Last week the md of Google UK called for UK companies to not be left behind by mobile. He claimed that only 3% of companies are ready to “harvest its potential” ( http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1028382/Marketers-need-experiment-mobile-says-Google-UK-chief).
The statistics obviously speak for themselves, everyone you know probably has a mobile phone and an increasing number of them are using smart phones every day.
My kids now both have blackberries (thanks to generous grandparents at birthdays) and the laptop, which only a year ago was fought over daily, is today gathering dust. BBM and Facebook are accessed constantly (meal times, whilst watching TV, even when hanging out with their friends) and via their hand held phones rather than via a desk bound pc.
My phone comes courtesy of Matt Brittin himself and his team (thank you Matt). Google handed out Android phones at their Zeitgeist conference earlier this year. It took me a while to get used to it admittedly. But now I am the one who gets her phone out when conversations with friends hit one of those queries that none of you can remember the answer to (a recent one was the different make-up of Pimms Cups) and searches online for the answer.
Personally I am not a great app user – apart from Ocado – but I am using the internet via my phone much more now – for news stories, for weather forecasts and for recipes. And when I do go to the news pages of say the Guardian there are obviously display ads. Which are small of course (stating the obvious). Despite the size and despite the different way in which I navigate the page, those ads do sometimes cut through to me. But once again we need to understand the value of those ads relative to other display activity both on and off line.
This is the moment our industry needs to learn from history. We must not make the mistake some made with the internet initially by failing to integrate it into marketing and communications on a comparable basis with other channels.
Consumer habits are changing as far as mobile is concerned around us every day. You only need to sit in a café and observe people. The industry needs to stop playing catch up and start anticipating the mobile revolution. With an understanding of mobile advertising, apps, mobile search, direct, social. We must ensure mobile is as mainstream for marketing as it is for the consumer.
The Royal Television Society’s Conference on September 28th was exciting for all kinds of reasons including combat style interviews, John Wayne (sort of) and a can of fruit salad.
Thursday, September 30th, 2010The opening speaker Jeremy Hunt – the minister for culture and sport – was closely followed by a panel talking about South Korea’s media landscape. The contrast between the UK minister’s manifesto for more micro-local TV channels and South Korea’s speed of development was startling.
Pity anyone interviewed by Steve Hewlett who was inspirational in his irreverence for status in his two sessions – with Mark Thompson and Adam Crozier – both of whom held their own against an interview technique which made Jeremy Paxman look a bit tame. But which made for very entertaining sessions.
David Abraham CEO of Channel 4 is optimistic about the future of television audiences and the ability for new viewing habits over different devices and over a period of time to allow recovery from the effects of fragmentation. On the same panel Steve Morrison’s confrontation of Google has been well documented, but he also held the rapt attention of the audience when he dug into a Sainsbury bag (he’s not connected then to the eponymous store) and brought out a can of fruit salad and a dripping pack of Sainsbury’s finest fresh fruit in a plastic pot. The CEO of All3 Media makers of Peep Show made the point that supermarkets charge more for fresh stuff than for tinned. Just as there is a different pricing policy for new cars, used cars and vintage cars so their should be different pricing for TV shows – 1st run, 2nd run, catch up, archived. Who would set those rules? Would internet aggregators be compelled to go along with them?
The key note speaker of the day was Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner. He basically disagreed entirely with the windows of charging strategy. He gave a rousing accolade for TV, for its brilliant flexibility in the past and the continuing adaption to new technologies. His view is that fragmentation has delivered better choice and better programmes. It helped that his delivery had the reassuring qualities of John Wayne about to save the day. He seemed the epitome of a worldwide chairman and CEO.
And he did indeed have a formula for saving the day. He urged the television industry not to “flag in their forward motion” and to bear in mind that not only has “no industry innovated as consistently” but also that “TV is the father of digital”. (I hope you’re imagining John Wayne delivering these lines and getting a feel for what it was like). His answer to successful digital content exploitation was to keep the integrity of the channels as brands, but to make all programming available on demand on any device. Don’t charge the viewer more for it – if you give them what they want viewing will go up, they will stay loyal and revenues whether from advertising or subscription will follow. Viewers will be happier, advertisers will be happier and there will be a gigantic explosion in media consumption.
It is once again worth remarking that it is a pity that there is no single metric that allows proper measurement of the aggregated audience that this would deliver in the UK.
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