The Changing Face of Media: Gerd Leonhard
Posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 3:00pm. #
Yesterday, I attended this rather good event from Canvas8. This is the first of three blog posts looking at what the speakers said, and their relevance to radio.
Gerd Leonhard (above) asked: “Is your branding based on a ‘connected’ world, or is it still based on disconnected ‘consumers’?”. He argues that connected people ‘consume differently’, and gives the example of TripAdvisor, and Yelp’s new iPhone 3GS application (the one with the fancy augmented reality thing).
“Maybe we only needed traditional advertising and marketing because we were not connected”, he poses. He claims that the traditional advertising (“people yelling at you”) will fade out: one-way communications from a non-trusted source will fade. “People responding to interruptions will soon be fantasy,” he claims.
He claims that the only way forward will be engagement. “We’re moving fast – away from trusting companies and advertisers, and towards trusting people we know”. He shows that 70% of people trust consumer opinions posted online; and shows some ‘socialradar’ graph showing the top Twitter brands from February 2009. (Incidentally, I’m also pointed, by Clare who’s sitting next to me, to an Edelman report around consumer trust – and also I note that ‘brand websites’ are just as trusted by consumers as opinion sites, which to my mind kills this point).
Says we’re moving away from “control” to “attention”, “attraction”, “magnetism”, “trust”, “openness”. And this is the new business model, he argues. He points to examples including software (Firefox vs Internet Explorer); and content (BBC Backstage and The Guardian’s Open Platform vs the closed media).
He sees the job of brand owners in the future changing from ‘protecting the brand’ to ‘projecting the brand’.
He says that revenue follows once the technology actually works (and behaviour changes as a result). He gives a few examples of this, like the Nintendo Wii, Facebook, or car navigation systems.
(He shows a brilliant slide with three phrases on it: “Attention Kernels” “Digital Breadcrumbs” and “Mouse Exhaust”. If you need a good reason to book this man, here’s the reason. No, he doesn’t explain what ‘mouse exhaust’ is. I’ve no idea either.)
And he says he’ll publish the slides soon at http://www.slideshare.net/gleonhard.
What does this mean for radio?
If the age of ‘people responding to interruptions’ is ending, then what does this mean for the thirty-second spot? How do brands get better at marketing on mass-market broadcasting? Can you see a future where brands no longer need to advertise in this way? (I can’t, being blunt. I see there being a very good reason to advertise things to people that they don’t know they want yet; but I also realise that this is going to be less attractive to brand owners.) What does it mean for radio’s business?
But, more importantly, where’s social media in your marketing plan? Absolute Radio‘s use of Twitter is conversational and engaging. Compare that with Heart London‘s use of Twitter – as another broadcast medium: no engagement, no conversation, just ‘listen to me’. Which are you? A Heart, or an Absolute?
Tomorrow, I’ll be looking at David Bausola’s passion about audience engagement: and wondering what that means to radio.
