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Time to eliminate “media” from the plan

If the Night of the Media Heavyweights proved anything, it is that the notion of a single medium doesn’t exist anymore. The future of “media” companies is not about the content, or the form it is delivered in, but how well they can create and sustain communities.

Cable TV, magazines, newspapers, direct marketing, Internet, broadcast TV, radio, and out-of-home media debated their merits in a mock sales pitch to Bill Sidwell, Hewlett-Packard’s Director,Global Brand Strategy and Management and Kenneth Romanzi, Ocean Spray’s COO. But what struck me wasn’t that in the audience vote the Internet handily won the HP pitch and magazines led for the Ocean Spray business.

Every medium – with the exception of out-of-home – made their own multi-channel pitch, emphasizing how they can combine their traditional properties with their web sites and other interactive assets for a stronger advertising package. At times when Ellen Oppenheim of the Magazine Publishers of America spoke, her pitch sounded more like Greg Stuart’s of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. But as much as each medium pitched their cross-channel wares, both HP and Ocean Spray expressed frustration that none of them talked about how they could work with each other to enhance the overall mix.

The highlight for me was watching ABC TV Network’s President of Sales & Marketing, Mike Shaw -- in the past an ardent defender of TV’s status quo and the inevitability of network TV’s continuing superiority -- merely mentioning the network programming as he pitched HP on the Web properties associated with shows like "Lost".

But this drove home the fact that the future for these companies is not in how well they can continue to put ink on dead trees or how efficiently they can source and broadcast programs. Their future is in harnessing the connection consumers have to particular topics, or characters, or stories. Beyond building an audience, the future is about building communities who participate much more deeply and share the experience, not on TypePad or MySpace, but on the site hosted by the content creator.

Maybe this is Martha Stewart’s real revenge – all media companies must now pursue being “omnimedia” companies. Or perhaps more pointedly, it comes to Publicis Groupe Rishad Tobaccowalla’s concept of “passion groups” – finding the topics that engage consumers on a deep, emotional level, giving them multiple ways to indulge their passion, and building a community around it.

So maybe the next Night of the Heavyweights won’t have “media” companies at all – maybe Dynamic Logic and Millward Brown will tell the “media” organizations to make their pitch around different passion groups – and work with each other to put together the best corss-channel plan.

Posted by Jim Nail on April 11, 2006 at 08:49 AM | Email this post Permalink

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Comments

Jim,

This is insightful. I completely agree with your analysis. I would love talk offline about your take on technology's impact on marketing. Regards, Will

Posted by: Will Waugh | Apr 14, 2006 1:45:24 PM

So the current problem is no longer that media companies are rejective or ignoring interactive, it is now that they are failing to develop cross media passionization of marketing and customer experience? (Sorry for making up the word passionization.)

It's my guess that most of the presenters comprehend the concept of cross media passionization, but have idea as to what it is in reality. It's probably 'lead with my medium and weave in the others'. That's because they're still seeing the differing media as seperate parts when they are instead parts of a whole.

Posted by: Jonathan Trenn | Apr 17, 2006 3:13:19 PM

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