Considering Multimedia: What Is Possible?

After having a great conversation regarding broadcast-television convergence with David Schepp, business news reporter (DailyFinance, Dow Jones, BBC News and Gannett), the subject has been on my mind again for the better part of the week.

Then today, my longtime friend Amy Vernon sent me an update on Boxee, which announced it will be launching a payment platform this summer. If you are unfamiliar with Boxee, it defines itself as a social media center that allows you to play videos, music, and pictures from your computer, local network, and the Internet on your television. The significance of such cannot be understated.

There will be no distinction between media and online media, right around the corner.

While some people consider Internet television the fourth method of distribution (alongside cable, satellite, IPTV) for broadcast and premium content, it really represents the singular distribution model of the future. For some smart phone purchasers, it's already difficult to distinguish the Internet from mobile.

The transition, which will continue to accelerate, will cause disruption because it places every distributor and service provider — AT&T, Boxee, Comcast, Charter, Cox, DirectTV, Sprint, Time Warner, Verizon, (to name a few) — in the same industry, with the only distinction being content creator or distributor/service provider (and even then those distinctions might overlap). It may also mean a contraction in related industries as it becomes more difficult for companies to ask consumers to pay for four services — phone, mobile, television, and Internet — that are being carried on what is essentially the same network.

What will the future look like? It seems crystal clear.

As a I told Schepp, the future will likely allow for our mobile devices to carry our preferences (and some content, as they do now) and then, once plugged in to another docking station, automatically pull up a customized desktop screen tailored to that device.

Specifically, I dock my iPhone (or whatever) to the television and all my preferred settings will be ported to the device. When I dock it to my desktop or laptop computer at work, ditto. When I dock it to my car stereo, I choose from my playlist or satellite radio. Calls and text messages can come through all devices, depending on my settings (which is important to anyone who has had a movie interrupted by a telephone call). It's simple, effective, and changes our thinking.

Online ... offline ... it all means communication and/or entertainment and/or mobile.

What does that mean for communication professionals?

While we're working on models that help companies better integrate social media into comprehensive communication, most of them are temporary five- to ten-year fixes. Just as the broadcast-mobile-Internet-cable mash up promises to erase our understanding of those industries, I anticipate there won't be any distinction between public relations, advertising, etc. It will all be communication, distinguished (perhaps) by previous world views.

Organizational communication will have to change, especially if consumers adopt a pay-for consumption only model, which could preclude advertising from the mix beyond product placement and peripheral marketing. (For example, maybe a customer becomes interested in the car their favorite character drives. One click and their programming could pause or be bookmarked for a future visit to the manufacturer's Web site. Another click inside the car, and GPS technology maps out the closest dealer or, perhaps, the one with the best deal).

Or, maybe, some companies will become content creators (with programs related to their products), competing with amateurs and production/broadcast companies or simply running alongside them as another option. Some of the better YouTube productions have already demonstrated the potential for advertainment, assuming we get more than an infomercial.

The applications are as endless as the imagination.

For me, the only thing more exciting than entertainment and communication changes ahead are the real life applications in areas such as education. When every classroom becomes a potential studio audience as it is streamed live across the Web (and any handouts are released to portable devices such as smart phones or tablets), it could potentially erase the barriers for higher education, with the most common barriers being proximity (physical location) and price points (mass audiences could reduce the current per credit rates).

What else? Anything is probable, but we can expect the road to be as bumpy as the transition from horses to horseless carriages or couriers to telephones. And speaking of phones ... have you thought about mobile lately?

Sharing Content: How Releases Impact Perception

Earlier today, I came across a press release posted on PR Newswire that questioned the validity of widely believed scientific data. And if the accusations in the release were true, it might have made an interesting case study in crisis communication.

However, I decided to pass on the topic after discovering that the originating source was biased. Instead, I decided to track the "success" of the release. The results weren't surprising, but they may be disturbing.

After CNBC ran the release as an automated PR Newswire pickup, the "story" was rewritten and embellished by a few bloggers and a few other mainstream media outlets. In turn, more mainstream media outlets and bloggers (along with some social network discussion groups) picked up on and discussed variations of the topic as well.

With each new wave of interest, some of them dropped the initial source all together, either accepting varied degrees of pro-con bias as "fact" without the need for attribution or preferring to attribute the content to a more credible news source or wherever they first learned about the story (their most immediate source). And some, apparently unaware of anything more than their interest in the topic, wrote new stories with new sources, either supporting or detracting from the original premise.

Ten Findings From Following A Single Release

1. The greater the popularity of a topic, more than the merit of the content, drives increased exposure.
2. The further content travels away from the source, the less likely the source will be mentioned.
3. The further content travels away from the source, the less accurate or tied to the source it will be.
4. Regardless of how accurate or tied to the source the content might be, people believe the content.
5. In some cases, negative sentiment toward an outlet generates a negative impression of the topic.
6. Many bloggers and media outlets cover topics with no knowledge of why the topic might be popular.
7. Communication, in this case a press release, shapes opinion well beyond measurable means of monitoring.
8. Over time, there is no means of communication management as the public shapes its opinion.
9. Most people have no knowledge of the public sentiment en masse; they only see their immediate contacts.
10. Some media outlets are lending credibility to biased sources, without vetting a single fact or original source.

It might make you wonder about the "news" we read today. Or, it might make some of us wonder how we, as communication professionals or public relations practitioners, are directly or indirectly shaping the world. Maybe.

Walling Up Content: Good, Bad, And Ugly

"We fundamentally believe that the readers should pay one price and get all or any of our content. If you don't pay, you don't get anything." — Neil Stiles, president of Variety Group.

And so it begins. Newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters have more or less collectively decided that the time for consumers to pay for news and entertainment is 2010.

The Good. When we covered the outcry for popular television shows like Veronica Mars and Jericho, fans of these shows overwhelmingly supported funding their favorite programs over leaving them to the fate of ratings or advertisers.

Would it have been possible? Maybe, except broadcasters are likely to want consumers to purchase all the duds along with a few gems and watch advertisements too. Unless the price point is right, consumers won't do it.

The Bad. That brings us to the bad. The average cable bill is about $85 per month, up 21 percent from two years ago, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Some people pay as much as $180 per month for the privilege of having access to more content than they can or want to consume.

With Fox and others asking for more fees, those rates will likely climb higher whether consumers watch those channels or not. As prices rise, more consumers may opt out entirely, increasing the burden on subscribers who remain while reducing the size of a marketable audience.

It seems likely that cable providers will eventually have to move to a pay-per-channel model rather than sacrifice their business. The same is happening with what used to be print. Consumers on tight budgets will narrow the number of content providers they are willing to pay for and that means plenty of content providers will disappear in 2010.

The Ugly. And that brings us to the ugly. Not all content providers produce content worth reading or watching and, given a choice, consumers will skip them all together.

Newsday, which was one of the first to move back to a paid subscription model, is steadily losing readers. At $5 per week, it's too much when other news sources are available.

When cable operators are eventually forced to move to a pay-per-channel model, imagine what would happen when a content provider like CNN loses more than 30 percent of its audience like it did this year. A reduction in subscribers will mean a reduction in revenue. A 30 percent cut in one year may not be survivable.

