Traditional media is about the width of your wallet. New media, that’s about the width of your brain. I’ll tell you exactly what that means on the next episode of your Daily Development.
If you’re running away from the future, man, you’re going to get caught up in the past.
Now, you may be wondering exactly what do I mean by traditional media being about the width of your wallet, and new media being about the width of your brain. Hopefully, you get a lot out of this episode, and I kind of want to talk a little more just about the state of media now, what’s going to happen, what is happening. I don’t think I’m any Nostradamus or anything like that, but what we gravitate towards here is what’s getting attention.
And right now, what’s getting attention, it’s not traditional media. Don’t get me wrong, traditional media’s not going anywhere anytime soon, there’s some forms of media that may struggle more than others, but every media has its pluses and minuses; but one medium, even me, you know, a few years back, I didn’t take it serious was digital and social media. Right now, these are king.
One thing that clients like more than anything is, they love to see data. Not too much data, but they want to know exactly where their money’s going, and they want to know exactly what’s working for them. It kind of goes along to that old John Wanamaker quote, “I know my advertising works, I just don’t know what half.” Let’s talk about traditional media right now.
In recent years, it has seen so many challenges. You think about cable television, you know, even broadcast television, you see new shows popping up every day. Now, I want you to think about back when there was Mash, the Cosby Show, MacGyver, you know, I know this may sound a little old school, and I may be dating myself just a little bit, but when these shows were out, there weren’t so many things that pulled our attention away from them. And these shows had huge ratings, because they had the attention.
There wasn’t so many other options for people to be entertained, as far as a lot of different cable networks, a lot of different programs, and we didn’t have that mobile phone next to us like we do now, when we watch television. So all these things have kind of come into play. What you see happening now, are the networks, the big 3’s, the big 4 really, the ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, these stations are coming up with new content. I want you to remember that word, they’re coming up with new content in the form of television shows. You know, the reality shows that really aren’t reality, or just some show that maybe hot for a minute, and then it’s gone.
One of the shows that kind of sticks out for me, when I was a television rep, was a show with William Shatner, and it was called My Dad Says. I think the show kind of started from Twitter, you know, and it was about this dad who always said some kind of inappropriate things. Well, you took a fine actor like William Shatner, and you put him in this sitcom, it just didn’t work. It didn’t last long. It couldn’t grab the attention of people. I don’t know if it was too early before its time, or if it just came at a time, where the attention was drifting away from that medium; or, you know, me in advertising.
I love anything that’s pertaining our industry, so I remember the show, The Crazy Ones with the late Robin Williams, you know? Good show, great, you know, cinematography and everything else, but it just didn’t last long. It just didn’t last long, but then there are shows like The Big Bang Theory, that they have a nice run, or even the Simpson’s, you know, that has a better run, you know, where people are growing up with these shows, and like The Big Bang Theory the millennials are all over that show, and also, you know, the 35+, they love it as well too; but traditional media is just, it’s struggling for content. It’s struggling to have the content to be able to keep up nowadays with all the other programs, and all the other sitcoms. And more importantly, its number one adversary the mobile phone and the internet.
I’d like to say this, you know, I am a fan of television. I watch television shows, but people are fans of programs. They’re not fans of networks. So if you take my favorite show. Let’s just say I love House of Cards. Here’s a show that is just it’s phenomenally written, but if you took that show and you put it on HBO, I’d go to HBO to watch it. You move to Showtime, I go to Showtime to watch it. If you put it on, you know, any network, USA Network, I’m going to go to USA Network to watch my show because people are committed to programs. They’re not committed to stations or networks.
No one’s just that loyal unless they’re an older demographic, you know, probably the 65+ where they watch one network all day long. And sometimes, like I have an aunt where I can go to her house and she knows what time of day it is, by just what television show that comes on the television. You know, they’re more set it and forget it, but you don’t have the big advertisers actually going after, you know, folks who are 64, 70 years old anymore. They’re not going after them, but, you know, just The House of Cards, going back to House of Cards like oh, what I was talking about, about that, what a great show, a great show. It’s on Netflix and it just proves to you that I will find that content. I will find that show regardless of where it is. That’s what drawing me.
I have one of those Apple TV’s at home and I remember turning it on and my show wouldn’t load. The screen was black and you had kind of a little circle of death going and it just said, your content, you know, cannot be found. And I just looked for that word, and I just thought, your content can’t be found. They could have used any other word. They could have said, “Your show is not ready,” or anything like that, but it said, “Your content cannot be found,” and just a light bulb went off in my head and I just started thinking this is it. It’s about the content. It is about the content. That’s what draws people in.
So then I’m going to go back to what I said originally about traditional media being about the width of your wallet. For an advertiser, you are paying the rates that they give you, that the stations or media companies give you, because they are traditional. You are bound to 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds where those are just standard traditional time periods or time links that you are confined to. If you wanted to go to the Internet on You Tube or anything else, I mean, you could have it at 2 minutes and 48 seconds, or a minute and 38 seconds. It doesn’t matter, but traditional media, it costs so much because it is established, that’s why.
Now, digital media, like I said in new media, it’s about the width of your brain. I did a campaign on Facebook one day, and it really blew my mind how many times I could have my video shown. I could see exactly who saw my video. I could see where they were, where they saw my video. To me, this is the kind of data I want to take back to a client and say, “This many men watched us.” This many woman watched us, and this is where they are. Not only that, what I’m able to do and this is what I mean about the width of your brain, if you were to take an actual funnel, a client funnel and how they go from awareness to becoming a lead, you could apply those same principles in Facebook advertising.
I’m not just a fan of Facebook. I’m a fan of anything that can work, but I’m really impressed with this product right now. Not just only showing videos there, but also capturing leads. I ran an Ad Words Campaign, and I ran it against Facebook, and what Facebook did, was giving me solid leads at a cheaper rate. Any advertiser who thinks about that, the one thing you want is you want a minimal cost per lead. If you want a minimal cost per lead, this is where you go. This is what you need to pay attention to. Facebook has more than billion users around the world. And, like I said, more than 7 out of 10 people are actually on Facebook. This medium is so powerful. It is so powerful to the point where you are able to specifically target male, female, and you can go exactly closer GO, you can pinpoint GO’s as much as possible. You can run ads, you can run carousal ads, and you can also remarket on Facebook the same that you can remarket on Google Ad Words.
So this medium has my attention and this medium is exactly why I say, new media is about the width of your brain. If any advertiser thinks that all they have to do is just traditional media with radio, TV, billboard, or newspaper, I’ve kind of got it in for billboards just a little bit. I’ve seen some great creative, but my reasoning for billboards is it’s hard to measure.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That’s kind of my only beef about billboards, but I’ve seen some great billboards that have grabbed some attention and we’ve also designed some billboards in full disclosure, but one medium that you need to pay attention to I will tell you is Facebook. Pay attention to it. It has the attention of the people right now. It is easy, it is an easier cost per lead. It’s direct. You can target by likes and interests.
I can’t do that on radio and television. Those mediums will be challenged by Facebook. If you thought anything about Social Media was a fad, last week Snapchat closed at 34 billion dollars in value. There is some TV companies that aren’t even worth that much. So that’s how much we need to take it seriously. If you want to truly target people, you go to them mobile phones, which is the second screen is what we call it now, but soon, it may be the first, think about that. That was your Daily Development.
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