Winning in Today’s Media Ecology

Nearly four decades ago, Neil Postman, NYU professor, media theorist, and cultural critic, (as well as a member of my very own Doctoral Dissertation Committee) predicted the coming of what he termed a “media ecology.”

Postman noted, “Media ecology is how the media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling and value,” an observation which astoundingly reflects the problem modern marketers are faced with daily. Especially when it comes to strategic planning, branding, advertising, promotion, co-branding, media planning, engagement and, well, pretty much modern marketing.

Ten years later, Marshall McLuhan observed that a “media ecology means arranging various media to help each other buttress one medium with another,” which even more astoundingly sounds like the current challenge marketers and planners face regarding cross-media consumption and the effect it has on engagement, brand development, and sales. (McLuhan also said, “most of our assumptions have outlived their usefulness,” and that was 40 years ago before things got so complicated. And he was an optimist!)

Anyway, one can argue about the precise date this media ecology finally arrived in its full-blown complexity – usually without an appointment – in the reception areas of major corporations like P&G and General Motors and Coca Cola and at advertising agencies like Omnicom, Interpublic, and JWT. Or you can debate upon which convoluted continuum the old media environment migrated.

While you’re doing that, keep in mind the absolutely incontrovertible truth, which is a real, 21st century media ecology – an environment where consumers are virtually cocooned by/have access to media of one sort or another on a literal 24:7 basis – has arrived. Oh, yes, and one other thing, that media planning for successfully winning the battle for consumers’ hearts, minds, and wallets in this multi-media ecology is more complex than ever before. Particularly when it comes to “cross-media consumption.”

And it’s not just the media. The need for a real measure of cross-media consumption has been further amplified by the rapidly evolving ways in which consumers use, juggle, adopt, and “gate keep” old and new media. Also, in light of the reality that burgeoning “new” media technologies have become more and more accepted – and used – as “media platforms.”

Many prescient companies like ABC TV and Rainbow Media have been researching media engagement “models.” They’re not the only ones, of course, but typically most of the less-useful forays into cross-media consumption relate only to “awareness,” “brand favorability,” and “purchase intent.”

Now that may sound impressive, but marketers should be wary when they hear those words. It’s prudent to remember that the brands that are actually doing enough marketing to warrant some curiosity and concern regarding cross-media consumption have already attained high levels of awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intention. These days, those kinds of excellent answers to meaningless questions are worth about 10¢ a ton.

Content providers, like Disney’s ESPN, who have been developing digital media – including Internet, mobile, digital audio and video (with an emphasis on supporting digital media growth, ad sales, branding and content development) – have recently brought in specialists to help advance cross-media research. That’s because they realize that you can’t keep arguing that more is better, even if it is a “sports” venue that you’re talking about!

Yes, some media formats are more practicable than others. Others more “cost-effective.” But that has always been the case, even in simpler times. Each touch point’s sales force argues that they incorporate a unique set and subset of values and nuances and capabilities to engage, communicate, inform, and persuade. And – based upon our predictive Brand-to-Media Engagement (B2ME) metrics – some are actually more efficacious for certain categories and brands than others – especially when one considers that more and more content providers are looking to support digital media growth.

It is equally true, for that very reason, that more and more marketers are utilizing a variety of touch points to communicate their existence and differentiation, and their messages and values to their intended target audiences, with, one hopes, the ultimate goal – beyond awareness, favorability, and purchase intent – of getting target audiences to actually reach into their wallets and buy their products. Embracing more and different media touch points theoretically optimizes the opportunity the brand has to engage the target consumer, since any one consumer uses different forms of media at different times, some even simultaneously. And that being the case, reasonable men might ask that ifeach medium has its strengths, and if a combination of media might have greater potency, won’t the brand with the most touch points win?

Good question. In fact, we’ve conducted research that answers that by demonstrating that cross-media consumption can be predicted as to whether it has positive or neutral or negative effects to brand engagement levels and, therefore, actual sales. And no matter what the medium promises, without real and meaningful metrics you won’t know if you’ve won or lost until after you’ve made the buy, which seems – from both a planning and budget-management perspective – too little too late!

Anyway, Brand Keys will be presenting this new cross-media engagement research later this month. The current version of our cross-media metrics measures 26 individual media touch points that marketers might use to win over the consumer to the brand’s particular point-of-view. We identified 11 discrete cross-media consumption segments.

In this particular study we surveyed Unilever’s Dove brand bar soap users and the engagement-based findings prove that relying upon cross-media consumption on a “time spent” basis produces dramatically misleading “insights” in terms of in-market consequences.

This is also true if you rely on some assessment based on identifying media touch points that consumers “love,” “trust,” or even think, “inspiring.” And don’t get me started on metrics that are based on the assumption that being engaged with the entertainment or the editorial environment is the same thing as being engaged with the advertising!

So, once again, loyalty and engagement metrics win the day. Build those into your planning system and media can be allocated on a more synergistic and efficient basis. In a more complex marketplace, that’s what you need if you want your brand to be the big winner in its category. Winning may not be everything, but in the current media ecology, losing has little to recommend it.

Robert Passikoff, Ph.D., is founder/president of New York-based marketing firm Brand Keys.