Atomic Direct, LTD

The “radicals” who envision an internet take-over of the entire advertising world have been telling us for years that TV was dying. But not only won’t it die — it just keeps getting better.

The radicals loved the idea of TiVo killing off all TV advertising. So we heard about it – endlessly. As a result, advertising agencies exerted tremendous angst re-structuring their lives without TV. And then, after more than a decade, it turns out TiVo has made TV advertising even more effective. (Link here.)

Now, news today in this MediaPost article (link here). Here’s a few high points…

Traditional TV ad spending has increased every year since 2009 and is projected to increase through 2013 (the last year projected).

TV’s shift is an outstanding increase for Cable (12%) and a small, but significant, decrease for broadcast (2%)

TV’s alter ego (online video advertising) will get 2 out of ever 5 dollars of local online ad spend – or somethint like that.

I’ll agree with anyone who wants to challenge me on the logic of “if advertisers are putting their money there it must be effective”. We need always be cautious of putting too much into these spending numbers. The last 10 years have been filled with advertising lemmings following other marketers into massive spending online just because it was the thing to do. (And, yes, online ads can be exactly the right choice in certain situations.)

But I think these TV numbers are a bit different because (a) TV is well established and therefore pretty well understood and (b) those of us in the TV business know that only TV can drive massive change quickly when you need communication.

So follow Apple’s lead. (And now Amazon’s.) When it’s right for you, TV builds your business like no other medium.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

The “radicals” who envision an internet take-over of the entire advertising world have been telling us for years that TV was dying. But not only won’t it die — it just keeps getting better.

The radicals loved the idea of TiVo killing off all TV advertising. So we heard about it for years. Advertisers exerted tremendous angst re-structuring their lives without TV. And then, after more than a decade, it turns out TiVo has made TV advertising even more effective. (Link here.)

And now, new news today in this MediaPost article (link here). Here’s a few high points…

Traditional TV ad spending has increased every year since 2009 and is projected to increase through 2013 (the last year projected).

Spending on Cable advertising is up a full 12% while broadcast has declined by a bit.

TV’s alter ego (online video advertising) will get 2 out of ever 5 dollars of local online ad spend – or somethint like that.

TV’s shift is an outstanding increase for Cable (12%) and a small, but significant, decrease for broadcast (2%)

I’ll agree with anyone who wants to challenge me on the logic of “if advertisers are putting their money there it must be effective”. We need always be cautious of putting too much into these spending numbers. The last 10 years have been filled with advertising lemmings following other marketers into massive spending online just because it was the thing to do. (And, yes, online ads can be exactly the right choice in certain situations.)

But I think these TV numbers are a bit different because (a) TV is well established and therefore pretty well understood and (b) those of us in the TV business know that only TV can drive massive change quickly when you need communication.

So follow Apple’s lead. (And now Amazon’s.) When it’s right for you, TV builds your business like no other medium.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Just saw a headline telling me there’s this great study showing change in TV viewing habits! Wow. They did a great job alerting the media! (Here’s the article about the study.)

We need to be more skeptical about articles reporting research – especially about media change. Let’s start with whether the company sponsoring the research has skin in the game.

In this case – not just skin. The study is funded by “blip.tv” who offers “The Best in Original Web Programming”. These guys are ALL about increasing consumer viewing of programming that’s developed solely for the web. And if they reported anything other than what they reported, we’d all be shocked. Not a good start.

And, let’s remember the fundamental humanity here. Their CEO’s job (and all the employee’s as well) depend on finding the consumer behavior the study reports. I can’t imagine getting any more VC money unless the study reached these conclusions. And the research vendor might not get more research if the study results are unsatisfactory.

The study may be completely accurate. But we who read the study need to remember there’s big stakes for them in finding exactly what they found.

Maybe that explains the more minor points that are self-serving. Check this one out:

The research showed that 43% of audiences had a positive reaction to advertising in front of original web series content. However, when asked the same question about advertisements in front of television content streamed online, users were less receptive, with only 30% reacting positively.

Is this true? I doubt it. It’s a very strange question asked entirely out of context. We know from a half century of TV research that something like this is extraordinarily hard to judge and these answers are probably wrong.

What about the blip.tv headline conclusion? No way to know if they’re right or wrong. My guess is that they wisely are shifting discussion from “cutting the cable” to “trimming back the cable”. And, they’re probably accurate with the times people watch blip.tv because those are just web stats.

Did they find this new behavior? I doubt if the study can be used to reliably judge whether they did or didn’t.

And as a TV guy, I’ll offer a different theory for the watching times. People probably watch online programming earlier because the stuff on traditional TV is better (for the vast majority) but doesn’t air until primetime.

We’ll never know whether or not we’re being played so their VC’s can make a load of money in a future company sale or IPO.

Here’s some specific skepticisms I encourage when reading ANY research article… These skepticisms apply to all research. But are particularly important for new media because most of this research is so fresh it must be funded by the people it benefits most. And given the vast profit potential involved, that has led to a very serious abuse of research as a communication method.

