Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Except they don’t – it just appears that way. Confused? Let David Brennan explain.

I have spent at least a decade now commentating on the progress of the digital revolution, and in particular the remarkable resilience of the legacy media. It’s funny, but it seems to me that the more evidence that emerges demonstrating that the digital newcomers still have a long way to go in terms of dominating the media landscape, the more I hear ridiculous claims about how online is ‘beating’ TV or how we are seeing the end of print media…or even the death of ‘traditional’ advertising.

In fact, the more digital becomes an integral part of our lives, the greater the influence of the media channels it was supposed to replace. There is nothing strange in that – revolutions often create unforeseen events that appear to move counter to the revolutionary march – but it is about time we started to spend more time focussing on how these developments will affect the composition of the emerging media and advertising landscapes.

First of all, let’s take a closer look at a couple of news stories from the past few weeks.

The September analytics data tells us that online editions of newsbrands have reached their highest audiences ever, both in the UK and globally.

MailOnline now attracts almost 12 million unique users every day and 184 million every month, up 24% year on year. The Guardian – with 6.5 million unique daily users and 114 million monthly, up 37% year on year – has also grown into a global media powerhouse, and all major newsbrands have recorded substantial growth (Mirror Group has more than doubled its daily unique users figure to over 3 million in the past 12 months).

I know some of this growth has to be offset with decline in circulation of print editions, but never in the golden age of print did any of the newsbrands record these sorts of audience figures…and print is still the dominant channel for most newsbrand readership.

The latest BARB data demonstrates that TV viewing is slightly down on the previous two years to date but is still consistent with 2009 levels, but with one big difference; the real viewing of TV programming – including time shift and on demand – is still growing and more people are watching TV content for longer than ever, across a range of devices and platforms.

As with newsbrands, online (and, increasingly, mobile) brings new audiences and (potentially) higher engagement levels than ever before. Meanwhile, commercial impacts continue to rise to record levels and TV continues to dominate our conversations – whether online or face-to-face.

What about radio? Despite music being the most disrupted of all the media and entertainment industries, live radio still accounts for more than 70% of music listening and on demand is adding around 1.5 billion listening hours every year on top. Some of the main radio groups – including Bauer Media – now achieve almost half of their listening via digital radio distribution.

All of this is helping to sustain a national radio audience which is virtually unchanged from even five years ago, even as Spotify and the other on demand and streaming services have emerged as significant competitors.

This runs in parallel with some other trends within the music industry. Live music and ancillary products (e.g. merchandise, licensing etc.) continue to thrive and even the humble vinyl record is beginning to make a comeback – 2014 is set to become the best year for vinyl sales in the UK for at least two decades. How could that be, when digital’s move from atoms to bits was meant to make such analogue artefacts redundant by now?

There are a number of answers to that question, which help to explain the larger phenomenon of the resilience of legacy media and physical product alike. The thing is, these answers have little to do with technology and everything to do with human nature:

1. The power of ‘now’ – psychological studies have demonstrated that what is happening now is considered far more attractive and important than what has happened historically or what may happen in future. The faster the world moves, the more importance now retains.

This helps to explain the growing importance of news content in our lives, as well as the incredible power of the live broadcast schedule, still pulling them in 25 years after it was meant to have died.

2. The power of ‘us’ – we now know that we are far more influenced by other people and our social connections than we ever could have expected. This helps to explain why people tend to congregate around content, rather than living their lives in fragmented, me-based silos. It also helps to explain the attraction of the social web, and our desire to use it to expand and enhance our media experiences – such as Social TV or news debate on Twitter

3. The power of convenience – this can also be linked to the paradox of choice; to quote Barry Schwarz: “choice is cherished, but choosing is a chore”. Nowadays, as consumers, we have more choice available than we ever could manage effectively, which is why we wish to know that lots of choice is available but, when confronted by it, we tend to simplify the selection process, often by heuristics, or emotional shortcuts.

These will tend to gravitate us towards selections other people choose or which are more easily accessed (e.g. let’s see what’s on the TV schedules rather than go through several layers of on demand choice; or let’s turn the radio on rather than picking a CD from my vast collection of music)

4. The power of trust and familiarity – in some ways, this is related to the paradox of choice, as unmanageable choice always nudges us towards the tried and tested. However, my decades of research across all media channels suggests to me that there is an additional power here – especially for media brands and products – and that is the trust in the curation of the content – the sense that this channel or media brand will provide me with the content I desire – whether it be for news, entertainment, information or communication.

As media content becomes so plentiful, and our available time reduces, this trust in the quality and relevance of the content provided by their preferred media brands becomes even more critical. Hence the continued power of the big media brands to dominate their sectors.

5. The power of ‘real’. No matter how faithful the replication of the content from atoms to bits, there is something about things that exist in the real world that creates a premium value. In the early days of the internet, it was having a real, physical retail presence (clicks and mortar).

In media terms it might be about having something to hold (recent research from PHD on the power of touch is especially relevant here – touch is the most sensitive and influential of the major senses, and yet we have never considered its value in media before) or something to keep (e.g. the resilience of DVDs, CDs and even printed books).

6. The power of serendipity – I’ll admit to a personal bias here, because ‘serendipity’ is my favourite word in the English language. I remember the early days of digital, with the promise that we would be in control of every media experience we desired, created a certain anxiety in me, because I always strongly believed that sometimes the best experiences we have are the unplanned ones.

Catching a news story that we would never have dreamed of searching out or a TV programme that would have normally passed us by (some of the most powerful TV programmes I have ever seen were chanced upon in such a way). Again, the surfeit of available content can make serendipity more vital than ever, but the online world is far more focussed towards control and targeting of the media experience.

All of these are real, significant human behaviours and attitudes, fundamental to the way consumers relate to the world of media. They can be seen in a diverse set of consumer behaviours, including their (to some) inexplicable loyalty to old media platforms and channels.

As we have learnt recently from advances in psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics, these are fundamental and universal drivers of behaviour, and their impact on our media selection and usage is both predictable and significant. So, why do we continue to ignore them?