Dramatic titles aside, the role of media in helping brands become more relevant online has entered a time where words like "convergence" and "integration" best describe the multiple channels, approach, and skill sets necessary to succeed.
The days of single device access to the Internet have given way to a range of connected devices including tablets, smartphones, and even cars and kitchen appliances. Ubiquitous connectivity plus the ease of publishing and interaction by both organizations and individuals can mean huge opportunity or apocalypse, depending on your perspective.
It’s absolutely perfect timing for this blog post (which I’ve been thinking about for the last month or so), hot on the heels of Altimeter Group’s report, released this week, titled, The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Will Combine Paid, Earned and Owned Media. It’s a great report that identifies and speaks to a trend we first saw emerge in 2009: the fact that multiple channels and multiple sources of content inevitably bring cross-pollination, which is an operational problem for most marketing and communications organizations (while you can download our recent whitepaper on the subject, we’ve been speaking and writing about this topic since 2010, here’s a post that references much of our own past thinking around the challenges of convergence in paid, earned and owned media, as well as a link to a whitepaper on the same subject we co-authored with Digg in early 2010). I strongly suggest you read the Altimeter report – Social Media Group will be contributing case studies from our own client work to Altimeter as they support their new research into this topic on the speaking circuit this Fall.
Summary: Converged Media a Reality –Significant Ecosystem Changes Ahead
Paid, owned, and earned is converging (like social ads) at a rapid pace, we found 11 criteria of success, a handful of case examples, yet companies are hampered internally and with fragmented agencies and technology to make this happen. Converged Media utilizes two or more channels of paid, earned, and owned media. It is characterized by a consistent storyline, look, and feel. We foresee that to achieve cross-channel integration in a consistent way there will be considerable changes inside of the marketing org chart, and a clear strategy on getting agencies to collaborate, and intensive system integration of vendors.
In a recent Nielsen global study, all forms of paid advertising—TV, print, digital, radio—showed a gap in the “trust factor,” with a majority of respondents reporting that they don’t trust each type much or at all. Conversely, and not surprisingly, “recommendations from people I know” scored highest on trust, with 92 percent of consumers trusting this source completely or somewhat. Owned media, such as brand websites, scored higher than paid advertising but lower than social recommendations. Yet advertising as a medium continues to thrive, with ad dollars on the rise globally and in many markets around the world.
Defining paid, earned and owned media With the rise in importance of social media and online PR, we?re seeing more companies change their method of budget. Marketing topic(s):Customer acquisition strategy. Advice by Dave Chaffey.
Incentivize collaboration
Varying agencies and vendors don't only have revenue models embedded in different media channels, but they also compete with one another for budgets and campaigns. The brands' role is to mediate these often clashing interests by bringing all parties to the same table, aligning them around the same KPIs, and by establishing systems that encourage cooperation rather than competition.
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Y&R's Brand Asset Valuator Back in the day, I had the good fortune to work on the introduction of Brand Asset Valuator, Y&R's seminal study that turned conventional wisdom on its head about how brands are built. Through thousands of interviews across dozens of countries, Y&R concluded that a brand's "Esteem" [...]
Changes to the way consumers perceive and absorb marketing messages will force marketers to change not only their thinking but also the way they allocate spending and organize operations. A McKinsey Quarterly Marketing & Sales article.
Paid, Owned, Earned: Maximizing Marketing Returns in a Socially Connected World [Nick Burcher] on Amazon.com. FREE super saver shipping on qualifying offers. The complexity of media that now sees multiple channels accessed through multiple devices has created major challenges for today's marketing and advertising professionals. Consumer time is split between TVs
Content to Commerce: Engaging Consumers across Paid, Owned and Earned Channels [A. Savar] on Amazon.com. FREE super saver shipping on qualifying offers. Master the publishing and entertainment world's tools and techniques for content marketing success Over the last decade the convergence of media and technology has turned the marketing world on its head. In order for brands to succeed in today's socially connected world
Sample editorial from the new book 'Paid Owned Earned: maximizing marketing returns in a socially connected world' by Nick Burcher. This sampler contains an excerpt from chapter one explaining how Paid Owned Earned media all work together and also features a brief excerpt from chapter 7 which discusses how Paid Media TV can be extended into Owned Media and Earned Media (and vice versa.)
In the Content Marketing Trilogy of Discovery, Consumption and Sharing, there are a mix of media types online marketers employ to facilitate the connection
Three categories have long dominated the way marketers approach media: there’s the ads you buy, the press coverage you earn, and the content you own. As far as buckets go, the paid, owned, earned media model was convenient and worked
Digital ad buying will never cede ground to social media engagement, content production and distribution, or conversations.
