It's easy to get overwhelmed by information in the media industry. ONMEDIA, OMD's regional newsletter, gives a clear understanding of the media issues which affect your business most. Read this select article from a recent ONMEDIA here or subscribe to receive regular issues.

Issue No.7. Winter 2006

Are people dancing to the beat of your brand?

Oliver Trethewey
Director of Business Innovation
FUSE Branded Entertainment

The demands of an astute and enabled consumer, combined with increasingly diverse distribution channels, means the pressure is on advertisers to innovate – and music provides an ideal platform. However, the potential of campaigns will only be realised if they enhance consumers’ experience of life and are seen as a route to having fun, says Oliver Trethewey, Director of Business Innovation and Music Specialist for FUSE Branded Entertainment, part of the Omnicom Media Group. In Trethewey’s view, advertisers have responded to recent changes in the media landscape in three distinct ways: denial, central control and (varying degrees of) innovation. “For those in denial, the next three-to-five years will not actually prove them totally wrong,” he says. “Traditional media will have a significant role to play in advertising for the foreseeable future and investment in it will continue to show a reasonable return.”

Trethewey reserves his greatest doubts for corporations advocating central control: “In cases where strategy dictates that ‘we now have to spend x% of total marketing budget in each country on digital or experiential media,’ I believe there are some painful lessons to be learnt about regional specifics and the very nature of these new media channels, which is flexibility,” he says.

It is the innovators who stand to gain the most going forwards, according to Trethewey. “There is a growing collection of incredibly interesting media campaigns out there that integrate above-the-line and below-the-line elements and offer consumers more than just product information and subtle manipulation or coercion,” he notes.

Spectrum of innovation

The key question now, Trethewey believes, is how to encourage more brands across Europe to do the same – to experiment and see that ‘live media’ (including experiential, endorsement and sponsorship) is a key element of marketing today. “We need to develop the concept of content creation and resulting association with a brand,” he says. “This content can then move us from a distant, interruptive relationship with the consumer to a close, integrated one, taking the brand from the periphery of a consumer’s consciousness to a place inside their everyday life.”

According to Trethewey, there is a spectrum of innovation that advertisers can work through, culminating in Activation, where content or endorsement are truly leveraged and a lasting connection between brand and consumers is made.

The 30” spot concept, which lies at one extreme of the spectrum, needs no further explanation. It is the simplest interruptive content available and drives pure brand message. One step beyond it, in Trethewey’s view, lies Sponsored Programming. There is increasing acceptance of adding brand ‘curtains’ to the beginning and end of a show which has particular relevance to the brand target audience. This does move beyond the 30” spot mechanism, Trethewey acknowledges, because it offers the brand the reassurance of ratings, exposure, and quantifiable return but with limited scope for creativity and some risk, due to lack of content control within the sponsored programme. “With Sponsored Programming, brand association is often peripheral,” he says. “It’s a bit like standing next to a pop star – it may make you look slightly cool but it won’t actually make you sing better!”

The next point in the spectrum, Advertiser Funded Programming (AFP), has more potential, according to Trethewey, because it allows the brand message to be more fully integrated throughout content but can still be measured by established metrics of impact and ratings. “The problem is that costs here are much higher than for a 30” spot and brands often fail to see that – where there is little other activation or supported media spending – the programme can languish in an undesirable slot or suffer low ratings and so the campaign can appear, wrongly, to be failing,” he explains. Focusing on the example of the music medium, Trethewey argues that the provision of pure music content within AFP is becoming redundant. “I believe formats like the Pepsi Chart Show should be taken to new levels and developed beyond purchased content (the music acts) to offer new music podcasts for more regular brand/consumer contact, music technology updates and much more,” he says. “The focus should be to create viable new platforms from which all forms of consumer contact can be driven. In this way, media formats provide a unifying glue and ‘platform’ is re-defined as a broader customer relationship mechanism. Brands should not rest on an obvious connection and format.”

Missing dimension

Continuing along Trethewey’s spectrum, Endorsement follows next, with celebrity promotion used to gain exposure and awareness for brand-message-enhanced content. Endorsement – which is essentially a combination of 30” advertising and AFP – is a key area where, he believes, brands start to diverge in their understanding and their willingness to invest and activate.

