Marketing Message, Media Content. Who Can...

Old media vs. new media. It seems to be a hot debate in the marketing world. Is old media slowly fading? Will new media be the media of choice for marketers? Has new media changed the way advertisers advertise? In reality, the marketing landscape hasn’t changed that much. The advertising that works for traditional media works for new media. If you look at the basic types of advertising, you can break them down into three different groups - interruption, background, and seamless. The main difference between these three groups is relevancy - how they relate messaging to content.

Interruption: When people think of advertising, they think of interruption advertising. Television commercials, radio commercials, print ads. Interruption advertising involves taking a piece of media, such as a television show, and interrupting it with a completely unrelated marketing message. The main criticism of interruption advertising is that it’s becoming less effective. Consumers “tune out.” DVR is becoming more popular and users are fast forwarding through commercials. While there is some truth to this, a recent study showed that only a very small percentage of people use DVR and over 95% of the television watched in the United States is watched live.

People are more than ever looking for ways to avoid marketing messages though - DVR, satellite radio, popup blockers, etc. Yet marketers have approached new media the same as they have old - with interruption advertising. Commercials are played before we watch some online videos. YouTube and Revver use pop-up video overlay ads for their videos.

Advertisers have a unique opportunity when it comes to new media. People fast-forward through television commercials because they want to get back to their show and commercials are by nature unrelated to the show. Commercials are unrelated to the show for two major reasons.

1. Producing a commercial is expensive and as a result commercials are reused in different time slots.

2. Creating relevant ads would require teamwork between show producers and advertisers, which is impossible.

The nature of podcasting would allow producers to work with advertisers. Commercials and marketing messages could be integrated into show content. Advertisers could easily create commercials for podcasts that listeners and watchers wouldn’t want to skip.

Background: Sponsorship is the best example of background advertising. It involves an advertiser taking its product, finding a somewhat relevant show or event, and bringing the two together. The best examples are the Bowls. We have the Capitol One Bowl, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, and a handful of others. Sponsorship is a closer merging of messaging and content. It used to be the most popular form of advertising during the infancy of radio and television. Sponsorship has been making comeback in recent years though. USA television network has started providing commercial-free programming sponsored by advertisers.

The majority of online advertising is background advertising. Banner ads and sponsored links are both in the background. Like interruption advertising, background advertising has been criticized for its decreasing effectiveness. Computer users are “banner blind.” They’ve learned to ignore the clutter and focus on the content. The only way to avoid this is to make the clutter part of the content.

Seamless: The best advertising is the advertising you can’t recognize. It’s seamless. We’re used to seeing cans of Coke, screenshots of Google, and luxury vehicles in our television shows and movies. In the past few years there’s been a lot of speculation about contracts between hip hop artists and big advertisers. In 2006, rapper Monica came out with “Dozen Roses,” which had an amazing 5 brand names mentioned within its 4 minutes of lyrics, and additional 2 brands included in the music video.

What used to be just a hip-hop thing went mainstream in June when pop singer Fergie signed a $4 million contract with Candies to include the shoe brand in her songs. Tide, the laundry detergent, has been experimenting with product placement in its sponsored web series Crescent Heights. In the future, I’m sure we’ll see more advertisers paying popular podcasters to include products in their shows.The most used form of seamless advertising is public relations. Traditional PR involves getting journalists to write about your brand. PR for new media is about getting opinion leaders to write about your brand, which turns your marketing message into media content.

In conclusion, the argument of old media vs. new media isn’t important. They’ll both be around for a very long time. It is important for marketers to recognize the shift media is taking though and adapt…quickly.