FRANKthoughts

The times are a changing and the good news is that we can now measure what we’ve all been doing for years…time shift viewing on free-to-air networks and subscription TV using VCRs, DVD-R, TiVo, Foxtel IQ, Austar’s My Star and others

There are three viewing definitions, basically;

 ”LIVE” – viewing TV content as it goes to air

 ”AS LIVE” – viewing TV content at a different time to the live broadcast but within the same day 

 ”TIME SHIFT” – viewing TV content 24 hours after the live broadcast

As i write we have one week’s data…so it’s ambitious to draw any trend conclusions, however here are 8 observations to be getting on with (when i talk about time shifting here it includes ‘as live & ‘time shift’ viewing…makin’ sense?)

 1. News and sport are the least time shifted content (not surprisingly) and drama (particularly US drama) is the most time shifted

2. In the US and UK where such viewing has been in place for several years only 10%-15% viewers time shift

3. The current level for time shifting is only 4% viewers (less than we may have anticipated).

4. The introduction of time shift viewing in Australia has coincided with the establishment of the additional digital channels Go, 7two, One, ABC2 & SBSTWO. The net  effect of these has been a reduction of about 7% viewers on the ‘parent’ networks

5. The loss to digital channels is likely to be made up by time shift viewing

6. We must anticipate that time shift viewers are largely skipping the ads and this may well increase in-programme integration

7. Last ad in break will become more important as ’shifters’ possibly fast forward too far and rewind back to the last ad

8. The networks will no doubt try to increase their rates even more than during their annual negotiations and we can anticipate a ding-dong battle with buyers as the months unfold.

If you have any other questions or points of view please let me know, by commenting below and i’ll get back soonest.

On the weekend I took the kids to see Fantastic Mr Fox. What a wonderful film! It would have to be one of the best ‘kids’ films I’ve seen – quirky, unique, non-stop entertainment underpinned by George Clooney’s brilliance! (Not the point of the story but I thought you should know).

The movie theatre was three quarters full of predominantly Dads with their kids and we all sat through the ads and trailers waiting for the film to begin. Not usually a hotbed of media innovation, the average movie pre-amble is a fairly straight forward affair: first the cheap ads, then the expensive ads, a few movie trailers, a Village or Hoyts plug, lights down and off we go.

On this occasion however we were all shaken out of our comfy daze by a unique and engaging piece of cinema advertising.

One of the expensive ads we saw during the pre-amble was a Federal Govt Spot featuring a melanoma surgeon removing a dangerous mole from a 22 year old girl’s back.

Fairly graphic stuff that had my 8 year old daughter’s hands over her face and my 4 year old boy’s eyes glued to the screen! The message was clear: protect yourself five ways in the sun and you can avoid ending up in his theatre.

A few more ads, a few trailers and just as we thought the movie would begin, the house lights went on, the curtain came down and a male voice began talking about the ad we saw a few minutes ago…. “Hey, that ad to do with skin cancer … was pretty nasty. Did he say 400,000 Australians are diagnosed each year with skin cancer? That’s like 2,000 cinemas like this full of people! They reckon that even short periods of time in the sun unprotected – like the length of the movie we’re about to show – could cause irreversible damage to your skin. So I guess the doctor was right …”

I looked around a saw that most people were listening intently, some nudging each other or simply sitting with puzzled expressions on their face. At the conclusion of this audio-only piece the room went black, the curtain went up and the movie promptly began.

A clever, unexpected piece of cinema advertising and an effective part of the government’s marketing communications mix executed well by the teams at UM and Val Morgan. We certainly took the government’s advice that afternoon at the local pool!

Do you notice the ads in the cinema? How effective do you think they are?

KeepCUP, originally uploaded by FRANkVizeum.

