Are You in Control Enough to LET GO?
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Iulie 2010 |
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MEDIAEDGECIA ROMANIA S.R.L. |
Adresa
Strada Dr. Iacob Felix , Nr. 63-69
Etaj 14
Bucureşti, Sector 1
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+40-21-319.71.54/5
Fax
+40-21-319.71.53
Website
www.mecglobal.com
MEC creates guide to address changing media landscape
MEC has developed a next generation blueprint of best-in-class media practices for businesses today entitled "Are You in Control Enough to Let Go?", that is available to help marketers from the smallest organizations to the largest conglomerates better navigate and integrate the opportunities that the new media landscape presents.
In this booklet MEC hopes to inspire change with seven new approaches that will help enhance the presence of brands, increase the level of Active Engagement with customers and generate more effective results.
2,000 DAYS OF ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT
Engaging consumers today means embracing new ways of working.
In 2005 MEC created the concept of Active Engagement, a new approach to building relationships between brands and their customers.
The effectiveness of traditional communications had been in decline. Active Engagement was developed in response to a fundamental shift in the marketing universe: the rise of digital channels to challenge established media such as TV, Print and Outdoor. We recognized that digital would change the game by giving brands the opportunity to build deeper, richer and, ultimately, more profitable relationships with consumers.
Five years on, technology, data and the digitally-enabled consumer have indeed changed the game. Innovation in how we engage with consumers is not just an add-on, it is a critical driver of business success.
In the early days when digital was the new frontier, agencies and clients alike struggled with new formats and channels. But experience gained in the early years is now paying off. The fog has lifted, the new landscape is visible and we now have repeatable models for success. In other words, we are now in control enough to let go of the old practices.
INTEGRATION 101
Three things to help us deliver better integrated communications in the 21st century.
The rapid proliferation of communication options is challenging our industry to come up with combinations of media and message that resonate with today's consumers. To achieve the goal of effective communication, we have to ensure our thinking and our doing are joined up.
Here are three questions that we should be asking ourselves:
1. Does our communications planning embrace paid, owned and earned channels?
2. Is our communication idea inspiring the audience to action, as well as building brand equity?
3. What does search tell us about how joined-up our communications are?
Paid, owned and earned
The choice is no longer between digital and traditional channels or above-the-line and below-the-line. Instead, it is about balancing the combination of paid, owned and earned (POE) media:
- Paid media: ex. a television spot or banner advertisement
- Owned media: ex. an event, sponsorship, website or application
- Earned media: ex. a positive post, blog review or journalist endorsement
The default position is to focus time and money on paid media – but in fact consumers have shifted their attention towards earned and owned channels. The POE approach challenges us to understand what drives effectiveness across the new media spectrum, to recognize the legacy bias often present in our selection of paid media and to harness the potential of owned and earned media.
First identified in 1988 by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman, earned media has grown nexorably. This growth has been driven by two factors: consumer appetite for using opinion platforms provided by the digital environment and broader acceptance of word of mouth as an important driver of business.
They may not be aware of it but every brand or company possesses owned media: their websites, trucks, retail outlets, packaging and even their workforce can be viewed as owned media. The phenomenon of “pop-up retail” exploits the owned media trend, as exemplified by the Gap FitnessLab in New York and the BrandNew chain of stores in the Netherlands, which brands can rent as their own pop-up space.
Smart companies work with their agencies to create vivid and engaging communication through their owned media, in the form of sponsorship, content production and event creation. Famous examples include Nike’s Run city events and Stella Artois’s long-term association with movies. These owned media events have proved to be effective drivers of ROI and offer greater potential for Active Engagement than short-term rental of paid-for media.
Engagement ideas
We have always believed in the power of an idea to inspire our communications and create value. It is ideas that drive business success and business effectiveness just as technology drives business efficiency.Over the last decade we have moved towards the fluidity and dynamism of engagement (or activation) ideas. Engagement ideas generate a physical response or a richer, longer degree of consideration in our audience. They are powerful drivers of earned media and the best ones not only encapsulate the brand proposition but also inspire consumer dialogue and action.
Start the search
Because of its powerful role in the consumer decision-making process, many leading brands now view search as an important indicator of online and offline success, in relation to sales impact and reputation-building.
It is also an immediate measure of a brand’s ability to engage. When you type in a brand name, Google delivers links from all three POE media categories. At no other point is a brand’s skill at managing its POE mix brought into clearer focus than on a search results page.
Paid-for listings will appear, as will the brand’s own websites and the earned links that represent press coverage and blog references.
Joined-up thinking and doing
The importance of joined-up ‘thinking and doing’ cannot be over-estimated in a connected world where a company’s pay-per-click search campaign is impacted by its social media strategy, which is impacted by its CSR strategy, which, in turn, is impacted by its content strategy. Agencies and brand-owners must get to grips with this new matrix and use it effectively to connect with consumers.