The Reality. I believe that content creators need to be compensated. They deserve to be.

However, the reality is that most of them were too slow to develop a working advertiser-supported online model five years ago only because they wanted the best of both worlds — two distinct revenue streams, online and offline. And now, because that did not work out, they want consumers (and advertisers) to pay for the mistake.

Meanwhile, there are an increasing number of free content providers — news, entertainment, analysis, advice, etc. — providing increasingly competitive content. And while they might not be multi-million dollar conglomerates, some will eventually give mainstream a run for their money, with a better value for advertisers as they reach more people with searchable content.

"Good programing is expensive. It can no longer be supported solely by advertising revenues." — Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.

Right on. Except nowadays, good programming is not enough. It has to be "better than" programming. Assuming consumers have a discretionary income of $100 per month for news and entertainment, that means they can afford approximately 10 to 20 channels/publishers at an average of $5 to $10 per piece in a tremendously competitive industry where local publishers/news outlets are competing with national publishers/news outlets as well as an abundance of free consumer-generated content, expert-generated content, and marketer-produced content. Hmmm ... good luck with that.

Fragmenting News: "Driven Media"

Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? — Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen, journalism professor at New York University and author of What Are Journalists For? might have posed his question last April, but its poignancy will become front and center in 2010. Although people like to poke fun at "old media," there is no such thing.

Old media has gone the way of the dinosaur. And if you missed it during the last decade, it's because things rarely happen all at once. They happen slowly. Old media went out with a whimper, not a bang. And I suspect most people don't even know what we've lost.

I think about it all the time, given I'll be teaching Writing for Public Relations this spring. It will be my tenth year teaching this core requirement for a public relations certificate program, but it might as well be my first.

With exception to the AP Style Guide, the text I once required (Writing in Public Relations Practice: Form & Style by Doug Newsom) has become largely obsolete. I've decided to make it elective, but only because there has yet to be a textbook published that I can justify requiring students to purchase.

The change hinges on what has become the fragmentation of media. There are some remnants of traditional media, but the entire field has been fragmented and the lines between the various practices are blurred. Tomorrow's public relations professionals have to know it all, but even their days are numbered as 80 percent of them think social media is the answer to everything when it's only the answer for some things.

What has been propped up in the place of traditional media are six divisions of journalism-like content. (I'm only offering up six divisions to help people get their heads around it. Most are blurred, blended, or feature multiple content divisions.)

Six Divisions Of Modern Media Content

Editor-Driven Media. This is the last stand of anything resembling traditional or old media, which is still one step removed from objective journalism. The concept is simple enough. "Experts" choose the news, with the best of them following in the footsteps of their professional predecessors and the worst of them attempting to set an agenda or practice "he said, she said" journalism, which is something people like Rosen and myself have railed against time and time again.

Blogger-Driven Media. While the vast majority of bloggers have no intention of becoming citizen journalists, public relations professionals have given some of them the first call leverage they need to be popular (sometimes in exchange for positively slanted reviews). But even without direct intervention by companies, bloggers have filled various special interest niches with the only real requirement being the time it takes to develop, market, and nurture a blog. Like it or not, bloggers can set the agenda for what receives attention and what doesn't based on variables as varied as the topics they write about.

Citizen-Driven Media. While most bloggers never aspire to be citizen journalists, there are a handful who do. Some of them used blogs to share content that resembles, aspires, or even competes with journalism on networks like the fledgling BrooWaHa, The Blog Paper, or any number ofdozens of others. Crowd-sourced content, like the Wikimedia model, fits well enough within this division too.

Consumer-Driven Media. While it might resemble editor-driven media on occasion, the presentation of facts are biased to provide consumers with the "news" they're looking for and/or an affirmation of their opinions. While the editorial team still calls the shots, they skew to trump up their circulation online or off using any number of tactics. Two of the most common: news dictated by what's hot on the search engines today or simply building niche content for special interests, left or right, so people with specific opinions can tune in to find preset facts. (e.g., if you think the country is on the right or wrong track, there is a news program for you.)

Propaganda-Driven Media. Special interests have done an excellent job at shifting traditional news desks toward special interest agendas or creating entirely new media outlets predisposed to researching, sourcing, filtering, and presenting information that is designed to support nothing other than a point of view. Years ago, it was called yellow journalism. Today, it's called progress. It's also disingenuous to the public because important topics like health care reform no longer have objective forums to vet out the worst of it.

Advertising-Driven Media. I recently read a post (but forgot to bookmark the link and backtype didn't pick it up) where a public relations professional said that the separation of news and the advertising desk was no longer needed. He went as far to say that it is part of the evolution of journalism. Within his context, it's not an evolution but a regression. Sure, I support companies establishing their own content online (heck, that's what we do), but the other form is much less authentic. Specifically, advertisers are setting the news agenda at media outlets.

The net outcome, at least in the short term, will be exactly what Rosen framed up, except with many more divisions than "he said, she said" media alone. People will be asked to sort out who's faking it more, despite their current predisposition to choose based on nothing more than popularity, affiliation, and social media metrics.

Get ready for a bumpy ride in 2010. It seems increasingly likely that it will be the year when the public makes its choice: do we want to support what we and/or our associates believe (true or not) or do we want to support those who are attempting to objectively pursue the truth (even when we don't want to read it)? I'm hoping for the latter, but am tasked with helping public relations students understand how to work in a world based on nothing more than the former.

Mocking Tiger: Spirit Airlines & Everyone

"I think that the public is very used to it at this point, this happening, not only with athletes, but with people in general, from all walks of life. I think that infidelity is prevalent in all realms of society worldwide." — Rita Ewing

With almost everyone attempting to cash in on the Tiger Woods scandal, we almost passed until the Spirit Airlines advertisement landed on Adfreak. Saying the airline hasn't been "this inspired since holding its 'Many Islands, Low Fares' (MILF) sale," Adfreak featured the cheesy online advertisement of a tiger driving into a fire hydrant. The copy read...

"It's a jungle out there! Make sure you avoid all the obstacles and get the lowest fares."

In terms of generating publicity, the advertisement worked. In terms of selling seats, it's hard to say. However, Spirit Airlines is one of the few U.S. passenger airlines generating a net profit during the recession, despite being fined $375,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration for violating consumer protection regulations .

Tiger Woods is big business, and perhaps even bigger business in a crisis.

The Ottawa Citizen published a top ten list inspired, in part, by the buzz up from comedians Jimmy Kimmel, Jay Leno, George Lopez, and Wanda Sykes. It seems only David Letterman, not surprisingly, took a pass.

The same cannot be true for public relations professionals. Most of them are jumping in to rehash the classic bullet points, with the most obvious being that Woods waited too long to say anything at all. It's par for the course, they all say.

Or is it?

Sure, Ari Adler is right in that under most circumstances, crisis communication requires disclosure. Scott Soshnick is right in that a loss of privacy is often the price of being a public figure. Gerald Baron is right in his frame up of a fictional crisis communication conversation.

And yet, all three are very wrong.