We all have degrees of environmental engagement exemplified by Tamir’s excellent slideshare .
An easy environmental new year’s endeavour is to buy your own KeepCUP .
For years there has been the guilt of tossing out the used ‘disposable’ coffee cup each day. No longer. We bought five medium cups @ $12.20 each.
Chucking some numbers around….we now pay 50c less per coffee per day so in 25 days the KeepCUPs will have paid for themselves. Great.
From an environmental point of view the collective impact of the five of us (assuming 1 x coffee per day) over a year will be to save

* 1600 paper cups
* 4kgs plastic lids
* 23kgs landfill
* 76 KeepCUPs-worth of plastic
* 0.2 of a tree…

Not bad for just five people. So let’s kick off 2010 in a sympathetic way. I feel 2010 is going to be good to us all so let’s be good to 2010.

There’s nothing better than to start the new year with some fresh ideas. The Customer Learning Curve is showing that your target audience is made of different people in different stages of their relationship with your brand. Check it out and let me know what you think:

We had some FAIL, we had some NAIL but the most important thing is that brands are starting to understand more about earned media. I believe next year will see a growth in this area especially in social business strategy and brand community managers. You can check out some other opinions: Mumbrella’s FAIL list for 2009, Ben Shepherd and Julian Cole’s 2010 predictions (On Ben Shepherd’s blog with a great comment from Mo from NOVA) and this video by Laurel Papworth:

What are your thoughts about earned media towards 2010?

Here’s another (very funny) video via Mo and Henry Feagins:

Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization

I’m not overly optimistic about the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. In fact I don’t believe the answer will come from politicians. I think it needs to come from economists, entrepreneurs and the market. We need to change the debate from “saving the world” (which unfortunately doesn’t carry enough punch) to “making money”. What does this has to do with branding?

At the moment, all countries (brands) are more or less the same. Everyone is looking for someone else to lead or to come up with the best excuse for not cutting emissions. This is the chance to leapfrog. If I was pitching for the brand called Australia I would pitch a strategy taking the lead on environmental AND economic growth for it to become Australia’s next export in terms of knowledge, products and services. Investing in new sustainable energy solutions, social entrepreneurship and green collar jobs is not a “pie in the sky” anymore – New York is already committed to a greener buildings and better energy use: “New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to pass the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan – a package of bills aiming to reduce New York City’s carbon emissions by almost 5%, create more than 17,000 jobs, and save New Yorkers $700 million dollars a year in energy costs.”

In five years the Australia brand can be recognised as a global leader in sustainable housing solutions, environmental living, bio-fuels, and more. This move will have a positive effect on wild life (therefore tourism dollars),  Education (therefore more money from overseas students) and improved health care with huge benefits to the economy (less money spent on health = more money spent on other things like education). What do you think? Can we do it?

As a marketing communications company we owe it to ourselves and our loyal clients to stay abreast of the ever evolving communications-shift that is in play. One of my solutions to appear knowledgeable is to surround myself with people and companies who are pioneering change.

One such company is Lookout Mobile who make iphone apps, jointly managed by Patrick and Daniel. One of their hero app is Aussie Rules Live and they are one of the leaders in this emerging market.

I was talking with them yesterday and they remarked that app development is now in its third-wave, which intrigued me. Wave One…all the way back in July 2008 largely came from 3G backyard developers and in hindsight were kind of crude, but fun. Wave Two emerged with 3GS. The “S” is for speed and gave birth to funkier apps such as the compass, improved gaming and augmented reality. A great example of the latter is in this clip.

Wave Three is capitalising on “second-mover advantage” which revisits existing apps and simply improves upon them. Weather apps are a good example with Pocket Weather emerging as one of the most popular.

From an iphone owner’s point of view there are so many new apps emerging and that awareness of the best apps is largely through friends and “have you seen this app?” conversations. It occured to me that aside from itunes there is no destination which provides independent, user generated, reviews and views. Apps are currently ranked in the app store by 1-5 stars which is fine but limited. I thought such a site might be called iphoneappreview.com.au. To my surprise i was able to register this url, which i did yesterday. Dot com was taken and takes us here, a site developed by doshdosh and the wrong advice  it has over 14,000 app reviews and currently ranks 328,000 on alexa.

