Manage-Wise

The future starts here

This book is titled Always On because there is no longer any downtime in advertising, media, or marketing. The pace is so relentless that the expression 24/7 does not do it justice. Think more in terms of 60/60/24/7. Every second, connection is being made with a customer somewhere. So marketers, media companies, and advertising agencies must be always on.

This new environment has had a powerful impact on consumers, too. “(Consumers) live in an always—on world. They are connected or know they always can be connected to media,” says General Electric CMO Beth Comstock. “They are engaged, in control, and eager to interact, not only with each other but also with their media—and to share that experience.(They) don’t just talk at the water cooler. They e-mail clips, create mash-ups, and build buzz in ways that marketers dream about.”

And, as the boundaries blur between advertising, information, and entertainment, consumers have become far more discerning about their media consumption. They know when marketers are trying to connect with them. And they decide whether advertising is worthy of their engagement.

In this new environment, marketers cannot win by wielding the implements of interruption that held sway over the captive consumers of yesteryear. Instead, they must create advertising that consumers will actually search out and find valuable—messages that improve life, make things easier, or entertain; messages that help consumers make decisions, connect with friends, and, most important, take action.

Creating advertising that powerful requires a carefully orchestrated mix of mathematics and creative craft. It is in some ways like playing baseball, where analytics (in the form of player knowledge and outcome probabilities) and broader insight into the game situation combine with personal brilliance (in the form of intuition and talent) to create base hits. And like winning baseball, successful marketing is all about increasing the percentage of hits and reducing the number of errors.

Future approaches

Now, as the future of advertising and marketing approaches, media platforms are abundant, advertising is ubiquitous, and technological innovation is constant. This has created a dynamic of discontinuity that can be navigated only with deep insights into consumer needs, interests, and behaviors.

For decades, these insights were limited by relatively basic analytics that could do little more than estimate the number of households tuned in to a TV program or the number of readers who flipped through a magazine. Today, with digital media feeding back insights to marketers as actively as they deliver information and entertainment to consumers, it is becoming possible to show an advertisement only to men who live in Los Angeles, who are between 18 and 34 years old, and who enjoy snowboarding and other kinds of outdoor activities. With this kind of knowledge, marketers (and their agencies) can move from a broader-based monologue to a more focused dialogue, tailoring their message to specific consumers, precisely selecting those media that connect best with their target segments and more effectively influence their behavior. But this can be achieved only if the marketer is always on: paying attention, listening, and learning.

This shift to dialogue enhances not only the creation of marketing messages and the precise selection of the media platform best suited to delivering them but also the continuing refinement of the products and services being discussed. The two-way relationship with the consumer becomes part of a perpetual brand-building machine, and it ultimately can enable the marketer to move from insight to foresight.

Marketers, media companies, and advertising agencies are already in the process of adjusting to this more consumer-focused world. Many are developing new models that are aimed at creating relevance, accountability, and interactivity. Many are adjusting their media mix to focus on two-way platforms. But as always, the mandate for change has been driven home more aggressively at some companies than at others. At some companies, the strategies and actions are even beginning to coalesce into road maps for success in this new environment. These select few are already living in the future of advertising and marketing today.

Marketer—heal thyself

At Johnson & Johnson, the eighth-largest U.S. advertiser, the future of advertising and marketing arrived in 2005, when the timing was right to break with the status quo and create a new model more in tune with an always-on world.

The catalyst at J&J was the departure of an esteemed senior marketing executive after 38 years of service. The company used the changing of the guard to recruit a new team of marketers drawn from media companies and advertising agencies, players purposely not grown from within or imported from other marketers. The new team brought new skill sets and marketing mores to J&J. It shocked marketers across the country, as well as media companies and agencies, by pulling some $400 million out of the upfront buying season for broadcast TV. Henceforth, the act declared. J&J’s business cycle and needs—not inventory availability on prime-time television shows—would drive the company’s media-buying decisions. After all, the team reasoned, no one really knew 5 to 11 months in advance what J&J’s marketing needs would be. So why commit to a broadcast schedule without sufficient confidence, based on consumer insight, that it was the right marketing solution to drive the business?

Content deposed

When J&J pulled out of the broadcast networks’ upfront market, David Vinjamuri, adjunct professor of marketing at NYU and president of ThirdWay Brand Trainers, saw it as a sea change in the relation-ship between programming and advertising.

He observed Johnson & Johnson’s withdrawal…marks a decisive and permanent shift in the balance of power between content providers and advertisers that mirrors the power shift also taking place between consumers and advertisers, and is no less significant.

Excerpt from 'Always On' by Christopher Vollmer & Geoffrey Precourt. Reproduced with permission © 2008, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. Price: Rs 375. Vishwanath_Ghanekar@mcgraw-hill.com