• by May 24, 2005

HOW MANY WAYS ARE THERE TO ORDER A CUP OF COFFEE AT STARBUCKS? - Until Monday, we thought there were only two: A tall mochachino with skim milk; iced if the weather is particularly warm out. As it turns out, there are precisely 19,000 variations on the Starbucks coffee theme. Who knew? The highly caffeinated team at OMD did. Aside from being a lot of lattes, it apparently is also an important thing to understand if you want to be a modern day media planner. Why? Because all those java apps aren't simply conversation for a coffee klatch, they're a metaphor for consumer media choice. At least that's what Dave DeSocio told a group of local cable sales execs Monday during the CAB's conference in Chicago.

Exactly how does that apply to media planning? Ever hear of Nielsen ratings? Well, DeSocio, at top media strategist at OMD, said that TV's mug is running over with so many program options that average program ratings simply aren't what they used to be. It seems all those little sips viewers have been taking, are making the average TV show more like a shot of espresso than a grande frappuccino. Exactly how many sips are they taking? According to DeSocio's estimates, an average of 8,000 channel switches per week.

"They know how to navigate," he said, noting that there are now only 18 TV shows with an average Nielsen rating of 5.0 or higher. "How many deliver less than a 1.0 rating?" DeSocio queried the CAB crows. His answer: 1,723.

Another brainteaser posed by DeSocio: "What's the No. 1 show for kids?" If you were like us, or some of the cable execs listening to his keynote at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago Monday, you probably lifted from your seat and confidently proclaimed, "SpongeBob SquarePants." Well, like us, you'd be wrong. The correct answer: the Super Bowl, the same TV "show" that's No. 1 for virtually every other Nielsen break you could conceive.

DeSocio also shed new light on the Big Game's Biggest Flap. You know, when one of Janet's flopped out, live on national broadcast TV, and replayed in countless TiVo moments. Well, according to OMD's calculations, the halftime stunt generated "nearly 12 days of almost solid media coverage." The reason may seem obvious, but DeSocio had an answer for that one too: "It was a mass audience, but it was not a mass message."

Matching the appropriateness of media content with advertising messages apparently is a big theme up at OMD these days, and DeSocio illustrated this in another way, citing three seemingly divergent primetime shows that could well be described by labeled as a common genre: WB's "7th Heaven"; Fox's "O.C."; and HBO's "Sopranos."

"They're all family dramas, but which one for which brand?" quipped DeSocio.

But the most interesting part of his presentation had to do with a new concept OMD has developed in an effort to envision the role some new media technologies may play in how consumers control media in the very near future.

"It's called the media concierge," DeSocio said of the new term being used by OMD, an agency that coined such concepts as "aperture" and "personal media mapping."

Like the service personnel at a good hotel, DeSocio said the media concierge would be used by consumers to make their media selections. DeSocio said it's not yet clear what technology would emerge as a concierge, or even if it would only be one, but that a variety of media technologies are vying for the role of the average household's centralized media gatekeeper.

"It could come from the PC. It could come from the television. It could come from a hand-held... or it could come from a [video game] console heritage," he said.

He noted that a variety of consumer technology firms already are developing such media technology hubs, citing as examples: DirecTV's Home Media Center; Hewlett Packard's Media Hub; Microsoft's Windows Media Center; Digeo; and things being developed by SBC Communications.

"It's really an essential part of the equation that will allow the consumer to determine where and when they get served," said DeSocio, noting that the media concierge would accelerate the shift from "push to pull," making media even more personalized than it was before.

"People don't watch TV. They don't listen to radio. And they don't read magazines. What do they do? They make personal choices," he asserted. "I don't think you sit there and think, 'I have an hour to kill, I think I'll spend it with print.'"

Of course, DeSocio illustrated OMD's own media bias in another telling way, beginning his presentation with OMD's media credentials pitch and noting that the Omnicom shop currently spends 66 percent of its clients' ad dollars on television, but only 3 percent on new media, or what he labeled as "direct, digital."

That could change soon though. DeSocio said OMD recently created a new unit - "Emerging Technologies" - to handle media planning and buying for new media.