In terms of personal branding, Woods is playing just below par. While this golf celebrity had gone to great lengths to preserve a certain image in the past, he has also passionately pursued keeping his personal matters out of the public spotlight. That much, at least, remains.

Woods is not Mark Sanford or Gavin Newsom or Michael Phelps or take your pick among those who demonstrated poor judgement this year.

Overall, Woods is a golfer whose image was created less by his own effort than those who wrote about him. He didn't market himself to earn endorsements; he played the game better to earn them. He didn't seek out publicity; the tabloids frequently sought him out. Nobody bought products because he 'endorsed' them; his presence merely made people more aware of them.

So if public relations professionals took a little more time to think before riding the Woods wave today, they might remember that crisis communication is situational. And this situation requires an accounting of key considerations. Here are some...

• Woods has set his priorities, and it does not include public discourse.
• Most of his sponsors support his decision, including Nike, Gatorade, and Gillette.
• It appears that the Woods family has yet to find resolution in what might come next.
• There was no risk of public health or safety in regard to a matter involving his family.
• His family has a long history of attempting to separate their private lives from public exposure.

How the Tiger Woods story could play out, depending on personal decisions.

The Tiger Woods brand will remain intact, though a little worn at the edges, provided his wife decides to work past present circumstances and if he continues to win tournaments in the aftermath of this personal crisis. It would have less chance to remain intact had he held a press conference, played victim of circumstance or ignorance, or suddenly tossed himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion. All of those options, for Woods specifically, would have been less than authentic.

Sure, there are those who are making the case that Woods is missing an opportunity to allow others to learn from his mistakes. I submit he has offered up a lesson that might help some people learn from their own mistakes. Perhaps we might even consider that transparency is a gift and not an expectation, under certain circumstances. What do you think?

"But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don't share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions. ... I will strive to be a better person and the husband and father that my family deserves. For all of those who have supported me over the years, I offer my profound apology." — Tiger Woods

Pitching Wind: Public Relations

"The traditional one-way media model has definitely had its day. So agencies are talking to clients about these engagement models much more." — Sam Lucas, chair of Burson-Marsteller to Adweek.

With consistency, public relations practitioners, even those who shrugged off social media earlier, are giving up on pitches and turning toward directly engaging consumers through original content they and their agencies are creating. And why not?

Diminishing Circulation Feeds Social Media For Now

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, 379 remaining daily newspapers had a total circulation of 30.4 million, down 10 percent since April. Sunday papers were not exempt. Of 563 daily newspapers, circulation had dropped to 40 million, down 7.49 percent. Magazines don't fare much better.

However, reactionary planning might backfire in the long run. Mark Hass, CEO and partner of MH Group Communications, who told Adweek that traditional media is a lot less important than it used to be, might be describing an accurate view of media today. But what about tomorrow?

The papers that remain, especially those that are moving to electronic platforms, will still be there tomorrow. One recent study shows that print publishers are very keen on the next step in distribution. And that distribution model will one day be mobile.

• More than 80 percent of newspaper and magazine publishers believe people will rely more heavily on mobile devices as a primary information source in the next three years.

• Nearly 70 percent of respondents agree that mobile is receiving more attention at their publications this year than last. More than a third believe their publication already has a well-developed plan for attacking and conquering the mobile market.

• Forty-four percent of respondents who track mobile’s impact on their Web site traffic said the devices increased visits by up to 10 percent today. Half believe mobile traffic to their Web sites will increase by 5 to 25 percent in the next two years.

If publishers diminish the cost of print (despite the majority of publishers wanting a print-electronic solution) and readers overcome mobile setbacks, some publications may flourish.

Restructuring Public Relations Firms May Diminish Their Value

Not always, but often, the pubic relations industry was commanding higher retainers than social media. So firms that throw too far into social media may diminish their own value as their media relations function becomes devalued over time. Worse for them, an overemphasis on direct-to-consumer communication, which was typically seen as a function of marketing, could seriously shift the practice toward astroturf or content resembling the modern press release (most of which are unreadable).

At the same time, newspapers that do survive and adapt with better mobile solutions may develop very different relations around public relations, thereby cutting out what some journalists consider client-side gatekeepers. And in some cases, journalists who work for re-emerging news teams might even remember which public relations practitioners kept the lines of communication open and which did not.

When you add it all up, the trends suggest an increasing need for an integrated team approach over attempts to control communication and marketing budgets. Simply put, public relations cannot afford to diminish the value of media relations to the point of alienation. After all, media isn't dying as much as it is being restructured. So what to do?

Consider the core functions of each discipline. Social media tends to work best in delivering customer-centric content (sometimes with a customer service overlap). Marketing and advertising work best in focusing on prospect-centric demand creation. And public relations tends to work best in reaching publics beyond the customer. Sure, overlaps exist around every corner, but recognizing priorities is still important.

Failing At Public Relations: Obama Administration

You know your public relations efforts are failing when you talk to more people (reach) more often (frequency) about an issue (message) and it produces a negative outcome despite having a powerful brand. When that happens, the most prudent course of action is to shut up and listen to people. But not the Obama administration.

Their strategy seems crystal clear. If you don't like a plan, they will talk you to death. And if you still don't like a plan, they will talk about you to death. And if you still don't agree, then they'll declare war. Shudder the thought.

Why the war on Fox News will backfire.

Before pointing out the obvious, I might offer up that this post has less to do with politics than it does communication. Simply put, politics doesn't have to be part of the equation to plainly see that the Obama administration is not only failing at public relations, but they also seem to be their own worst enemy (even more so than the previous administration, which one would have thought to be impossible).

There has always been plenty of evidence to support the idea that Fox News leans right. There has always been plenty of evidence that MSNBC leans left. In general, there is ample evidence to support most media leans left and talk radio leans right (but not as much as some people think).

Indeed. The vision of Walter Lippman is dead. Objective journalism is at the end of its brief, but worthwhile run. And the public has lost its appetite for true news in favor of flavored coverage.

Any questions?

And if you work for any White House administration, you have a choice. You live with it or you resort to diatribe. The current administration has chosen diatribe based on the mistaken notion that if you cannot win the debate, you beat the debater.

Of course, that tried-and-true political tactic doesn't work with the media. It only compounds the problem.

When you take media "opposition" seriously, it means you risk increasing its credibility. And in the case with the White House war against Fox News, that is precisely what is happening.

Ratings for Fox News is up, easily beating CNN and MSNBC. In fact, Fox News averaged 2.25 million total viewers in prime time for the third quarter, up 2 percent over the previous year, according to left leaning The Huffington Post.

Meanwhile, White House poll numbers are dropping. Why? As President Obama and his team obsess over criticism, anyone who is uncertain or critical of unpopular policies are added to a list of undesirables. Take your pick: health care reform policies or the struggling economic climate or the troop buildup in Afghanistan or the abandonment of a promise for open communication or the failure to deliver a tax break for seniors making less than $50,000 a year. And the list goes on, with dozens of more reasons why people are interested in hearing other ideas. And, according to the administration, you'll find them on Fox News.

