 Clients
as Media Owners
There’s
a fault line running through the heart of so-called new marketing.
As marketers start to blur the lines between products and services,
as they narrowcast their most valuable customers, as they start to
deliver experiences – they still talk as if media channels
were something “out there” a commodity once bought by
the yard but now bought more qualitatively. The penny hasn’t
yet dropped that they themselves are media owners in their own right.
With their own audience and the necessary information and motive
to contact that audience. With content inside their organisations
that customers would pay attention to and might even pay for.
 Clients still employ
agencies to sort out deals for them with media owners without ever
thinking that perhaps bartering is in order. That
as media owners themselves they have content and audiences that the media
owner might like access to. Media owners don’t buy and sell to
each other. They do deals and swap audiences and content. And they aggregate
channels in order to reduce the costs of origination and distribution.
Read the Entertainment Economy by Michael Wolff to see how the worlds
of film, TV, radio and publishing have cannibalised each other. Why on
earth go out and buy space on the open market – when you are buying
at the position of the greatest disadvantage with bulk ordering being
the only lever to bring the price down. Before any client considers promotional
spending in the media they ought to consider what alliances they could
use to make their spend go further.
Yes I’m talking about co branding but at a much more fundamental
level. Most co-branding is short term promotion. It is switched off long
before people become aware of the co-branding partnership – what
it entails in terms of the values brought together and the value that
is added. And there is little follow through. A BMW is placed in the
latest Bond film. But where’s the follow up when the film comes
out on pay per view TV – is there a promotional campaign attached – ask
for a brochure and a follow up call and the film comes to you courtesy
of BMW? What happens on digital TV – where’s the click through
and what is the mechanic to profile the respondent and to qualify them
for a test drive? Where is the campaign when the film comes out on rental
and when it is available on retail? A single placement ought to be the
precursor for activity lasting a full 2 years.
 In this new world
order clients would audit their own audiences and their own content.
They would expect to produce their own programming/content
and consider investing in channels to distribute it – channels
other media owners would be interested in. They would invest in appropriate
audience and content swaps using alliances with other client brands.
They would still use media channels but would judge these by the same
criteria they would apply to their strategic partnerships. And above
all they would protect their audiences from over communication and communication
that undermined their own editorial integrity.
Does this mean the
writing on the wall for agencies? Not at all. Most clients rely heavily
on their agencies because they make better deals,
they work faster and they are better at navigating their way through
the chaos of the media choices available. But of all the agencies – media
agencies are best placed to help their clients evolve into client brands.
They understand audiences and how to price them. They don’t need
to capture an entire audience to measure it (unlike database marketers).
They already manage 90% of promotional budget already on the slenderest
of margins.
They have a vested interest in making budgets go further where creative
agencies want to originate content about products ie add cost!
With media fragmentation
rife, costs continuing to rise – it is
only a matter of time before clients stop being incidental channel managers
and begin to become full blown media owners themselves with an agenda
to sell as well as buy.
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Media Ownership