Strategic Insights – We’ve Got Ideas

Last week, my students and I had a fascinating conversation about new media and interactive advertising. Our “virtual guest,” who was beamed into our classroom via digital technology, was Dr. Cassandra Jeyaram, the Social Marketing Manager of IHG which is headquartered in Atlanta. IHG is InterContinental Hotels Group, and they own some of the premier hotel brands in the world

Dr. Jeyaram took the students through the range of new media options available to marketers and advertisers. Clearly, there is an intriguing array of new options for reaching target audiences via new technology. Dr. Jeyaram provided some valuable lessons learned about using these tools in generating increased business, more frequent hotel visits, and elevating brand engagement.

But I thought Dr. Jeyaram made a larger point that was even more valuable than the descriptions and explanations of the specific channels or tools of our new media world.

She told the students how it was her job, working along with the various brand managers of the different hotel brands, to develop specific strategies and establish firm objectives for using the new media options. For example, brand managers will come to her in an excited fashion, proclaiming that they “want a blog” for their specific hotel brand. Or perhaps they want to include a podcast on their hotel web site, or they want to create a Facebook page for their brand. Part of Dr. Jeyaram’s role is to persuade these brand managers to think about exactly what they are trying to accomplish with a blog or a podcast or some other new media tool. She makes them craft a clear objective statement prior to execution. Often, these brand managers may find that their well-written objective may point to a different new media tool altogether.

In other words, new media tools are a means to an end.

Dr. Jeyaram also insists upon clearly written and agreed upon benchmarks for success. These objectives must contain hard numbers for measuring the success of the new media tool. Is the proposed blog designed to increase visits by 10% over a year or is it about increasing brand affinity by 20% over three years? Just what is the brand team after?

These very specific goals are the only way to measure the usefulness and success of the new media tools now available to marketers and advertisers. In the new media world, accountability is a primary driver.

These new media tools can be great fun for marketers to implement, but they are not toys. Ultimately, they are meant to drive business and grow brands.

Podcasts and podcasting are on the verge of becoming mainstream in a very big way. When NBC starts promoting the podcasts for their most popular news programs numerous times each day………as they are doing now, you know that something is up. Podcasts and podcasting are just about to take off right down the middle of our cultural landscape.

And of course, we are not just talking about music here. We are talking about visual and audio content covering news, information, sports, entertainment, electronics, politics, and even education. Podcasting can included a range of diverse content.

Podcasting offers marketers and advertisers two opportunities.One is to produce their own podcasts containing unique content. Placing this content on their Web site allows others to download the content and view or listen to it on their desktop, laptop, iPod or another type of MP3 player. For example, I listened to a podcast the other day from “Pardon the Interruption,” the popular ESPN television show. Plus, iTunes allows anyone to upload their podcasts to the iTunes podcast library, making those podcasts available to anyone.

Frankly, we think this is a very valuable tool of which many of our clients should take advantage. Imagine creating a podcast for a new product or service introduction, say a new drink at a local bar or restaurant or a new workout regimen at a local health club. What if a client has a product that needs some in-depth explaining? A podcast could really help there. One’s imagination can really run away with this concept. Talk about getting your customers and potential customers engaged in a product or service.

Oh, man.

The other opportunity is to advertise on podcasts. Granted, placing ads on podcasts is in the very early stages of development. In fact, at the University of Tennessee, along with my research partners, we conducted a content analysis on advertising and podcasts and discovered that only 29% of podcasts have any advertising on them at all. And among the podcasts with advertising, the average number of ads was 2.4 per podcast. Most of this advertising was in the form of sponsorships, not traditional ad placement of 30 second spots interspersed throughout the content. The sponsorship model, often used with public radio or public television programs, allows for a limited amount of content interruption. For podcasts, this is key because a large part of their appeal, aside from time and location shifting, is the fact that the content is largely still pure and uninterrupted.

Our research recommends that advertisers and their advertising agencies follow a set of guidelines when advertising on podcasts. In essence, these guidelines recommend continuing to follow the sponsorship model, allowing listeners to enjoy the content without periodic breaks or interruptions. Generally, our overall recommendation is to suggest to advertisers and podcast content providers to respect the listener and maintain the integrity of the content. It is our belief that listeners or viewers of podcasts will respond to an advertising message if the advertisers respect the audience and the content. For that matter, the same goes for blogs.

Oh, if you are interested in learning more about our research on podcasts, please contact us. We will be more than happy to take you through our findings.

Many marketers and advertisers instinctively write off academic research for business purposes as they consider it useless and irrelevant for their purposes. This type of research, they say, is simply “academic.” But does academic research really have no place in our real world business lives? Can it not provide a valuable perspective on some issues we grapple with in advertising and marketing?

I think it is entirely too simplistic just to write off academic research completely. Granted, much of it is theory based and therefore not particularly applicable to marketers’ needs for quick reads on consumer attitudes and behaviors. Of course, little of it deals with specific product areas. Certainly, sample size and composition of those samples are also a concern. And a lot of academic research is published a year or two after the research was originally conducted.

However, if one is careful and knows where to look, some academic research can be of value. As long as one realizes that most of the research is quite broad in its perspective and typically attempting to reinforce or build on a theory, valuable nuggets can be located.

For example, we found some useful data on consumers’ use of coupons that assisted us in the development of a coupon strategy for a specific client. We also found articles explaining how consumers are engaging with content found in interactive advertising. This learning helped us develop the agency’s overall strategy for advertising on new media. Obviously, this whole “new media” area is timely and vital for marketers to understand as we lunge further into an Internet-based communicaiton world.

The key to locating good learning in academic research is being familiar with the key journals and the types of articles found in these journals….or at least finding someone who is familiar with them. And of course, one has to be able to cut through all the academic jargon that infests these articles, making it practically impossible for any normal human being to read.

Remember, nuggets of wisdom are there and often worth the effort and time involved in looking for them.