"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage,
concludes that it is also more nourishing." --H.L. Mencken
Online
marketers are a naturally optimistic lot. So much so, that we tend to avoid or ignore some of the obvious deficits of online media, and the relative strengths of traditional. Comparing online media to
TV and print is like comparing apples to avocados. Yes, technically they serve similar purposes, but each has their own strengths, weaknesses and relative nutritional value.
A major
shortcoming of online media came to light recently. As it turns out, one innovative agency employed the green factor to solve this increasingly challenging problem.
Television gets
criticized for being too interruptive. Despite the general public's disdain for commercials, however, TV does manage something that online has a very difficult time achieving: a high
frequency of viewed impressions.
Online video media is quite the opposite. Even when there's an interruptive impression, it's usually accompanied with a little
"x." "X" as in "close," "finish," "end," "destroy," "kill." How many times have you been reading your favorite branded news blog,
searching for the little "x," heart racing, trying to close the damn overlay?! How dare they mix my morning read with yogurt ads!
Recently, I have been consulting with online and
offline businesses of all sorts. Interestingly (and I write this knowing I may be about to win the banality award), they are pointing to an even greater problem with online media. They equivocate
"attention" almost entirely with "traffic." If creative is viewed outside of the site, I'm noticing increasingly that advertisers do not count this as valuable." "As
long as it drives traffic" is the mantra that I've heard repeated numerous times. Even TV is being used during the recession increasingly as a direct response vehicle.
Furthermore,
online marketers do not value attention in the traditional brand-building sense (brand awareness, intent to purchase, etc.) within publications. They want it all: undivided attention. The marketers
are pulling potential viewers away from their publication, by demanding traffic-centric billing. In TV terms, it's the equivalent of an advertiser getting you to change the channel in the middle
of a program!
Television, on the other hand, achieves a high frequency of views. As much as we hate "ring around the collar" repetition, it tends to work. Conversely, single
impressions tend not to. Repetitive brand messaging is an important aspect of media buying, since brand awareness and purchase intent is highly correlated with repetitive viewing.
So, the
problem: how do we get repetitive views in online media, if marketers are competing for viewers to frenetically change the channel?
One solution is green marketing and green media. By
encouraging viewers to return to a site on the basis of increased social investment, high frequency brand engagement is starting to occur.
The example at hand is the multimedia Cadbury
Bicycle Factory campaign, produced by Toronto-based The Hive. Users were invited through traditional and social media to visit http://bicyclefactory.ca. Once there, they entered UPCs from various
Cadbury products. For every UPC, a bicycle part was installed (it takes 100 bicycle parts to create one bicycle). At the end of the three-month campaign 5,000 bicycles (that's 500,000
engagements!!!) were "created," and sent to a village in Africa. Green marketing was employed successfully as a way to get repeat engagement, attention, as well as product sales.
In
the end, by properly employing this unique value proposition, "green" can be a powerful solution to potential frequency deficits in a campaign.