.” Think about the early days of media consumption and what advertisements contained, it was basically an image of a product coupled with text or dialogue about how fantastic the product was and what it did and how it could be used. Today on the other hand advertising is much more subtle and often clever about finding its way into the users mind. Instead of explaining what the product does exactly, the advertisement aims to create curiosity or memory retention and brand recognition. so I suppose that Snider’s comment is true because instead of advertising informing people, it prompts them to go find out more about it through other sources such as the internet or discussion between other people or visiting a store.
“Future consumers, Snider concurred, would not have to sort our conflicting assertions made by manufacturers and merchants, all claiming their products are the best, but will rely on independent sources.”
This quote confirms the idea that consumers are having to source out more information about a product in other places than just the advertisement. These days advertisements acts as a “teaser” that compells people to act on their curiosity. These things include company reputations, personal recommendations and e-mail conversations (electronic rumours or an amplified word-of-mouth), and less on advertising.
“US marketing savant Regis McKenna agreed, also basing his conclusions on an analysis of the computer industry (especially Apple and Dell), that advertising was about to whither into insignificance as technology dictates that companies must turn to constant innovation, intense attention to consumer wishes and full-spectrum marketing to build an enduring relationship with customers.”
Case Study: Heinekin Secret Final Soccer Campaign
The Heinekin Secret Final Advertising campaign is an interactive advertising campaign for Heinekin and their involvement with UEFA Champions League sponsorship. Each visitor to the website is instructed to launch themselves from a human cannon (Heinekin branded) to any destination in the world, in which the chosen secret location is where they have the chance to win a trip to and watch the champions league.
This interactive advertisement creates an personalized perspective for the viewer, as they are given step by step instructions to choose the country of origin, where they would wish to land and which secret location they would like to visit before they enter details about their name, gender and email address. After this they are even given the opportunity to upload a photo of themselves (or choose one the web site offers) which will appear on the person being shot from the cannon, creating a one on one feel between the ad and the viewer.
The replica of the viewer is then shot out of the cannon across the world to their destination in a brief moving animated cartoon, they land on a couch and immediately friends from all over the world join them there to watch the soccer final accompanied by plenty of Heinekin beer to set a fun and exciting atmosphere. On the right hand side of the screen the viewer can easily send this video to their friends by entering their details, watch the launch again or browse the rest of the sight.
This is an example of one of the popular and new fads in the advertising industry currently. They have proven to be quite successful because they are interactive, funny, exciting and novel. They also require the viewer to enter details such as their email address before they can view the whole ad, meaning that they can add the viewer to a database to send more advertising to. More often than not viewers are willing to give out this information so that they can participate in the fun, and at the time giving it out seems quite insignificant.
Case Study: I-Vision
The current trend of the advertising is looking for new places to advertise where consumers cannot help but be confronted with. In this contemporary society people seem to have less time. They are constantly in motion and have little time to tolerate traditional forms of advertising (TV, radio, print). How PR firms portray themselves via the internet. I-vision Pharmacy was created in 2004 and specialises in the management and implementation of Pharmacy based screen media networks. They work to maximise pharmacy sales by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of target audience communication. I-vision works with Screen Media, a new current trend in advertising that was developed in order to reach individuals who carryout extremely busy lifestyles. As a result of changing consumer habits, the advancement in new media technologies, advertising options are also changing. Digital in-store advertising (screen media) and specific internet based strategies, are two examples, as they both facilitate a more effective audience connection. Digital or Screen Media is effective as it is a high quality and visually appealing method of providing text, audio and visual communication with large volumes of consumers. They operate similar to point of purchase displays as they are in store but are also interactive. This technique is successful as it targets consumers while they are in the store- which is where they make 7 out of every 10 buying decisions. Another advantage of this Screen media is being able to communicate personalised messages and promotions through the ads, andthey also provide an improved, more entertaining shopping experience for customers.
Screen media is essentially hight tech digital signage within stores. The moving images is effective on consumers because it is relatively new thing that is novel. Consumers tend to pay more attention as they appear less like advertisments and more like TV which make the messages more compelling.
Consumers have become exhaused with the constant bombardment of Tv, radio, magazine and outdoor advertisments. These experienced consumers couldn’t care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them so advertisers need to think of new ways to ignite conversations between corporations and consumers. Try-verse is a new way of getting consumers to become familiar with a product by getting them to actually try them out. Its kind of like a new type of product placement in real life that allows consumers to make up their own mind about the brand through experiencing the product rather than simply being told through the brands messages.
Advertising Blogs
In the current advertising and marketing industry, it is understood by many the importance and power that the internet offers for promotion, branding and low cost real-time connectivity. So of course many professionals seek to enhance their reputation and credibility by setting up blogs offering advice and insights on their craft. Web blogs are the new age way of generating word of mouth marketing and successfully increasing brand name and image cheaply. Traditional means of advertising, such as TV, radio and print are expensive and put a huge dent in a company’s budget, internet advertising (which includes web blogs) offer a way to circumvent these expenses. The blogosphere is rich with marketing resources for both small and large businesses. Below are a list of websites where marketing blogs can be found…
Transmedia Storytelling
“Transmedia storytelling” refers to a new aethetic that has emerged in response to media convergence, that places new demands on consumers and depends on active participation of knowledge communities. Consumers are now chasing down the bits of stories across different media channels, comparing notes with one another via online discussion groups and collaborating to come away with a richer entertainment experience.
Expression
Expression is the term used to describe the level of activity or response from consumers to advertisements and situates consumption within a larger social and cultural context. Consumers not only watch media, but also share media with one another. This might be through wearing a t-shirt that expresses something about a product, posting a message on a discussion list recommending a prodct to a friend, or creating a parody of the commercial that circulates on the internet. Expression is seen as an investment in the brand and not simply an exposure to it.
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