Don’t accept the research until you know the methodology used, specific questions, and the population surveyed. Were these online interviews, phone interviews, behavioral observations, online tracking, or even part of a bigger omnibus survey? How many were interviewed? Who interviewed them and what population was used as the base for finding these people. It’s CRITICAL to know this to understand if the data has validity and a bad sign when it’s not revealed. (For blip.tv, the press coverage tells us nothing, but some of this background is in the press release which you can eventually find.)

Watch Out for Relative Percentages (e.g. 50% more likely). Medical studies are the absolute worst here. They’ll study a behavior like eating cheese with 10,000 people (5,000 who eat 1 pound per week and 5,000 who eat none). Then, when they find 2 died who eat cheese and 3 died who don’t eat cheese, they write up a conclusion that this “huge” study (10K participants) shows “you are 50% more likely to die if you don’t eat a pound of cheese each week”. Riiiiight. Of course we’ll usually find its funded by some dairy or cheese related council.

Did survey participants understand the questions the way the researcher intended? Boston Consulting Group published a recent study about tablet operating systems that asked people which OS they wanted on tablets (Windows won). This is absurd research. Consumers only know one operating system (Windows) and have no distinction mong PC, mobile phone OR a tablet. They don’t even know Android is an OS and won’t recall the blandly named IOS from Apple. So this study got a reflexive response: consumers will answer any question whether they understand it or not. This study should be thrown in the round file. (BCG should know better.)

Were the questions designed to elicit the answers? There are some research companies who are very sophisticated at creating questions that will get the answers they want. But most company sponsored studies don’t report the wording they used. There’s interesting analysis of poor wording in the political world at Nate Silver’s blog. Here’s a sample of his work talking about wording in a Wisconsin opinion poll. (link here).

Conflicts of interest. EVERY study should be considered with full knowledge of the economic benefit that the answers deliver to the sponsor of the study. This IN NO WAY suggests that the answers are wrong merely because the research is sponsored. Rather, it should increase our interest in looking critically at the study before accepting the answers.

So two points of advice…

If you’re publicizing research you’ve conducted, do it right and report with strong background to support it. This increases your credibility and will make it much more likely that people will pay attention to your efforts. (blip.tv or BCG should have done this and their failure to do so is concerning.)

For everybody else, when you’re reading yet one more over-the-top headline (or that headline that supports your belief very strongly)…take a deep breath and ask these important questions to see if the headline claims are even related to truth.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

There’s something in the water of technology centers in the US that drives an idea that digital media always means revolution. It’s been there a very, very long time. And it makes pretty outrageous claims about technology’s impact.

But when it comes to “revolution”, more often than not, human reality keeps getting in the way. Nowhere is this more true than with the digirati myth that TV will diminish and fade into the past.

Steve Jobs offered us a dose of reality in 1996 - and reveals a wisdom about technology that should become more widely embraced. (It’s reprinted in the new Wired special edition about Jobs.) In this article, two quotes about current topic stand out.

“What’s the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.”

“These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light – that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

“The Next Insanely Great Thing”, Originally Published February 1996, Wired Magazine

Nielsen offered dose of reality on the TV issues this week –  with new numbers on time and place shifting. (Link here.) The message from Nielsen? Time shifting and place shifting (e.g. mobile access) of TV programming is primarily EXPANDING TV’s role in our lives.

Funny thing is there has always been an elite in the US that looks at TV viewing with smug & self-righteous satisfaction. They usually claim to “never watch TV”. More recently, the claim we hear is “I skip all the ads”. (Funny thing is that, while there have always been some people who ignore or skip, experience suggests these statements project behavior people want to believe about themselves and ignores the tremendous influence of both TV and TV advertising in their lives.)

And there is a great love of anti-TV myths – from telling us over 50 years ago that sitting too close is bad for your eyes (false) to telling us more recently that infants who watch too much TV have weaker language skills (quite a silly idea which studies don’t confirm).

Despite all this TV antagonism, why doesn’t it die?

Perhaps TV gives the mass of people what they want. Yes, everyone complains about TV – but it’s simply human to complain about something as pervasive as TV. Besides football, what else would fill water cooler conversations? Of course, none of this complaining decreases TV ratings.

Interestingly, Jobs discussed TV in that same interview. His thoughts suggest he was also anti-TV – but reveals some interesting wisdom.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, your realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. … It’s the truth.”

(In the ommitted area, Jobs observes that this is far more depressing of an idea to him than the idea of a network conspiracy.)

And all this means…? First, there’s nothing to suggest Jobs’ has it all right. I disagree with his depression. The Roman’s had the coliseum. In the middle ages, even more macabre things were high entertainment. And public executions remained entertainment throughout the 19th century.

Looked at against history, TV gives us a wide range of refreshingly harmless entertainment. Of course, every individual will give us a different viewpoint about which TV is good and which is bad. And that’s one of the beauties of TV.

It’s time for the tech biz to grow up and learn some key things about TV:

1. TV delivers viewers tremendous value today – WITHOUT digital revolution.
2. TV will thrive in a state not far removed from what it is today.
3. Digital enthusiasts should be cautious about upending the TV ecosystem because it will be far easier for them to screw up TV than to make it better.
4. Successful digital companies will respect TV’s value then enhance it rather than replace it.

