August 11, 2010

Broadcasting: A Fertile Ground to BE DiFFERENT

I recently spoke to the Annual Conference of the BC Association of Broadcaster in Victoria BC. The topic of my presentation was “BE DiFFERENT: The Key to Stayin’ Alive”.

This was my advice:
- embrace the digital revolution. Opportunities abound if you are open to them.
- ignore the competitor hordes at your door. Spend your time focusing on how you intend to keep your audience from leaving as opposed to keeping the competitors from entering. Create Barriers to Audience Exit.
- stop thinking that you need to ‘reach ears’. It assumes that a specific advertising message will appeal to everyone. Not the case. Everyone is DiFFERENT with special tastes and interests. The challenge is to define small audience clusters of interested maniacal raving fans and target the appropriate message to them.
- mass markets are gone. In fact they have never existed.
- long live the emergence (in our minds) of differentiated customer clusters of interested, caring and connected people.
- advertisers are moving away from traditional media for two reasons: one, they look at ‘old’ media spend as an expense. Difficult to measure the ROI. Second, many are moving to on-line advertising. On-line ad expenditures will grow from $17 Billion in 2006 to $70 Billion in 2011. Reason? On-line advertising results be measured. On-line allows advertisers to treat their spend as a investment and justify it.
- if you can’t measure the ROI why are you spending the money? Traditional media needs to get on the ‘measure-the-results’ bandwagon.
- the ‘passive’ media product is under attack! Interactivity is more in demand. The Oscars this past year were actually viewed more than in prior years because viewers were watching with their computer in their lap. Exchanging Tweets with their friends. Reading live blogs from Entertainment experts. Using mobile devices.
- interactivity creates a DiFFERENT experience for media consumers. They like Experiences. Experiences require interaction.
- interaction should be the strategic theme of any media plan going forward.
- move from flogging passive programs to producing personalized Packages of Interactive Experiences. Target them to the raving fans that covet them. They are NOT for the mass of ears.
- covet the competencies you need to deliver the above. Many are going to on-line. If you don’t have the right people you don’t have a business.
- SEGMENT your audience. SEGMENT it again, and again and again until you are able to define audiences with special unique interests. Demographics don’t cut it. Discover the Secrets of people; use them to define your marketing approach.

The parallels between the challenges facing traditional media and the Telecom business (I spent 30+ years in it) some 20 years ago are staggering. I trust they will learn from our successes and mistakes.

Click here to view my presentation

Cheers, Roy
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