The iphone app market is in early stages of development and penetration and i figure with the right collective attitude and experience now is a good time to explore the opportunity to provide a UGC app-review platform as a destination in a market that is destined to grow dramatically. So is  there anyone out there who agrees with the opportunity and would like to contribute at this formative stage in the life-cycle of apps? Please let me know.

Flicking through the sports section of the weekend paper I was held up by something unusual. At first I didn’t know exactly what it was. Was it the unorthodox ‘fireplace’ format that runs across two pages? Or was it the vastness of the ‘hard working white space’ in the ad? I’d been involved in both of these techniques before so it can’t just be these. There must be more to it. 

Ah hah! Then I realised that unlike regular newspaper ads this did not have a border. Subtle at first, it only took a split second for me to work out that it was an ad for a “Borderless” TV, but it was this split second challenge that had me engaged. In the heavily cluttered world of newspapers, this little example of media innovation was enough to arrest me, make me smile and get me interested in the new product, even when I am not in the market for a telly just now.

The media placement also added to the overall effectiveness of this marketing communications strategy. Newspapers are a highly relevant context in which to display interesting new products, and with Tiger Woods in town the golf pages would be heavily read. Also according to Morgan Plasma/LCD buyers are 32% more likely to play golf than the general population, and over 20% of them watch it on the telly, so a strong target audience composition amongst golf fans.

Great use of press, but unfortunately when I jumped on the web site  the TVs displayed have more borders than Mexico!  You have to dig pretty deep to find any tellies that look remotely borderless which is a bit disappointing given the cleverness of the print campaign. Perhaps a video on the site (and on youtube) showing the telly in action from different angles?

When the world is changing so quickly some organisations will survive and some not. The difference will be in how well you prepare and how good is your solution. Here are three examples of three different industries going through changes. These are my observations and I will love to hear your thoughts:

1.MUSIC: Artists are doing it for themselves – Superstar artists are now using social media to launch their new video/show/single using Ustream.tv and facebook: That’s right both Shakira and Chamillionaire did this in the last week against their record label’s advice and I expect to see many more artists doing this “social media” thing in the near future. So if you’re a record label or a music related business this act represent both threat and opportunity. When your artists know better than you how to reach their audience, there is a problem.  It’s up to you to keep up.

2.NEWSPAPERS: What will be the new model? Rupert Murdoch continues his war against google and wants to charge for online content. That’s great. Now he’s saying that without eTablets, “Newspapers Will Go Out Of Business.” Do you actually know anyone who owns an e-tablet? Any way you look at it, the newspaper model is broken (now they might charge you for a day pass?) . People are getting their news from other sources for free. Will people pay to get the same content on an e-paper? I don’t believe quality journalism is broken but I feel the delivery mechanism is. In a world where everything is shared by niches what’s the role social media and crowds can play within a publication? I’m sure Murdoch is working on it but if I was working for a newspaper or a magazine I’ll be thinking about it too.

3.ADVERTISING: The rise of the consumer-ambassador – When Coca-cola is doing it you know it’s real but they are not the only ones. More and more brands are using reality type “social” campaigns featuring real people to earn brand recognition, more fans/followers and the holy grail: organic google juice. Think about how many mentions your brand can get when people are constantly adding content, twittering and blogging about it, sharing the content with their friends and their friends friends. When the consumer journey starts with a google search, your first page is the most valued property you have. In this kind of world you need to be sure of what happens when someone is googling you.

I’m in Singapore for a few days as one of the judges of the inaugural Nuffnang blog awards. Great result for the Aussies, we have about 1% of the bloggers that make up the 100,000 community and picked up 25% of the awards!

 Congratulations must go to everyone who was nominated and who made the event such a success.  More about the winners later.
On my strolls around Singapore i came across a new twist on reflexology which involves hundreds of fish nibbling your feet to remove the dead skin. Check this out