Ardi Kolah - Improving the Performance of Sponsorship Book Launch

Are you complying with sales and marketing law?

Are you complying with sales and marketing law?

High Impact Marketing That Gets Results

High Impact Marketing That Gets Results

The Art of Influencing and Selling

The Art of Influencing and Selling

from podcast to vodcast

Is podcasting already out of date for brand owners?

The growth of broadband platforms has heralded something of a boom time for the creative industry and has allowed content providers like the BBC to extend their brands online and build a direct relationship with the audience and consumer.

I recently downloaded the BBC’s iPlayer that allows me to download some of my favourite programmes to my computer if I’ve missed them on the telly (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer). And of course I can listen again to the Today programme or its best bits by downloading a specially edited podcast of the show.

Radio One DJ Chris Moyles is a podcast evangelist and regularly encourages his audience to download his latest shows, as does the ‘king of podcasts’ Ricky Gervais. Both have generated loyal audiences for their content.

It seems simple enough. Get hold of an iPod or other MP3 player, download the software onto your computer, copy the download podcast file to your player and off you go.

Brand owners haven’t been slow to get in on the act either.

Many have experimented in podcasting since the explosion of iPod sales in 2004 and predicted that podcasting would grow into a powerful broadcast medium suitable for brand communication.

For example, BA has created a series of podcasts giving tips on how to get a good nights’ sleep, the AA has launched a series of podcasts explaining how to carry out basic car maintenance and Arla Foods have recently launched recipe podcasts to support the re-launch of their feta cheese product in the UK.

On the face of it, this sounds like these brand owners have evolved a digital strategy that’s keeping pace with how audience and customer segments now prefer to receive their information and entertainment.

Except that like fashion, audience and consumer tastes are fickle and can change in the time it takes to download your brilliantly entertaining new radio commercial.

According to research conducted by BMRB last year, 24% of respondents questioned said they would download a podcast in the following 12 months, yet only 19% of respondents questioned this year said that they would.

Part of the reason is that we’ve all become confused, say the researchers.

The term podcast has developed into a catch-all phrase that could include downloading, streaming, subscribing and even vodcasting.

Then there’s the phenomenon of ‘podcast inertia’ where users often subscribe to a series of podcast downloads and may listen to the first couple of episodes and then stop. Unless there’s genuinely new content only available via a podcast then its unlikely to attract a big audience, say the researchers.

It’s clear that brand owners have a long way to go in exploiting the full potential of the medium in a more creative and engaging way rather than simply running adverts in the vain hope they’ll be downloaded. Re-worked radio ads isn’t the future.

Podcasts are also notoriously difficult to measure as podcasting is less transparent than other forms of online media usage which can be directly assessed. The industry will have to invent new ways of tracking audience behaviour if it’s to stand a chance of turning podcasting into an art form.

So is podcasting becoming irrelevant as a brand communication tool?

Well, not yet.

Brand owners need to start to evolve the use of podcasting as a modern brand communication channel that lifts its head above re-working advertising commercials.

Brand owners like the AA, BA and Arla Foods who’ve already started to become innovative ‘podcasters’ are in a good position to extend their activities to include sponsorship of a show or stream of content that can help create a more enduring relationship with audience and customer segments.

For the majority of brand owners looking to jump onto the podcasting bandwagon, it may be too late!

By the time they’ve mastered the technique, the audience will have moved onto downloading videos that can be played out on the next generation of video-enabled iPods.

In which case, forget podcasting. And get vodcasting!

battery power

‘Battery Power’

Free mobile calls and texts in return for receiving brand owners’ messages is set to become a predominant brandcasting model of the future, predicts Ardi Kolah

While user generated content (UGC) and its impact on brand communication has occupied a fair amount of marketing media coverage lately, the next wave of consumer communication has only just begun.

Later this year, users in the UK will have the chance to make free phone calls and texts on their mobiles.

That sounds like an offer too good to be true. And of course there’s a catch.

Subscribers will need to opt-in to receive brands’ messages.

On the face of it, this looks like a fair compromise.

However, critics are sceptical that the ‘free rewards in return for advertising’ model won’t work as users will soon get fed up being bombarded with junk mail and offers they’ve no interest in. That’s been the experience to date.

But this hasn’t dissuaded City investors in looking for new ways to use mobile technology to reach 16-24 year-olds with a greater degree of accuracy and fluency than has been done at present.

According to telecom industry analysts, advertising and marketing on mobile phones is set to become the next marketing phenomenon – worth $6 billion a year within the next five years.

And this will take place against the background of a shrinking market for traditional voice services that have become so commoditised that they’ve dropped from the bottom of the value chain.

For example, Skype already allows millions of users to make free calls anywhere in the world and it won’t be long before technology allows you to do this from your mobile.

