Traditional media are becoming animators for “social engagement”: Pepsi sees TV advertising in a new function — the traditional role as lead medium is being questioned. What applies to Pepsi and TV can also apply to European and much smaller companies — as well as the use of other media.
From now on, television campaigns no longer have to tell the entire story that an advertiser wants to place: Instead, they become trailers that simply encourage the audience to interact with the advertiser's brand on social media channels. This new role for TV advertising describes Shiv Singh, Global Head of Digital at Pepsi, in a blog post for the Harvard Business Review.
Singh puts forward six theses on this subject:
- In the future, TV commercials will no longer simply tell self-contained stories. Your task will no longer be to support brand values and create awareness. Rather, they will be there to trigger in-depth digital brand experiences as teasers.
- Fewer and fewer media plans will start using a TV commercial as a central element. Instead, an engagement strategy will be created in the future and then implemented in a series of creative approaches in various media types.
- Location and event-dependent digital experiences are becoming the new drivers for television advertising. They will bring advertisers a higher ROI because they make it possible to document the interaction with customers all the way to the point of sale.
- Media planning will change, and television formats will be judged on how well they support interaction with consumers.
- The willingness and ability to interact with consumers in real time is becoming a key success factor for advertisers. Advertisers will have to position themselves accordingly.
- Brands must demonstrate their “digital culture” in TV commercials if they want to remain credible. TV commercials will only be the beginning; soon all advertising will be focused on this.
Intensity of interaction instead of GRP
If Singh is right, the success and ultimately the price of a campaign will soon no longer be reflected in contact amounts or GRP determined, but about the intensity of consumer interaction with the brand. TV commercials and other classic lead media are turning from key players in media strategy to animators for a wider and deeper brand experience.
What Singh describes for his multi in the USA can also work in Europe and with much smaller budgets: You don't need a Superbowl to start interaction with a brand world. In this country, too, there are already examples in print, outdoor, radio and television of how larger and smaller advertisers are adapting to new forms of communication.
Regardless of whether Singh is right in detail or not: Not only traditional media, but also advertisers and their agencies are required to adapt to a new distribution of roles between the various media. New approaches must now not only be discussed but also tested.
Because consolidation or even the end of the media revolution is not even in sight.
Link: Blog post by Shiv Singh in Harvard Business Review (text in English)