Communications disruption: consumer preferences are probably enabled by technology not caused by it
The growth of media such as Netfex and the like, creating and broadcasting programs free of advertising; time shifting, seamless storage options, and programming on demand are combining to create a world where viewers don’t have to endure the drudgery of meaningless adverts.
This of course is playing havoc with the media industry’s revenue streams and established processes of doing business and naturally inhibiting their profits and returns to their stakeholders.
But is it technology that is causing the disruption?
I believe not; in essence, the disruption is being facilitated by technology but is actually being caused by the consuming public.
For years it has been apparent that advertisements are no more than irritants, the tax we have had to pay to watch TV (or read magazines for that matter); simultaneously, content (programming and articles and the like) has become formulaic, often mundane with the odd sparkle.
For years we have had to endure increasingly poor and demotivating program interludes; offering nothing to our leisure time experience.
The model (good programs generate viewers, available eyeballs create marketing opportunity, space is a valuable commodity to be sold and purchased), created a wonderfully profitable and stable industry one in whose interests the paradigms were most suited.
Audiences just had to put up with it!
The derived communication and persuasion models were and are hopelessly inadequate. One only has to read researched material of Douglas Holt, Dan Airely. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and David Lewis, to understand that the media space / advertising brand model was always doomed.
The question is where to now?
Consumer Decision making and behaviour is far more complex than the currently used models; suggest; the notion that programming ratings provide commercial engagement opportunity and that people are prepared to pay for space predicated on household distribution are empirically challenged
Well, consumers are voting with their remote controls; ensuring that they don’t have to watch program re-runs and meaningless advertising interludes.
It is clear that high engagement products have already shifted into a content relevant era; unfortunately, the media model that participants individually and collectively use actually do not assist in this endeavour.
Media owners are choosing to orchestrate their digital assets / channels as broadcast mediums just as they would TV or radio.
Savvy marketers on the other hand see digital platforms as communication channels in which audience not only participates but drives.
Unless media owners recognise that marketers need to participate in the content creation, that the entire process is based on what people want to hear, and not what the media owner nor marketer) want to say; then this will similarly result in media owners ‘tears’
For those interested in this topic I recommend:
Douglas Holt’s :
- How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding
- Branding in the Age of Social Media: Harvard business Review March 2016