By Christopher Schroeder
Sit back and pretend something for me today. Imagine a world where the Internet came first with all the interactivity, all the measurability, and all the
individuality that goes along with it. tv and print, therefore, were invented after the Internet. Further imagine that you are the head of ad sales for this new medium called television and you give
your pitch for it.
It's colorful, entertaining, easy-to-use, and even allows advertisers to sell their products with mini-programs that will run throughout the regular programming. Sounds
pretty intriguing, doesn't it? Of course, the Internet came first, so the marketer our prospective client has a few questions.
First, the client is accustomed to the way the Web works, so
it wants to know how users will interact with this new box television. So we say, "It's actually a one-way relationship. The viewer can't interact with the programming or your advertisement. You
will create 30-second video spots that will appear every 12 minutes or so, and the viewers will be compelled to watch your ad."
At least, we hope that they will.
We really don't know
for sure if they will see the ad because they can change the channel with this device known as a "remote control." More tech-savvy folks will skim through your 30-second video spots with a great
technology called a personal video recorder (pvr). It's a little like the Internet, because it lets people choose what they want to watch when they want to watch it. Most pvr users skip your spots.
Also, folks tend to get hungry during these 30-second spots, so they may even get up and make a ham sandwich during your commercial. But if the ads are really good, people will pay attention.
...we promise!
The marketer says promises are great, but what about hard metrics? "Surely you can measure how many people are visiting my Web site or buying my product after seeing an ad. And
what kind of brand lift am I getting?"
So we will say, "You're not really getting it. There is no actual interaction with your ad, so there is no hard measurement we can use. But I tell you
what, we'll have boxes put in a few thousand homes around the country to measure how they use television, and from that we'll derive how many people nationwide are watching shows, and from that, we'll
derive how many people are seeing your ads!"
By now, the marketer is quite concerned. "I'm not sure I understand all this," they say, "but just out of curiosity, how much will this cost?"
"Well," we say, "if you want to do this right, you should buy a one-time 30-second spot on the Super Bowl, and that should run you about $2.5 million."
I think you get my point here.
I
first heard this story from the head of marketing for one of the world's biggest and most innovative electronics manufacturers. Today, that manufacturer not only spends more than 15 percent of its ad
budget on interactive marketing, but actually initiates campaign planning with the Internet and builds tv, radio, and print around it. It is a rare example, but instructive.
This particular
head of marketing tells the story to prove a point. Common sense tells us that the rules of marketing and advertising are changing in the most profound of ways. Common sense tells us that if one looks
at the world clearly, a wealth of new opportunities is at our fingertips. And, as common sense is not always that common, there is a unique opportunity for those who embrace the change faster than
their competitors.
Today can be all about opportunity instead of fear or a defensive crouch. We have an unprecedented opportunity to offer marketing value to people where and how they wish to
be reached. The media world whether online, or offline is all about the individual now. She wants what she wants, when and how she wants it.
She tivos ads not because advertising writ
large is bad, but because most of it is irrelevant or not compelling to her. Get the right messages in front of the right people in the right ways and at the right times, and we all are offering
potential customers a service. Business has said, for millennia, that the customer always comes first but now the customer has the technology to make it so. And the good news for us is that those
same tools can allow us to deliver, measure, and evolve our messages in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. Consider then, the opportunity of embracing the notion that the marketer is no longer
solely in control.
Christopher Schroeder is CEO and president of ChoiceMedia, and formerly the CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. (schroeder@choicemedia.com)