Wait a minute. That's not an attack ... that's advertising. At the current rate of decline, Fox News stands to gain a majority while other media outlets play ball with the President. Even the President is speaking out against Fox News, but his position makes a play for another tactic — good-natured belittling. (Sorry, David. That will not work either.)

The real criticism, where the American public ought to be concerned (contrary to President Obama's opinion), is from the First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky

"The White House has basically said that they don’t believe in the marketplace of ideas, they’re not willing to engage in debate, and they are going to be associated with John Adams and the Sedition Act and Richard Nixon and his ‘enemies’ list — is that the company they want to be in?” says Mike Farrell, director.

It sure seems that way. Anytime political communicators choose a clash of personalities over opinions, it means their opinion might be weak. And, based on a 10-point drop in polling, it seems to me that people are tuning to Fox News because they do not agree with the President; they are not changing their opinions because Fox News is influencing them.

The lesson is simple really. Obama won an election because the public has been rallying around those who affirm their ideas. And right now, what the Obama administration seems to be missing is they have yet to be a source or affirmation because while Americans might want some of the ideas presented on the campaign trail, they are less than thrilled with the proposed execution of those ideas.

Mostly, the bills don't deliver on promises. They might make things worse.

Stacking The Odds: Magazine Publishers

The story may be stale for some, but it's no less relevant. AdvertisingAge published an interesting article last week, revealing that rival magazine companies are discussing the creation of an ad network that would sell targeted ad space across many industry Web sites.

While considered very preliminary, the concept is that each participant could get better ad rates. Owning their own network, these publishers believe, thereby reduces the increasing number of independent ad networks that return pennies on the dollars.

According to the IBM Global Business Services study highlighted earlier, this is the kind of network that many advertising professionals expect in the next three to five years or less.

Will a collaborative magazine ad network work?

According to the article, a magazine publishers' network, if it could achieve the crucial scale required, could offer advertisers behavioral targeting on professionally produced, "well-lit" sites. However, depending on the structure and whether publishers would retain independent account executives, it could also skew sales toward favored publishers.

While it might seem like a prudent move for magazine publishers, they would have to take care not to model such a network after the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which may have saved some newspapers in the short term, but resulted in near dual-paper monopolies that hindered start-ups.

Generally, most participating newspapers consolidated advertising sales and distribution. In recent years, the number of joint operating agreements has declined considerably. Personally, I wonder sometimes if the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 didn't set the stage for declining print circulations today.

Specifically, had newspapers not grown complacent with little fear of competition, would they have been faster to act in developing a modern distribution model that paid for itself? We may never know.

Changing Environments: 2010 Ford Taurus Outdoor

Digital billboards are hardly new, but there seems to be some potential in the way Western New York Ford dealers will use them. When it starts to rain, the message changes. When there is a full moon, the message changes. When any number of 50 situations occur, the message changes to pinpoint the situation and deliver a situational message.

"The boards allow us to talk to people about relevant local events, news and weather, while having some fun introducing the vehicle's features," said Chuck Basil, representative of the Ford Dealers of Western New York. "The new Ford Taurus is a very unexpected vehicle so we wanted our advertising to follow suit."

That is what the campaign is about: It will introduce people to the new 2010 Ford Taurus, with western New York Ford dealers hoping to drive home the message that the car, along with the billboard messages, are "unexpected." While the creative thread is thin, the application has potential for both Ford and the future of advertising.

"Advertisers are now able to change their messages as often as they want, set up their ads to run up-to-the-minute weather forecasts or even link to a Twitter or Facebook account updating the board's message almost instantly," says Todd Schaefer of Lamar Advertising. "The creative options are endless."

Why Situational Communication Will Work In The Future

While marketers are borrowing from their public relations, advertising, and corporate communication budgets to cobble together social media funding, social media is not replacing them. Situational communication is replacing it.

We already know that the course of most communication is to steadily increase the impact of proximity (location) and demographics (population characteristics) thereby increasing the connection with the consumer. But what hasn't been fully explored, since the individual targeting featured in the film Minority Report changed too frequently to be scalable, is how technology could put us on the right path.

Could you, perhaps, read this post on the bus stop shelter poster or duratran signage at the airport? And if not this post, then why not The New York Times, with a certain percentage of space saved for the content sponsor? And while e-reader technology is still not cheap enough to mass distribute devices today, we might ask why print publications haven't been exploring such options to deliver the distribution devices for pennies on the dollar and thereby eliminate distribution and printing costs.

Right. For all the buzz from some publishers about consumers paying for subscriptions, most of them have forgotten that consumers never really paid for the paper. Advertisers did. Subscription prices barely covered the price for home delivery.

So how does the 2010 Ford Taurus campaign fit into the picture? Digital publications could deliver digital advertising as situational as Lamar Advertising's outdoor concept, e.g., allowing an investment firm to deliver messages based upon the fluctuations of the stock market but only for those readers that meet a certain demographic profile.

All it requires is for modern advertising creatives to stop writing for each other and return to their golden era roots, where copywriters once wrote as if they were writing to a single consumer (much like some social media pros do today). In fact, in our playbook, digital distribution would not only make this possible, but it would also make it a necessity. Leap forward already.

Marketing Movies: Why They're Different

According to Adweek, a new study by Stradella Road reveals that 73 percent of moviegoers first gain awareness of a new movie release from television and 70 percent from in-theater trailers, beating out word-of-mouth (46 percent) and the Internet (44 percent) and leaving billboards and newspaper advertising way, way behind.

However, beyond the initial exposure of a new movie commercial, an overwhelming number of people across all age groups have fully adopted digital technologies and increasingly depend on them to gain information about new movie releases and help with their decisions about which films to see. As with most advertising campaigns, television is effective to generate awareness but the Internet becomes the battleground in the decision-making process.

Key Findings From Stradella Road

• 94 percent of all moviegoers are online, across all age groups
• 86 percent of all demographic segments go online via a computer or mobile device once a day
• Moviegoers spend more time online (19.8 hours) than they do watching television (14.3 hours)
• 73 percent have profiles on social networking sites, and 69 percent watch online video content
• 93 percent report that they use Internet search to find information about new movie releases

What We Learned Marketing Indies

Our own experience marketing independent films demonstrated much of the same. Television, including news and reviews, dominated generating awareness. However, it was a strong personalized social media program that proved critical in creating a desire to see a film in theaters and prime audiences to purchase the DVD.

Social media also helped mitigate negative reviews, especially in that film fans would defend the film and point people to more positive reviews for a balanced perspective. But even more importantly, the social media program helped capture interested moviegoers and direct them to balanced insider information written by the producers (as opposed to a single critic's viewpoint).

The end result was a more passionate fan base, one that not only referred people to see/purchase the film, but also take a personal stake in the movie as fans were invited to become as close to the film creators — producers, directors, writers, and cast — as possible. While the independent film had several hurdles to overcome via traditional publicity (40 interview requests, but no A-list cast available to accept them) and mass media (a remarkably low budget and relatively few markets), fans wanted the film to succeed.

What Can Product Advertisers Learn From The Movies?

