The advent of the TIVO, or DVR devices, began the process of increasing the amount of deferred commercial viewing, inevitably creating the opportunity for "commercial skipping." Given that there is less and less willingness on consumers' part to allow disruptive advertising to interrupt their entertainment, companies continue looking for the opportunity to showcase their brands.
At O2 Media, we are producers of television shows that run on Lifetime and the WE TV networks. These shows are a logical extension of Brand Integration and Product Placement strategies. They are clearly within the broadest definition of Branded Entertainment, but are probably better thought of as Edutainment or, as I like to refer to them, as Brandutainment?. These shows feature permanent hosts, mostly in a talk format, and provide a clear formula for entertaining the viewer with a broad range of topics from the weather, to book authors, to celebrity guests promoting social causes, to health and fitness, etc. They are shows that entertain, but provide viewers with potential solutions to everyday issues, mostly those faced by women -- who make most of the household decisions.
This strategy provides the company seeking to establish brand positioning an opportunity to tell a more robust and in-depth story about what they do, while we get a chance to entertain, educate and engage our viewers. We also believe that by combining Brandutainment? with other aspects of PR, Promotion and Direct Response Marketing, a comprehensive marketing strategy can be built for the consumer products company of the future.
Writer: Gerald M. Czarnecki President & Chief Executive Officer O2 Media, Inc. 2001 W Sample Rd. Pompano Beach, FL 33064 Media Contact: Limor Windt Vice President, Marketing Limor@o2mediainc.com 954-691-1102
The Challenge of Deferred Viewing and
The Rise of Branded Entertainment
The TV industry is experiencing a sea change and advertising, as we have known it, is threatened as in no other historical period. For as long as most in marketing have known, advertising is the way that brands are positioned and awareness built. Whether the advertising was a print ad in a newspaper; a direct mail piece; a billboard; a radio spot, or the king of all ads, a commercial on a popular TV program; the end game was always the same. Get the attention of the reader, listener or viewer for as long as possible in order to expose them to the brand message, or to create a call to action that causes a purchase of the good or service.
This mechanism was the "impression" experienced by the consumer. The exposure to the message was the goal. Sufficient opportunities for the message to be experienced created a quantity of impressions that would add up to a reasonable probability that the consumer being exposed would both become aware of the brand, the product or service and, in turn, purchase. If a TV show had one million viewers, and they all saw a 30-second commercial spot during said show, then that would be one million impressions available to impact buying behavior of some percentage of those viewers. Hence, the quantity of impressions became a measure of the value of the advertising, and drove marketers to "buy media" where they could maximize the number of impressions that would impact the most number of consumers. If the ad was effective in communicating its message, then it was assumed that the impressions would move consumer behavior.
All of that works because it is assumed that a reasonable percentage of the show viewers will actually watch, or be exposed to, the commercial spot. And, in the past, that was, more often than not true. But, the world is changing. Today, several factors create meaningful threats to the traditional model.
The advent of the TIVO, or DVR devices, began the process of increasing the amount of deferred commercial viewing, inevitably creating the opportunity for "commercial skipping." How many of us, when viewing a program we recorded, actually have the program play the commercials during the breaks? Even the most ardent TV media seller, or buyer, would obviously admit that a growing percentage of programming is recorded and viewed on a deferred basis. The inevitable result is decreasing the probable impressions from the traditional commercial spot.
Another emerging change is the shift from a handful of networks to literally hundreds, mostly available on cable or satellite. These various networks are now so substantially focused on smaller niche markets that the general broadcast media predictably lost market share. These niche networks offer more carefully defined demographic and psychographic characteristics. With these changes comes a much smaller base, and the smaller the viewing base, the fewer the impressions, and therefore fewer consumers impacted. Indeed, what happened in many cable markets is that the more traditional "short-form" infomercial of 60 to 90 seconds became more prevalent. These hard-offer, call-to-action spots dominate many cable networks, while branding spots take a much smaller segment of the commercial spots. With advertisers looking for ROI, the infomercial spot seems to have much better payback than the branding spot impacting a much smaller audience.
On top of all that, there is the internet and the growth of the high-speed broadband connection! The "digital natives," or the audiences that grew up only knowing a world with easily available internet, are clearly migrating a good deal of their lives, including their "TV show viewing," to the broadband connection. All the data suggests that the today's youth are watching major portions of their programming on the internet, while a growing number of the "older generation" are discovering the convenience of watching shows using their computer. This is also coupled with the drift away from newspapers to online media and the growing importance of online buying. How many book readers actually go to a bookstore to buy a book? How many TV buyers go to a... [download for more]
