Last month I wrote about the need for brands to understand their category drivers (“If You Can’t Change Your Fate, Change Your Attitude”). I pointed out that because consumers and markets were changing so quickly, it was likely that some companies would see the present only when they turned around and noticed that it was disappearing. For that reason, most marketers don’t really have an accurate “fix” on what drives their category, no matter what their shelves of research binders tell them. You miss that and you’re likely to miss out on engaging your target audiences.
To keep up with modern markets and even more-modern consumers interacting in those markets, you have to update the tools you use to plan and measure success (or as more often the case, failure). It’s no secret that we at Brand Keys have a particular bias for leading indicators–metrics and measures that tell you how consumers will think and will engage with and behave toward your category and your brand before things happen, not afterward. Knowing this kind of stuff ahead of time gives you an awfully big advantage over the competition.
This approach also extends to media planning. It’s also no secret that there too the job of engaging consumers and optimizing marketing efforts is more complex and prone to waste than ever before. Advertisers and stockholders are demanding real accountability beyond “awareness” and “reach and frequency.”
This is why I thought it incredibly interesting–and so mid-20th century–that an industry publication reported this week a list of the “first-quarter cable winners.” By “winners” it meant networks that reported double-digit ratings gains for viewers 18-49 years old. Some of the “winners” included BET, E!, FX, TV Land, USA Network, and VH1. There were other networks that reported slightly smaller gains, but gains nonetheless. Some of these were Biography, Style, and WE.
And as the balance of the universe decrees that an abundance of winners is paid for by a growing number of losers, the article also reported the first-quarter “losers.” Some of these were Comedy Central, Lifetime, Sci Fi Channel, Spike TV, and TNT. They were all down in that “key demographic.”
All of this leads one down the traditional media-planning path. Nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen in the upfronts (when the TV networks unveil to potential advertisers their programming for the coming year), but buyers are predicting that total dollars will be only minimally higher than last. So it seems as though media positioned as “engagement friendly” such as buzz andbranded entertainment and VOD-to-cell-phone aren’t taking too much of a bite out of traditional budgets.
The next likely scenario is that the broadcast networks opt for pricing discounts, which is what you do when there isn’t a whole lot more up for offer. That would leave cable far behind, as the gap between CPMs (cost per thousands) for cable and broadcast is expected to increase, although cable networks with a well-articulated brand, strong ratings, and digital platforms might not have to involve themselves in “let’s make a deal” negotiations. Cable networks such as ESPN, MTV, VH1, Food Network, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Bravo, and E! might be better positioned to sell more to advertisers because they own much of the content and also many of the platforms. So in light of all the traditional fundamentals that seem to be getting factored in, I suppose that you can’t blame a cable network for celebrating its demographic “win.” The networks are businesses, after all. They’ll use any tools available to them to sell. Who wouldn’t? If that means finger-counting the demographics, well then, 18-49 it is! Given the absence of anything else for many of the cable networks, Lord only knows what those networks that actually lost in those demographic segments will do!
But the article about the winners and losers raises an interesting conundrum. On one hand, advertisers want real engagement. On the other hand, their view of success is entrenched in the demographic data and CPMs of the last century. Instead of insisting on metrics that matter, they continue to rely on measures that don’t generally matter anymore–especially given that locating segments of targets isn’t really the challenge it was a couple of decades ago. This is not, perhaps, the most efficient or cost-effective way of going about 21st-century media planning.
Perhaps advertisers should talk to Rainbow Media. They recognized the need for real engagement metrics a couple of years ago and built them into how they assess real competitive advantage. They have all the demos and CPMs and platforms and content, but more than that, they can show advertisers how to more cost-effectively engage consumers. That kind of approach means that advertisers can successfully turn demographic targets into paying customers, which is what real engagement is all about.
For marketers continuing to rely only on demographics and CPMs from which to plan, it appears that the future will be exactly like the past. Only more expensive.
Robert Passikoff, Ph.D., is founder and president of New York-based marketing firm Brand Keys and writes a monthly column for CHIEF MARKETER.
Network