The flow of information for products and services works relatively the same way. While diminishing, traditional marketing has an expansive reach that provides an excellent opportunity to generate awareness. However, immediately following that awareness, consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet for information that will help them make purchasing decisions.

However, there is a piece of the equation that differs for products and services. One of the reasons that the public responds well to television advertising for movies is that movies are considered an important message whereas most products and services are only important to those selling them.

So, the hurdle most advertising creatives need to overcome is how to make what is the least important message in someone's life (an advertisement) into communication that can change behavior. Or, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, "You say what you have to say. But you have to learn how to say it in a way that people can see what you mean." Or in advertising, sometimes they have to "feel" what you mean. If they don't, you can talk all day about yourself and never move anyone.

Reaching Customers: How Media Stacks Up

According to a new study from Opinion Research Corporation and sponsored by ARAnet, consumers are turning to online and radio sources for news and information and relying less on daily newspapers and television. This is the second year that Opinion Research Corporation has conducted the study.

Media Rankings by Opinion Research Corporation

• Television: 31.1 percent, down from 34.7 percent
• Daily newspapers: 19.4 percent, down from 23.5 percent
• Radio: 19.4 percent, up from 16.5 percent
• Online: 14.6 percent, up from 12.7 percent
• Weekly community papers: 4.4 percent, down from 5.1 percent
• Free shopper newspapers: 2.9 percent,up from 2.2 percent
• Magazines: 2.1 percent, up from 1.6 percent

Additional Research Highlights

• Respondents with household incomes of $100,000 or more receive considerably more news and information from online sources (23.1 percent versus 14.6 percent for the general population)
• College graduates reported using online sources more frequently (20.0 percent)
• People 18-to-34 reported the highest reliance on online sources (22.2 percent)
• Hispanic respondents were more likely to prefer online sources (21.0 percent)

What The Shift Means

"The survey results — especially that high earners and college graduates are continuing to move toward online sources of news and information and that the credibility of those sources is on the rise — reinforce that Americans are continuing to change the way they consume media," said Dave Fleet, senior consultant for Thornley Fallis Communications, in a release.

Beyond finding new ways to reach consumers, companies and organizations that have virtually no online presence or a Web site only presence may want to rethink their current communication strategy.

With increased frequency, consumers often search for companies and opinions about those companies online after they see news stories or advertisements about that company on radio, television, or in newspapers. So in many cases, paid and earned exposure across traditional media can increase competitor sales when customers follow up online.

Targeting Behavior: YuMe

Most advertisers are already familiar with YuMe for its video ad management platform. Basically, advertisers can purchase space — power rolls, click to videos, overlays, tickers, sponsorships, pre-roll, etc. — on video streams provided by more than 500+ publishers.

Earlier today, YuMe announced its new partnership with AutoTrader.com Access, which is another advertising network that targets automotive consumers specifically. But what we found interesting about the news isn't the partnership as much as the reasoning behind it — behavioral tracking.

Behavioral Tracking Places Qualitative Over Quantitative.

Forget all the buzz about who has the most friends and followers, online advertising is beginning its slow shift away from the number of impressions and toward qualitative measures that lead to qualified buyers. The shift in thinking could eventually hasten the decline in traditional media, which tends to focus on volume over value. In fact, according to YuMe, the partnership was forged because of the company's ability to leverage data about the viewers' browsing behaviors, search histories and video consumption habits.

For example, AutoTrader.com Access will now have the opportunity to target video ads to viewers who have recently searched and compared vehicle prices online or searched for a specific car make and model. The concept is simple enough: reaching people with a specific interest is more powerful than reaching someone within a specific demographic.

This comes at a time when online video viewing has reached a record high. According to comScore, Inc., more than 157 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 124 online videos (each) totaling an average of 453 minutes during the month of June. This represents more than 81.2 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience. Additional data:

• 111.8 million viewers watched 7.6 billion videos on YouTube.com (67.9 videos per viewer).
• 53.6 million viewers watched 524 million videos on MySpace.com (9.8 videos per viewer).
• The average visitor to Hulu watched 10.1 videos, totaling more than an hour of videos per visitor.

There Is One Caution In Behavioral Tracking...

Much of it touches on demand fulfillment. Demand creation is something else, entirely.

Avoiding Business Traps: Harvard Business Publishing

The author of one cool site: blogging tips recently re-asked a question that many people have been asking: is mainstream media losing significance?

Under the current business model most traditional publications operate under, you bet. But it doesn't mean they'll go away. Publishers will eventually evolve and develop different business models. Long term, it is anyone's guess what these business models will look like, and chances are many of them will be different.

Some might evolve in networks like Michael Milken recently invested in. Milken is banking on the idea that Bizmore might be the better business model. The potential success of the site will likely hinge on how good the advice is. For example, one executive asked "How often should we change advertising campaigns?" And another executive answered "I'd recommend testing new/alternative campaigns continuously, via smaller campaigns in different magazines, geographies, outlets or via paid search online."

In that case, it's the wrong advice, prompted by the wrong question. And, unfortunately, this is the wrong post to cover it. Bum advice aside, the concept might be sound. It seems fewer executives are satisfied with the research culled by traditional publications these days; they need to know what it means and what to do with it.

Another emerging model (that some research firms have already adopted), which I offered up to Jay Ehret for his open letter to the Waco Tribune Herald, is to keep the summary information free and charge for the deeper research. The only burden that remains is proving content that has value.

To illustrate, I purchased an article on Harvard Business Review this morning. It's an older article (circa 1998), but meets the criteria: it's purchased content and provides some answers that newspaper people, who do not always operate as businessmen, might consider. (I skew my summaries for newspapers, but the traps apply to all business.)

The Hidden Traps In Decision Making

• Anchoring Traps. Business leaders have been struggling with this all the time. The most common problem is placing too much emphasis on past performance without considering other factors.

Newspapers certainly fell into this trap. As subscriptions shrank, they increased their direct mail programs and trial discount offers. It worked before, but now all it did was reduce the non-existent profit margin on subscriptions even more.

• The Status Quo Trap. The article points to newspapers as an example, as the majority of the “electronic newspapers” that first appeared on the Internet were modeled after their print precursors. They didn't need to be, but nobody really considered that they could be anything else.

Status quo suggested they be the same, as if people who looked for content online would be looking for the same content they found offline. Unfortunately, the status quo thinking trapped papers into offering virtually the same product for free.

• The Sunk-Cost Trap. The article uses the example of being given a stock or having a stock that we refuse to sell, even if it is for a loss, and thereby miss out on more attractive investments.

Fundamentally, this where many newspapers are now. They are desperately trying to "save" their old business model despite the fact that the business model no longer works.

• The Confirming-Evidence Trap. While the authors could have never guessed it at the time, the confirming evidence trap is trending up in popularity. In February, I called it validating opinion, but it's much the same.

Not only are publishers demonstrating an increasing propensity to validate reader opinions, but many are attempting to build future business models based on finding examples that may support their vision. Nowadays, it's easy to do.

• The Framing Trap. The framing trap refers to one of the most common mistakes made in business. People ask the wrong questions. In fact, it's the very reason the Q&A advice on Bizmore was flawed. It was the wrong question. It's also one I've answered before.

