Marketing

Issue No. 34 - April/May 2007

Should you advertise in new media?

by Dr David Corkindale and Dr David Corkindale

Will newspapers disappear?

If they are, should you be learning how best to use other advertising channels like sponsoring much-used local websites or email?

Well, let’s consider if the demise of media channels like newspapers is imminent.

I remember running courses on the marketing use of the internet in the late 1990s. I was convinced that newspapers would disappear because the internet offers a better way to advertise many of the things, like cars and jobs, that appear in the newspapers’ classified sections and which generated much income for them.

The logic seemed irrefutable: income from advertising pays for the newspaper to be produced – the cover price hardly pays for the ink – then for newspapers to continue, if classified income disappears, they must put up the cover price but people won’t pay. So, end of newspapers.

That hasn’t happened in spite of the classified sections getting smaller, particularly for things like cars.

What has happened is a common phenomenon that occurs often when a new technology comes along, and I should have known. Rather than replace what has gone before innovation tends to generate additional forms of business, new customers are tapped and the market expands.

The coming of radio was forecast to eliminate the need for newspapers; the advent of television was forecast to eliminate the cinema; email would shut down Australia Post.

A reason why the ‘old’ media will continue is that they do provide good benefits for some audiences and some advertisers: horses for courses. It’s an elementary marketing principle at work.

So, newspapers will be with us for quite a while yet as they do serve a purpose, providing benefits that can and are being enhanced, but also they used to subsidise the fledgling internet-based services and now these can subsidise the newspaper, if necessary.

A media revolution is happening — but it is a mixed media one!

I visited Hong Kong a while ago and over the next day received three SMSs on my mobile phone offering me a tourist guide. If you book a ticket for something like a Rolling Stones concert you will get sent a bar code as an SMS. You will show this to a scanner to get into the venue – no old-tech, paper tickets involved; fridges talk to yoghurts, blogs can be projected onto contact lenses etc.

New capabilities are undoubtedly with us. What they are not doing is making old media redundant. What we are witnessing is people adapting to the multiplicity of media – they will use what is most appropriate for their purpose, at the time and place that suits them.

So, kids who use MySpace and look at YouTube also lounge in front of the TV and listen to radio at times: the average person watches more hours of conventional TV now than 10 years ago!

At Christmas time and for birthdays will people prefer to buy a CD or DVD in a nice big box to give as a present rather than an austere little voucher sticker on a card?

The implications

Being able to digitise content and transmit it easily is great but has its limitations. Not being able to ‘see’ and touch things tends to reduce perceived value.

Having things easily and cheaply available drives a need for exclusivity. We go to the Entertainment Centre to see Eric Clapton along with 10,000 others not just to hear the music, which we could have heard on our iPod in probably better definition.

Consumers do not care what technology is used, digital or analogue, as long as it delivers the best media experience for a given circumstance.

The challenge for advertisers is to know, or find out, what medium people prefer to find out about, or be reminded about, their products and services.

An extreme example would be if you were a movie company who’d made a period romantic drama, would showing clips on YouTube be the best way to promote it? Probably not as you’d want to be able to engender the right mood and ambience for the trailers that only big-screen, high definition TV ads would provide.

On the other hand, if you run horse racing events it is possibly better to send SMS reminders of an upcoming event to the racing fraternity than mass-media advertising to many who have no interest in it.

How do you get the phone numbers to send out a mass SMS message? It is quite possible – essentially you use old devices, like an easy competition at the last event, but that’s a necessary part of being able to use new technology.

So, the decisions are not about the use of old media versus the new but how we can best deliver perceptions of value to our clients.