Changing – Digital Britain

On Wednesday (14/01/09) I was at the Westminster eForum at a keynote seminar on a new report due out this year on Digital Britain. Lord Stephen Carter, Minister, Communications, Technology and Broadcasting was outlining what he felt were the key issues that Britain needed to respond to to stay ahead in a new digital future. He did not reveal a great deal about the substance of the report but did raise some interesting points and emphasised that it is very clear that digital is critical to the future of Britain in an ever developing global economy.

The Panel

He outlined that he was looking for legislation to make it a legal right for everyone to have access to at least 2MB broadband in every home in the UK by 2012. A bold vision but one which may bring the infrastructure to its knees if we continue to follow the trend towards greater use of video content on-line. A typical HD film downloaded over the Internet is like downloading 35,000 web pages. A country downloading this type of content will quickly eat up any bandwidth and this trend is increasing.

He raised points about finding an alternative to the BBC long term and opening it up to more to competition which was later picked up on by John Tate – Director of Policy and Strategy at the BBC who spoke about the possibility of opening up the iPlayer (which receives about 40 million programme requests a month) to other public service channels including iTV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He went on to talk further about how this may work through the implementation of project canvas which is a joint venture between the BBC, iTV and BT to combine terrestrial and web based TV into the TV in the lounge.

Carolyn McCall – CEO of Guardian Media Groups said that there was severe difficulties for regional reporting because of convergence. She went on to say that the role and dominance of aggregators was damaging the quality of reporting and that the current model for providing local journalism was becoming uneconomic, reducing the incentive for commercial players to get involved.

This did feel a little like sour grapes to be frank. It felt like she was complaining about the fact that the media industry is fragmenting and consumers are now finding their news from other channels. This suggested that it is  impacting their sales of both advertising and the news papers and as a group they are not happy about it.

The whole media industry is changing and all journalists and content providers need to get used to this because it is not going to change. The BBC is a great example of an organisation who is recognising this and actually looking to find ways to engage with their consumers in a new way.

I would argue that if the on-line public really felt that the quality of the content they were being provided was genuinely better than what they can find through aggregators or other on-line channels then commercial publishers should have nothing to worry about. Unfortunately the reality is that often its not. What is very clear to me is that as more people are encourage to migrate on-line (which I think is fantastic) through the governments policies, there will continue to be a change in how society consumes information and entertainment content. There is too much other “good” content out there for the mediocre to have a voice and compete. Only exceptional organisations that can change quickly and provide a genuine differentiated offering are going to survive in the new world Lord Carter has painted – and rightly so.

It will be interesting to see what is in the rest of the report.

Filed under: Marketing, Opinion, BBC, Carolyn McCall, Digital Britain, John Tate, Lord Stephen Carter, Marketing, Project Canvas, Technology, Trends

Is A Big Idea Enough?

Is a great creative idea still great if it adds no value?

Late last year (December 2007) in an FT article Cadbury’s suggested that the “Gorilla ad” had played a major part in helping to raise its sales in Dairy Milk Chocolate.

TNS recently did some work for Marketing Magazine that looked at the biggest brands in the UK by sales.

One of the most interesting facts that came out of it was, that although Dairy Milk had a huge profile and PR success with the award winning Gorilla advert, they actually lost market share, posting growth results below the market rate of 2%. Galaxy on the other hand grew 12%!

Jan Jesenovec from TNS said that “advertising will not significantly increase your sales…it simply reinforces the positions of big brands”. I think the Gorilla ad is a great demonstration of this at work.

I personally loved the Gorilla ad. I thought it was bold, different, unexpected and had great stand out but I am not that surprised it seems to have had zero impact on sales.

Just like many others, I stood around the water cooler at work talking about it and emailed my friends the You Tube video link. Did it make me buy any more Dairy Milk…well errr no. I thought it was great entertainment but it did not make me feel like buying a chocolate bar, let alone Dairy Milk. What it did do, like many others, was make me want to talk about the piece itself – very much like a great bit of artistic work, a great film or a good book.

In doing so, the ad became more about the Gorilla than the brand or the chocolate bar. My emotional connection was with how “clever” the ad was and not with what it was ultimatly looking to sell me (that is unless Cadbury’s is moving into the entertainment business and out of the chocolate one).

When you look at Galaxy on the other hand, it is aimed squarley at women and plays on the soft seduction of chocolate. The emotional connection is clearly seductive in the way you visually enjoy the emotional sensation of the chocolate. They are clear in what they are saying to you and it’s all around the chocolate experience.

Fundamentally, it seems that the Cadbury’s work by Fallon failed to generate sales. So was the Gorilla ad worthy of “Top Dog” at Cannes, or some of the other awards it has picked up in the last few months? In my opinion I don’t think it was. Great advertising creative is there to serve a purpose and, more often than not, that is to generate revenue in one form or another. If you don’t do that, you sort of miss the main underlying objective of the brief. In this mad world we live in, at the moment making sure that the work delivers to the bottom line, is going to be even more important and something that many creatives are going to need to pay more attention to.

CMO’s of today are measured on their financial results that positively hit the bottom line, not on the number of trophies and paper weights they have on their desks. Ultimately, if they don’t deliver, then fantastic creative awards are just extra stuff to pack in their box as they get their P45.

The best creative is about results, not awards and a great creative idea has to first of all deliver the former.

Filed under: Creative, Marketing, Cadbury's, Marketing