“I feel L’Oreal is a notorious example of a brand which lacks any form of activation investment in its big endorsement properties and which, instead, relies on the unspoken assumption that, by buying a product, the consumer will somehow ‘become like’ that celebrity,” says Trethewey. “Brands like this are trying to sell ‘identity enhancers’ whereas we at OMD Fuse believe the public are increasingly seeking ‘experience enhancers.’ Surely a campaign that spends as much on talent as L’Oreal, should be looking to develop this association to include real handson consumer experiences, such as podcast haircare tips, competitions to win celebrity stylists for the day and interactive web-based consultations with stars.”

In Trethewey’s view, L’Oreal is not alone in relying on pure ‘celebrity’ without innovation: GAP (Madonna, Missy Elliott), Sketchers Trainers, (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera) and others all fail to capitalise fully on the allure of their celebrity endorsers, he says. What these brands must do, Trethewey believes, is strive to create genuinely new content and experiences and that’s where the most immersive end of the spectrum comes into play – Activation.

“Take the Sony Ericsson/Orange campaign with Christina Aguilera – yes, there was exclusive content, the ring tone, the wallpaper and the concert tickets,” he says. “But I for one would like a Christina Aguilera DVD showing me how to use my phone, I’d like a MMS from her to me at the end of the month telling me I should be on a different tariff, I’d like a voicemail from her thanking me for being an Orange customer. All of these things are easily created and easily personalised.”

Trethewey sees Experiential Marketing – immersing the consumer in the product, or more often its values and those to which it would most like to become associated – as a natural extension of the more innovative elements of Activation. This ‘live media’ is essential to any modern marketing mix that seeks to give the consumer more than a simple interruptive message and instead wishes to reward and develop a more significant relationship, he says. The problem comes in proving to advertisers that the live element of a campaign is economically viable, because ratings no longer serve as a guide and the only available metrics include surveying, attendance, redemption (for promotional offers), brand image and simply ‘giving people a good time’.

“Several credible case studies have emerged which show that this trend for the experiential is leading to a more effective form of marketing. There was the small Tiger Beer Underground Boxing/Asian Music event, which ended in huge PR, lengthy queues and significant brand awareness uplift,” he says, “and then there are the much larger events, like the Vodafone Live Music Awards, which delivered to fans an interactive, multi-platform experience connecting them with their favourite artists.”

Let us entertain them

Turning the spotlight onto activation raises several pertinent issues for the European media industry; for music in particular the industry has yet to commoditise the product in the same way that sport has. “With sport, there are clear formats for sponsorship – the shirt, the pitch banners, the ball and so on. Each has an established market value and each can still be directly related back to TV-style metrics,” he says. “But for music, whilst the content is equally emotive and experiential activity is readily available, the record labels and artist/tour management have not yet moved into becoming truly collaborative and still expect to finance a much more limited and customised range of opportunities.”

Trethewey is quick to point out that some artists are making bold moves: David Bowie (with his in theatre simultaneous broadcasts), Cash Machine by Hard-Fi (with their alternative video endings for Mobile through 3) and Duran Duran (with their Second Life performance), amongst others. But he maintains that the music industry overall is still bogged down by publishing issues, rights ownership and a historical wariness between labels, publishers, managers, artists and brands. Before true innovation can be achieved in music media and beyond, it is the media industry itself that must look at a different type of problem altogether, Trethewey adds.

“When it comes to campaign activation and experiential marketing, I believe media agencies and creative agencies have yet to work out their respective roles and responsibilities,” he says.

“Is it the job of the creative to come up with the live activation or is it the job of the planner to choose to allocate money to a specific live experience? That’s what we have to sort out if we are going to expect advertisers to commit money to these critical activities.”

Trethewey’s final point is an appeal to all members of the European media industry to join the growing group of innovators and not to opt for denial or for central control. “In six weeks, six months, six years, the marketing landscape will continue to change irrevocably and I do believe that we must move with the times, along this media spectrum,” he says. “We need to stop thinking in terms of ROI and KPI for a ‘demographic group’ and start thinking in terms of putting a smile on the face of the consumer, through interesting and value-added engagement.”

This is something OMD Fuse is keen to drive, shifting the traditional client/ media agency dynamic, by pushing innovation beyond the traditional ‘big 6’ media channels. We have invested heavily in developing a pan- European team of ‘on the ground’ experts in each market, and are currently active in projects ranging from French endorsement deals, Finnish branded music competitions, German car launch strategies, and European wide efforts for an airline client to develop consumer loyalty and engagement through a significant shift in their traditional advertising methods. Our strength lies in our ability to understand our clients goals’ and long term strategies in detail, and combine this knowledge with incisive market analysis and an in-depth understanding of all brand/consumer contact points to innovate, engage and deliver outstanding results.