Some newspapers are asking the wrong questions too. They keep asking how many journalists do we need to let go because online advertising revenue is only a fraction of our print revenue? It's the wrong question. Instead, they might ask which assets have a demonstrated value that people might actually pay for or advertisers might want to be associated with.

• Estimating and Forecasting Traps. The article explains this trap as problematic because most of our minds are not calibrated for making estimates in the face of uncertainty. There seems to be some truth to that given the number of companies that inexplicably opted to try and wait out the economic downturn (as if).

The article breaks it down further into terms I learned from philosophy rather than business. People who get into accidents the most tend to be overly cautious or overly confident. For business, it's the same. The article goes a step further by suggesting even people in the middle are at risk if they always assume the past can accurately help us forecast the future. It cannot.

Of the above mentioned traps, I'm not sure if this one applies to newspapers as much as some of the new models that are being tested by people like Milken. Case in point: Milken's past success combined with the past success of similar Q&A networks that have seemed successful on Linkedin would convince some to conclude Bizmore will be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bizmore's success will be based on an entirely different equation that has little to do with Milken or similar formats.

Bizmore Q&A aside, they do seem to have some editorial content right for them. Shorter, punchier articles play well online, and today's daily download comes from Apple.

Currently, Bizmore's traffic appears to be about the same as a multi-author average blog, with significant distance to travel before catching up with Forbes or Businessweek. But, so far, it still represents a viable next step in how content providers might evolve.

Of course, there is one last point to touch on today. Of all the sources mentioned in this post, only Harvard Business Publishing generated revenue from me. They can from you too. You can purchase this classic article by Ralph L. Keeney, Howard Raiffa, and John S. Hammond right here. Have a nice weekend.

Going Green: Free Iran

While most people have heard that social media has played a role in the post-election results in Iran, the consequences of immediate communication and online conversation have an impact that is equally compelling to on-the-ground coverage.

While Valeria Maltoni sees the potential for crowdsourcing to surpass CNN news (it can), we also see it as an interesting division. Whereas traditional media has been tending to cover the sentiment of the elected, social media tends to reveal the sentiment of those who elect. And that is making the elected take notice.

Mass Influence Over Influencers

Even in the United States, President Obama has been compelled to step up his stance on Iran. Originally, he hoped to avoid commenting about the democratic process of Iran over concern for future diplomacy with a country known to be developing a nuclear program and backing militant organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. However, his initial hands-off stance had been largely viewed as timid and unrepresentative.

Yesterday, that changed. President Obama, who now says he was moved by the protest images, has called for an end to the violence while advising those who govern that they ought to lead by consent over coercion.

It's equally likely he wasn't moved on his own. Overwhelmingly, Americans have helped make the Iranian elections two of the top ten stories on the Internet — the election itself and the State Department asking Twitter to hold off on scheduled maintenance in order to ensure real-time citizen reporting.

News that used to die in a day isn't so easily forgotten. People all over the world want resolution.

BloggersUnite Hosts Spontaneous Event

BloggersUnite.org, which is a nonprofit platform that encourages bloggers to do good and raise social awareness, has launched an initiative that asks bloggers and network participants to use their blogs and accounts to do exactly that. They are asking bloggers and network members to continue their efforts, drawing even more awareness to the Iranian election and related atrocities in Iran through June 29.

“When we host organized campaigns, they are usually 90 days in the making,” said Antony Berkman, president of BlogCatalog.com and founder of BloggersUnite.org. “This time, the crisis is now, the need for action is now, the initiative is now.”

The event has already received praise by Amnesty International USA, which has its own action page condemning the violence and repression over the elections. Amnesty International says it is important for people to keep Iran in the public spotlight until it ends restrictions on freedom of expression and association, which includes the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas.

Bloggers and members of the media are asked to contribute to the Bloggers Unite for a Free Iran campaign by making it a dominant social media issue once again on June 29. Others are asked to participate by leaving supportive comments on participating blogs, sharing links to posts about this important effort, and/or by turning all avatars green in honor of the campaign. Bloggers who have already posted on the subject are asked to add their links to the BloggersUnite.org event page and post again on June 29.

Making Sense For Media: PriceWaterhouseCoopers

PriceWaterhouseCoopers released its Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2009-2013 yesterday, and the findings will set the stage for some companies to excel while others will be forgotten. Not surprisingly, the migration to digital entertainment platforms and convergence will accelerate as companies seek advertising distribution efficiencies while consumers want more value and more control over their content streams.

The future is bright, but not for everyone.

While the report shows declines in consumer ad spending through 2011, PriceWaterhouseCoopers sees industry growth returning in 2012-2013. Specifically, global spending on entertainment and media will reach $1.6 trillion in 2013 and then grow by 2.7 percent in digital content, which will eventually offset declines in traditional media revenue models. In the United States, the entertainment and media market will ultimately grow at a 1.2 percent average annual rate to $495 billion in 2013.

The primary challenge, it says, will be that some media companies will struggle to attract revenue from fragmented and mobile audiences. On that one point, we couldn't disagree more. The emphasis on mobile audiences is leaning toward more convergence, not less, with audiences being able to import and make portable their favorite content from their desktops to their laptops and mobile phones.

If any fragmentation is occurring, it's a direct result of consumers finding a continually increasing amount of content that would otherwise be unavailable. More choices simply means not all people will pick from the most popular three, but rather any number of options from a list of 3 million.

The decision that media companies have to make is whether their product is strong enough to capture any audience at all. For example, as one large publishing company reported months ago, its greatest challenge on the Web is competition. Rather than compete with the only other daily in a major market, they have to compete with several more migrating print sources, broadcast news sites, radio news sites, and the seemingly endless supply of amateur op ed blogs and network content.

They're asking the wrong questions. They're searching for the wrong conclusions.

Digital demand is increasing, but not everyone sees it.

"The current decline in revenues is not because of declining demand," Bill Cobourn of PriceWaterhouseCoopers' media and entertainment practice said. "In fact, demand for (entertainment and media) appears to be increasing."

The struggle that some media companies are facing is where that demand is increasing and their own ability to be able to meet that demand. Rather than continuing to find ever-narrowing niches where no competition occurs, they ought to be asking what do they have to do different to demonstrate a clear product contrast.

The right content mix would ensure that the publisher would never compete with other migration print sources, broadcast news sites, radio news sites, and the greater content sources that make up social media, including former advertisers who are finding it easier to develop direct-to-public online programs.

Ergo, today's news doesn't have to be the same on every station. If anything, that is the model that died when consumer choice began to grow exponentially. Consumers no longer have to choose which newscaster or print reporter they enjoy more as much as they choose which stories interest them the most. It changes, daily.

Coupled with the media's focus on preserving old distribution models, e.g., print and broadcast, they miss the bigger picture. While there will always be room for some print (assuming it is not duplicated online), distribution stands to sort itself out.

Even PriceWaterhouseCoopers sees it. It projects mobile and digital platforms expanding at the highest average growth rate of 12.2 percent through 2013 in contrast to a non-digital growth rate of 1.2 percent. So traditional-minded media might ask itself: which growth sector makes more sense to pursue?

