“Mother, they’re still not sure it is a baby.”
James Whitmore, managing director at Postar, wonders whether we have forgotten the value of brands… Are we so dazzled by the short-term, the data and the noise that we have lost sight of the bigger picture?
A monumental promotion delivered the Sunday version of The Sun.
Both weekend editions are heavily discounted. It is perhaps surprising that News International feels the need to use quite so much ammunition to extend what is already a very strong brand by a seventh day. (I would contend that the recent scandals have had only a modest impact on the core readership.)
It begs the question that has been bugging me for a while. Have we forgotten the value of brands? Are we so dazzled by the short-term, the data and the noise that we have lost sight of the bigger picture? Have we lost confidence in our ability to persuade? Or have the rules changed? Do we know something new?
From last weekend, both the Saturday and Sunday editions will be sold at a discounted rate. By the end of the year, the cost of the price cuts amount to £12 million and £58 million respectively. These are sobering figures. The claimed advertising budget for the new Sunday is only one tenth of that.
Which, in a link worthy of local radio, brings me to MediaTel’s annual get-together to discuss the future of media research. One of the many themes was the growth of data, its primacy and what it might indicate for the future of media research. This debate is becoming somewhat repetitive. Now that we have so much data, is there really such a need for more traditional forms of research? Blah-di-blah.
When we talk about data, we most often refer to information culled from online activity. It is primarily a promotional or below-the-line space.
Equally, we might put most media research into an above-the-line box. We seek understanding of how best to influence behaviour and purchase.
They aren’t alternatives but different things. There is a bigger question, to resurrect some old jargon, is it above or below the line? Are we promoting or persuading?
The balance for Mr Murdoch appears to be in favour of promotion. The focus for many in the media community also seems to be that way. That is also where most of this new mass of data seems to sit and that is what it most often informs.
To paraphrase Virginia Woolfe – it’s about time someone did on this site – it is an attempt to hypnotise us into the belief that, because a house has been built, there must be a person living there. Never mind the big pile of numbers, concentrate on the question that you wish to answer. I think the scale of statistics seduces many. Truth is more readily discovered in concision.
For the marketer, among other things, the web is a ritzy amalgam of directories, catalogues, junk mail and word-of-mouth. And this year it comes with super-sexy new added mobile. Yes I am being flippant. The point is that we might try and strip away the wonder of the technology and look at what it actually does. And from there give context to the value of the information that we derive from it.
The scale of the statistics derived from the on-line world is vast and fiercely accelerating. Size does not automatically confer import or value. There is a danger in spending too much time, devoting too great a focus, on the promotional world and forgetting the power of the art of persuasion.
As ever, it begs a bigger question. What business are we in?
I would be surprised if the new paper does not settle down at the same level as its predecessor. There is a precedent of sorts – The Times and Sunday Times strike of 1978/9, when after the absence of a year, the papers returned with the same circulation as before.
I question why the price cuts need to be so big. But then, I don’t know much of anything.