So the recent announcement by Blyk – the pan-European free mobile phone operator that’ll launch its service in the UK this summer – is evidence of ‘battery power’ in the marketing mix.

“For decades, marketers have been dreaming of a medium that has the distribution effect of broadcast, targeting capabilities of direct marketing and interactivity of the internet. And now it’s here,” claims Ala-Pietila, founder of Blyk.

What’s interesting is that Coca-Cola, Buena Vista, L’Oreal Paris, Yell.com and StepStone have been the first brand owners to sign up to use the Blyk network (provided by Orange).

They’ve been seduced by the prospect of reaching consumers in real time, creating innovative content that will allow dialogue as well as being able to closely match the needs and interests of the customer segment.

And it’s likely that these brand owners won’t stop at advertising but will create campaigns around ‘mobisodes’ as well as offering branded-downloadable content such as music, games and other entertainment – for free.

And of course it’s measurable – allowing a deeper level of behavioural data to be captured.

Provided these brand owners engage rather than antagonise these customer segments then the future’s bright for Blyk’s new service.

And it could make paying your phone bill a much less painful experience.

Ardi Kolah is a sponsorship practitioner and works with a range of brand owners to maximise the return on investment from sponsorship. He can be contacted on mobile 077100 77941 or ardi@kolah.com

an experiment in armchair sponsorship

An experiment in armchair sponsorship

Ardi Kolah explores the thinking of a furniture retailer that’s following in the footsteps of a chocolate manufacturer.

In October broadcast sponsorship history will be made as furniture retailer Harvey’s takes over from Cadbury’s as broadcast sponsor of the nation’s favourite TV soap, Coronation Street.

At first glance you’re left wondering why Harvey’s rather than some other well known household name is in the frame?

Given that Coronation Street continues to dominate the viewing figures as the nation’s most watched TV show with a 46% share of viewing, you would’ve thought that there’d been a queue of more high-profile sponsors knocking at the door of ITV’s Brand Partnership Department.

Cadbury’s association with the show spanned a decade and yet the current deal, rumoured to be worth £10m a year is only for two years.

This may be indicative of several factors – for example, a higher profile brand owner didn’t step forward or if it did it didn’t want to write a big cheque to acquire the broadcast sponsorship rights.

Or alternatively, there wasn’t ever a long queue of sponsors waiting to acquire this jewel in ITV’s crown.

The absence of a higher profile advertiser may also reflect the nervousness of some brand owners to use TV as a channel to build trust with the audience in light of recent scandals that have shaken the public’s confidence in the medium.

However, this is unlikely to have been a factor in the current deal with ITV despite its phone-in problems.

At the end of the day, the broadcast sponsorship deal looks like a clever media buy.

Already an advertiser on ITV1 and 2, the new deal with ITV now expands Harvey’s brand awareness across all interactive platforms, including mobile and the broadband section on itv.com as well as off-air merchandising and licensing.

Clearly, Harvey’s has done its sums and thinks it will get a decent return on its media investment.

But the deal still leaves open the question as to whether Harvey’s will stick with the show in the long run like Cadbury’s.

According to Harvey’s spokesperson “the Coronation Street viewer is a perfect fit for our shopper and working on a two year basis provides us with the opportunity to put research benchmarks into place to understand the effectiveness of this deal longer term.”

If we subtract the PR spin, what this means is that “it’s a good media buy that’ll help raise our brand awareness and we’ll need some convincing to continue with this strategy if this has been achieved at the end of the two-year deal.”

It’s hard to imagine that this deal is anything but a media buy rather than sponsorship in its widest sense.

Sponsorship is much more than simply the alignment of demographic or psychographic data.

Where sponsorship is proven to work well is where it builds a deeper connection and dialogue between the brand owner, the property and the audience– and the relationship between the brand owner and the property is both relevant and natural in the eyes of the audience.

It’s also interesting to note that consumers don’t buy armchairs with the same frequency as they do bars of chocolate!

On this basis, there’s bound to be media wastage in terms of those viewers who’ve already bought their sofas from Harvey’s or its high street rivals and won’t be ‘tuning in’ to change them – no matter how seductive the message.

In any event, these same consumers have probably purchased their living room suites on HP and interest free terms that lock them into contracts for a very long time.

Clearly, Harvey’s is hoping that it can make itself just as famous as Coronation Street to become the ‘UK’s favourite retailer’ in order to attract new customers into its stores.

So where does this leave our understanding of sponsorship?

If deals like this become the norm, then the net effect will be to reduce broadcast sponsorship to the status of nothing more than a media buy.

And over time, the public will begin to regard ‘sponsorship’ as little more than another word for advertising - which of course as you and I know, it isn’t.

Ardi Kolah is a brand communication and sponsorship consultant. He can be reached on +44 (0)20 7 323 1587 email ardi@kolah.com