TV will always evolve. I wonder what it will look like in another 10 years? Probably a lot like TV, but different. After all, in Jobs’ words “things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Brand has become the marketing religion of our time and takes on outsized importance in every decision. And that leads to a bunch of lists – each claiming to reveal “the” absolutes of brand building.

The following makes no claim about summarizing absolutes. But the more lists I see, the more I love the far more humble and practical sense of brands found among this bakers dozen. And, the more I think they reveal important things that enthusiastic brand enthusiasts seem to have forgotten:

1. Brands build through YEARS of consistent efforts.

2. No, really. Brands build far slower than anyone wants to think.

3. Building a brand requires not only years, but consistent execution throughout that time.

4. Convincing consumers of a product’s unique value creates brand far more quickly than does lifestyle communication.

5. There are many ways your business can leverage advertising to drive profitability other than “Brand Building”.

6. There are many flavors and types of advertising – all will build brand. That means so-called “brand advertising” may be exactly the wrong way to build your brand.

7. Most brand theorists seem to love exotic and abstract theories of brand. But you’ll only see profit if they generate a practical advantage.

8. The emotions that create economic power for a brand are not usually hot blooded emotions.

9. Creating passionate connection is only possible for a small percentage of brands – and then only with a small percentage of their consumers.

10. You can create tremendous profit advantage from brand – without succumbing to the pressure to drive for artificially passionate connections.

11. Most consumers don’t want to be friends with your brand.

12. Brands, companies, and products have life stages – each requiring very different types of brand advertising, brand communication, and brand development. Sadly, most brand theory is driven by the experiences of mature consumable brands at companies like Pepsi, P&G or Johnson & Johnson. There are many life stages where these lessons don’t work.

13. Brands follow the Double Jeopardy Law postulated by Ehrenberg: “Brands with less market share have far fewer buyers and these buyers are slightly less loyal (in their buying and attitudes).” (Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Page vii, Oxford University Press, 2010). In other words, brand loyalty is less important to building a brand than is bringing new consumers to purchase the brand.

These are few absolute rules of branding. Each situation raises unique brand realities. But that is also no excuse for ignoring the brand laws and guidelines that experience AND statistical analysis can show us. (Read Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” for a great set of laws derived from statistical analysis of brand results.)

And now the real bottom line. Far too many suppliers (agencies, consultants, production companies) want to use work on your brand to get their next job.

So stay grounded and don’t get lost in the wilderness of brand theories. The ultimate goal of a brand is to increase profit by driving the same or more sales with less cost. How do your brand efforts stack up?

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Brand has become the marketing religion of our time and takes on outsized importance in every decision. And that leads to a bunch of lists – each claiming to reveal “the” absolutes of brand building.

The following makes no claim about summarizing absolutes. But the more lists I see, the more I love the far more humble and practical sense of brands found among this bakers dozen. And, the more I think they reveal important things that enthusiastic brand enthusiasts seem to have forgotten:

1. Brands build through YEARS of consistent efforts.

2. No, really. Brands build far slower than anyone wants to think.

3. Building a brand requires not only years, but consistent execution throughout that time.

4. Convincing consumers of a product’s unique value creates brand far more quickly than does lifestyle communication.

5. There are many ways your business can leverage advertising to drive profitability other than “Brand Building”.

6. There are many flavors and types of advertising – all will build brand. That means so-called “brand advertising” may be exactly the wrong way to build your brand.

7. Most brand theorists seem to love exotic and abstract theories of brand. But you’ll only see profit if they generate a practical advantage.

8. The emotions that create economic power for a brand are not usually hot blooded emotions.

9. Creating passionate connection is only possible for a miniscule percentage of brands – and then only with a small percentage of their consumers.

10. All brands can create tremendous profit advantage from brand – without succumbing to the pressure to drive for artificially passionate connections.

11. Most consumers don’t want to be friends with your brand.

12. Brands, companies, and products have life stages – each requiring very different types of brand advertising, brand communication, and brand development. Sadly, most brand theory is driven by the experiences of mature consumable brands at companies like Pepsi, P&G or Johnson & Johnson. There are many life stages where these lessons don’t work.

13. Brands follow the Double Jeopardy Law postulated by Ehrenberg: “Brands with less market share have far fewer buyers and these buyers are slightly less loyal (in their buying and attitudes).” (Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Page vii, Oxford University Press, 2010). In other words, brand loyalty is less important to building a brand than is bringing new consumers to purchase the brand.

These are few absolute rules of branding. Each situation raises unique brand realities. But that is also no excuse for ignoring the brand laws and guidelines that experience AND statistical analysis can show us. (Read Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” for a great set of laws derived from statistical analysis of brand results.)

And now the real bottom line. For far too many suppliers (agencies, consultants, production companies) their goal is to use your brand work to get their next job.

So stay grounded and don’t get lost in the wilderness of brand theories. The ultimate goal of a brand is to increase profit by driving the same or more sales with less cost. How do your brand efforts stack up?

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved