Do you eat a balanced media diet?

Opinion

Mediaplus UK’s Hannah Moody calls for planners to consume a balanced media diet: embrace variety, stretch your palate, and don’t forget your greens.

Louis Theroux said something interesting at his headline talk at MAD//Fest earlier this summer. He spoke about how he consciously tries to consume a “nutritious diet of information”.

This is a man who’s built a career on his curiosity, so it seems only right to imagine him scrolling TikTok as much as perusing the papers. But that word “diet”, the comparison to food, really sparked something.

We all know eating a balanced diet of food is good for our health (physical and mental) – it’s something we’re taught in school, but it’s not always easy to do amidst numerous temptations, and it requires a conscious choice. So why wouldn’t it make sense for all those things to apply to consuming media, content, information too?

In fact, even the verb “consuming” makes the connection; it’s been right there in front of us this whole time. And so, in the same way you’d expect negative effects if you consume only ice cream, shouldn’t you expect the same if you consume only Instagram?

And it’s not just the general populace that should aim for this balanced diet of media and information for their wellbeing; media planners should plan like it too. With the ever-fragmenting media landscape, we have access to more food and cuisines than ever before, so why would we restrict ourselves to just a few, especially when it seems our audiences aren’t? Maybe Magic Numbers’ “lots of littles” research was really Grace Kite telling us all not to forget to eat our five-a-day!

Well, all of that got me thinking… if media is like food, what food would each media channel be? I threw it out to the Mediaplus hive mind and this is what came up…

TV = fish and chips

Universally popular, a staple of British culture.

Podcasts = kombucha

You get a superiority complex from them.

Social media = sweets

Quick dopamine hit, bite-sized pieces, always end up having more than you meant to.

Radio = meat and two veg

Pretty ubiquitous, can’t go wrong with it, but doesn’t feel especially innovative.

OOH = potatoes

A staple, with formats to suit almost every occasion. Can easily be the base of a meal, a side dish, or occasionally the star of the show.

Programmatic display = granola

Everyone tells you it’s good for you, but you know it’s got a lot of hidden sugar in there.

Newspapers = aspic / Jell-O salads

All the rage last century, out of date now.

PPC search = bottled water

Necessary but also available for free from the tap (organic).

Mail = banana bread

Everyone got into it in lockdown.

Influencers = high-protein snacks

All anyone is interested in right now, regardless of whether they know how much they need or not.

In short, remember to plan your media with the balanced curiosity of Louis Theroux: embrace variety, stretch your palate, and don’t forget your greens.

(And anyone who works in newspapers, please don’t come for me… surely Jell-O salads are due a comeback?!)

Hannah Moody is comms planning business director at Mediaplus UK, and a previous member of The Media Leader‘s Future 100 Club.