Tomorrow's media model will be everywhere or nowhere.

When migrating media learns how to deliver valued content over the same old coverage and shift its one-way communication model into two-way community development, then advertisers will have a real reason to invest advertising dollars in order to capture those communities. However, and in the meantime, right now it makes more sense for companies to develop their own online communities while media struggles to sort it all out.

After all, digital spending is projected to rise to 25 percent of total industry revenues in 2013, up from 17 percent in 2008. And advertisers will continue to shift toward new media, boosting Internet advertising to 19 percent of U.S. advertising by 2013, from 13 percent in 2008. In other words, the hard choice media needs to make today is whether they want to be everywhere or nowhere at all. And that choice will not be made by media alone.

Content Related To The PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report

Digital spending to fuel slower media growth-PwC by James Pethokoukis

Pricewaterhouse Coopers Notices We're Going Digital by Catharine P. Taylor

PricewaterhouseCoopers Study Finds A Positive Outlook For Digital Media Growth by Stuart Elliot

Reinventing Public Relations: Edelman PR

You don't have to agree with Richard Edelman of Edleman PR, an independent global PR firm, to appreciate some of the finer points of the presentation delivered at Georgetown University. Social media has changed public relations and mass communication in ways that few people ever expected.

From Edelman's perspective, public relations is faced with the challenge to evolve from pitching to informing, control to credibility, from one-off stories to continuing conversations, from influencing elites to engaging a new cadre of influencers.

Yet, for some, in looking at these four points for the evolution of public relations, they might wonder where public relations took the red pill. Was it ever about the pitch? Were they ever in control of communication? Was the focus on one-off stories? And was public relations really a game of expanding influence? Was the public relations world so bleak or is that the tone to make a brave new world seem twice as bright and shiny?

There is probably too much content for the confines of a single post to address those questions. So it might be best to stick with just three.

What Was Public Relations?

Bill Sledzik, an associate professor at Kent State University (and one of the few people I know who has an aversion to online typos like I do, even our own), still reigns with one of the best sum-ups on what public relations might be, assuming it never became what Edelman suggests it is today.

The point is that Sledzik's post has become required reading for my students, specifically because none of the definitions presented include words like "pitch," "control," "influence," or "one-off stories."

Who Owns Social Media?

If there was ever a misnomer in communication, it's the constant question of who owns social media. Does public relations own it? Marketing? Advertising? Social media experts?

While I often share the idea of integrated communication because social media skill sets tend to pull from all communication-related disciplines, the less obvious answer is no one owns it beyond the people who participate.

Why Are Influencers Nouns?

While there is enough good in Edelman's presentation to encourage people to read it, there is plenty wrong too.

The best of it mirrors some recent research we completed. It demonstrated to one of our clients that engaged citizens are much more likely to promote the organization's message than are members of the media, despite the fact that the organization devotes more than 90 percent of its time to media relations.

The worst of it keeps reinforcing this notion that there are new influencers. I used to think so, and might use the term for simplicity on occasion. However, Edelman keeps missing that while anyone can have influence about a subject or within a network for a varied period of time, the bigger picture suggests there aren't any influencers. And even if there were influencers, that noun is seldom permanent.

Changing Times: From Print To Push

As a foreshadow toward a possible yet uncertain future, two newspapers — The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — carried stories that mark the sign of the times.

The Washington Post featured an article highlighting the public struggles of the Boston Globe, which many expect could close in as little as 60 days. Meanwhile, The New York Times asked its readership if big-screen e-readers might save newspapers. Some of the new models, which are expected to be released by the end of the year, are coming much closer to electronic paper as imagined more than 35 years ago (and imagined in the fictional world of Harry Potter).

Newspapers And Other Content At The Edge Of A Chasm

For several years, the most pragmatic viewpoint about newspapers has been that they might be dying but news is thriving. Indeed, the problems faced by newspapers have been confined to one of distribution and economics.

Subscription-based content on a more portable e-reader might be the answer, provided newspapers learn to segment their free online vs. subscription-based publications. Content duplication has clearly hastened the demise of print.

The analogy is simple enough. Journalism will survive and leap forward to the other side. So the real question is what will we find once we get there. That is a toss up. While most people focus on the short term, asking whether newspapers will shift toward more localized reporting with an influx of citizen journalists or more relaxed professionals, the real challenge remains content oversight.

In 2007, we asked that question with the advent of the Kindle, already recognizing that the Internet solution-providers were starting to ask questions as to how much content control they wanted as distribution platforms. At the time, people laughed to think Amazon or anyone would attempt to control content. It's not in their nature, proponents said.

Not everyone is laughing now. Apple rejected an update of the Nine Inch Nails iPhone update, saying that it contains “objectionable content.” YouTube, as if in defiance of What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, is hoping to police product placement, thereby collecting a cut from certain content creators.

The Leap Is Simple Provided People Keep Their Senses

To be fair, it's new territory for everybody. And sometimes, future solutions are easier to come by than the vision of the people shaping it today.

What Could Google Do? Simple. Stick to what it knows best — developing great distribution platforms. And rather than worry about product placement, it might consider a tiered approach to bandwidth with premium video being streamed for a monthly content creator rate. For everyone else, free as always.

What Could Apple Do? Rather than reject material based upon questionable content, it might consider opening a separate section for adults. And no, we don't mean an electronic version of the original local video store. Rather, something like NIN can stick to creating content.

What Could Newspapers Do? Really, if the problem is distribution because printed products are too expensive, then it's well past time to partner with electronic paper makers. Some people might be willing to pay a modest rate for subscription service to some papers for delivery by application or e-reader. Just keep the price models in check. Almost everyone knows that subscription fees never really paid for print (so split the subscription with the distributor or whatever); advertising did.

Ignoring Audience: Traditional Thinking

According to a new study by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), a consumer behavior research firm, audiences are spending more time multitasking while watching broadcast programs than ever before.

Specifically, the study found that TV watchers spend an average of 9.3 percent of their time online while simultaneously watching television. Among viewers watching broadcast TV, 11 percent also are surfing the Web. For cable viewers, it’s 8.2 percent.

"During the past year, there has been much debate about the perils of making television programming available via the Internet," said Amanda Welsh, head of research for Integrated Media Measurement Inc. “While some have speculated or feared that online accessibility would cannibalize television audiences, our data shows that the affinity of DVR users to view television episodes online offers advertisers new opportunities to recapture a desirable audience that had been slipping away."

Of the people who watched primetime programming both online and on a DVR during the month, 35 percent watched four or more episodes online, compared with 15 percent for people who watched prime time programming both online and on live television. Of the people who watched prime time programming both online and on a DVR, 30 percent went online only once, compared with 57 percent for people who watched prime time programming both online and on live television.

Previously, IMMI had found 50 percent of online viewing are audience members watching episodes they missed on television. They are either filling in an episode online when they had already seen the other episodes around it on TV (18.7%), or they are catching up on an episode online after seeing the subsequent episodes on TV (31.3%). The other 50% are apparently viewers using the Internet to check out shows, replacing the channel flipping or sampling they might have done on the television in the past.

Integration Over Traditional Thinking Is Key

The bottom line is that advertisers cannot continue to afford a singular mindset as if to choose television over online marketing. As the IMMI study suggests, consumers do not distinguish between delivery systems.

They simply want to watch their programs. And we're not the only ones to think so.

“To effectively utilize digital media, and promote its integration with traditional media, marketers and advertisers must overcome the two obstacles that continuously arise: education and measurement,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers told TV Week. “Only once the industry takes steps to become savvy will integrated marketers be able to fully embrace all that advertising today can offer a brand.”

We're seeing it play out exactly like this with one of the projects we're currently engaged in. While more traditional thinkers on the team are quick to dismiss the greater impact of other team members (both with product and with exposure), the 360-degree view demonstrates the audience does not distinguish between entertainment assets such as soundtrack and film nor do they distinguish between traditional media and online engagement. Rather, the audience sees various elements as different contact points working toward each other.

In this case, as the online audience learns about exposure in traditional media, they rush to review the content and set the tone for non-engaged reader feedback left on the traditional articles. In essence, they are both engaged promoters and media consumers. No one can really separate the two as traditional marketers/public relations practitioners and social media experts tend to do nor as advertising and public relations or print, broadcast, and online proponents continue to do. Nor even as broadcast/print or online programmers/online continue to do for that matter.

Integrated communication, working seamlessly together on assets or promotion, will deliver the best return on investment over the long term, which is best described about 90 days. That's right. Ninety days is long term, and online, even seven seems like an eternity.

Some Related Ideas

• Is social media a revolution in local government communications? by Simon Wakeman

• 365 is the new 360 by Tom Beckman

• Beginning 2009: The year of communication from Copywrite, Ink.

Switching Hitters: Left Brain Or Right?

Understanding psychology is great fun for advertisers and marketers. So much fun that there has always been ample discussion whether purchasing decisions are made with the left brain (rational) or right brain (emotional).

It's even more fun to discover that there is so much discussion in this topical area that, depending on the day, the same sources are really arguing among themselves. And, each time they do, they benefit from the coverage. Case in point.

The Case For The Left Brain.

Last year, Branding Strategy published a post by Jack Trout, which makes the case for rational advertising over emotional advertising. In it, they cite Mark Penn's book, Microtrends, that stresses "the rational side of people is far more powerful in many areas of life than the purely emotional side."

The post then goes on to cite TiVo, the current leader in digital video recorders (DVRs), which had just examined the commercial viewing habits of some 20,000 TiVo-equipped households, including which ad campaigns are fast-forwarded past by the lowest percentage of viewers. The results, they concluded, weigh heavily in favor of rational arguments.

Of course, Branding Strategy revised this thinking later in the year, suggesting the opposite was true in 12 Causes of Bad Brand Advertising. Brad VanAuken cited Harding’s 1996 study of buyers in ten corporations that "demonstrated that corporate buyers overwhelmingly rely on personal and emotional reasons over rational ones in their purchase choice."

That's okay. TiVo changed its position too.

The Case For The Right Brain.

TiVo, working with Innerscope Research, a biometric research firm, released a new study that suggests the opposite.

In a live study of 55 national ads, TiVo and Innerscope found that TV viewers are 25 percent more likely to fast-forward through ads with low emotional engagement than those with high emotional engagement. The data suggests that ads that are more emotionally engaging are more likely to be viewed in their entirety even in a time-shifted environment.

“We’re measuring emotions because emotions matter,” says Carl Marci, CEO of Innerscope Research, in a related article. "The science is very clear that emotions are prime determinants of behavior."

The study was originally conducted in late 2008, and then compared live biometric monitoring of emotional engagement with scores from TiVo's Stop||Watch(TM) ratings service, which collects anonymous, second-by-second audience research data from 100,000 TiVo subscribers. When the two metrics were compared, the emotional engagement of Innerscope's viewers correctly predicted whether, and how many, viewers would elect to fast forward at any given moment.

Our Take On The Brain.

We don't pick sides. For all the studies, it seems obvious that people are people, and different people react differently to different things.

Some people are predisposed to making emotional purchasing decisions based on personal trends (the shiny object afflicted) or because they want to help others (chronic solution providers). Others are predisposed to making rational purchasing decisions based on price point (bottom liners) or a logical presentation of facts (analytically enabled). Most people are some degree of two (assuming they aren't polar opposites).

Most advertising has a tendency to target one trait extremely well — e.g., children's cold medicine — or some pairing of the two — e.g., a cheap and trendy app. Of course, the very best advertising, which you don't see very often, hits all four equally.

If you still want to keep it simple, emotional vs. logical advertising, there is one broad-based solution. Emotional communication most often attracts interest while rational communication closes the deal or at least prevents buyer's remorse. And if you don't believe it, then wait for the next study that reveals whatever the opposite of whatever today's study says.

As for which advertisements do most consumers really fast forward? They fast forward on the very first bad commercial, and all those that are unfortunate to follow it during the break. No study needed.

Shifting Ad Dollars: Reckitt-Benckiser Migration

"We've seen a fundamental shift in consumer consumption and media habits migrating over to digital video. Obviously YouTube started it, but we want to be aligned with professional content. With broadband getting to the scale that it has, the shift has happened. The integration of traditional and digital media is here now." — Marc Fonzetti, media manager and internet specialist for Reckitt-Benckiser

According to AdvertisingAge, Reckitt-Benckiser joins a long line of companies that are increasingly interested in the net. The company plans to shift an estimated $20 million in TV ad dollars to the Web for more than 15 of its brands, including: Lysol, Air Wick, Mucinex, Finish and Clearasil. $20 million is still only a small percentage of its estimated $475 million media purchased, but signals an accelerated migration.

The increasing emphasis on the Internet isn't only about CPM. Its also about market share. The company, which markets everything from Electrasol dishwasher products to French's mustard expects to increase its market share from 30 to 31/32 percent in 2009. Even more striking, Rob De Groot, head of the group's North America and Australia region confirmed what our research for some of our accounts has been saying for some time.

"The start of the recession has been here for the last six months. We haven't seen any recession in our numbers," he said, according to Reuters. "There is no reason to doubt that our innovation-led strategy is not working."

Right. Recessions are elective. Innovation is exempt.

Reckitt-Benckiser has frequently led the U.K. stock gains, including adding 7.6 percent profit after beating analysts’ estimates in February. The real losers in their most recent move might be major TV network Web sites. Reckitt-Benckiser decided to partner with ad-serving video ad networks such as Glam, Tidal TV, YuMe and Brightroll, rather than TV network Web sites, to avoid higher online CPM charges.

It's long past time for advertising agencies and communication-related firms to consider the obvious. Convergence is accelerating at a increasingly rapid pace. In fact, from our independent research, there is virtually no one under age of 30 that distinguishes media from social media or broadcast from online digital. Besides that, traditional broadcast doesn't reach mobile.

All this means that 2009 is shaping up to be exactly what we said it might be. Except, this is the year of communication in three months, not 12.