Truffle Pig and the new media trough
From the launch of Truffle Pig to Vice’s tie-up with Unilever, we’re seeing new levels of innovation in the media, writes Raymond Snoddy.
Oink oink. Sorry guys you have just missed out on one of the best brand names for a new content marketing company dreamed up for ages. Once again, Sir Martin Sorrell has beaten you to it.
The arrival of Truffle Pig, which obviously has close emotional ties to the immortal Peppa Pig, should just be given the award for best new media brand name of the year – whether or not it ultimately amounts to little more than a pile of pork scratchings.
The proposed role of Truffle Pig is interesting too, as are the three founding partners.
The new agency aims to combine “the best of global agency, newsroom and social media talent” and brings together Sir Martin’s WPP, the Daily Mail in the form of Mail Online and rising social media star, Snapchat.
The aim of course is to take advantage of the rise of native advertising – the advertising that aspires to look as close to editorial as possible without making too big a monkey of the reader.
Cuckoo and nest springs to mind, but that would be a very old-fashioned way of thinking.
The really interesting thing about Truffle Pig – perhaps we can call it Peppa as a pet name – are the participants in the venture.
Particularly eye-catching is the involvement of Sir Martin and the Daily Mail.
This is the Sir Martin who a few years ago was tearfully bidding farewell to the printed press, while more reasonably attacking the financial model under which newspapers were giving away their expensively assembled content for a thin potage of advertising.
Then Sir Martin emerged from his dark period and saw the light. Earlier this year the WPP chief executive told journalists that maybe newspapers were more effective than they were being given credit for.
And Sir Martin, who can be tenacious when he gets his mind around a concept, went further on Radio 4’s Media Show and emphasised the importance of engagement to the marketing community.
Producing his own tablet of stone Sir Martin pronounced: “the death of traditional media is much overplayed…there is value there.”
There was then no stopping him, now that the scales had dropped from his eyes.
You know what, said the great marketeer, people actually get their hands on a physical copy of The Times and do something really weird. They start at the beginning and read it all the way through – or even sometimes vice-versa – and spend an average of 40 minutes on the task. Wow, how engaging is that.
It certainly compares quite favourably with what counts as an online viewing, a full screen absorbed for at least half a second.
With Peppa and the Daily Mail Sir Martin has gone for online newspaper volume.
In December Mail Online attracted no less than 199.4 million unique visits globally making it the most widely accessed English language online newspaper site in the world.
By now it must have shown a clean pair of heels to 200 million mark.
So, at the very least, the union of WPP, the Daily Mail and Snapchat, which claims more than 100 million users a month, to create Truffle Pig can display some impressive initial numbers.
It is another small indication of how the media is changing, and how new cross-media alliances are being formed.
Though Truffle Pig is primarily an agency, and one prepared to work with other partners, it also reflects an element of the advertising and marketing communities becoming increasingly interested in content.
Despite being controversial with some television professionals, Sir Martin is happy to expand his investment in television production through Group M Entertainment.
The aim is to accumulate intellectual property, gain access to surrounding advertising slots for his clients, while ensuring there are enough good quality shows for viewers to watch.
Naturally Sir Martin insists that the commissioning broadcaster retains full editorial control.
WPP has also taken a stake in a Swedish OTT company called Flownet.
Just after the launch of Truffle Pig on the Mail Online yacht at Cannes Lions festival, another form of marketing miscegenation was unveiled, this time the result of Unilever’s passionate involvement with Vice.
No prizes this time for those who came up with the name for the planned female-focused online site – Broadly.
The only possible rationale for choosing such a bland, boring, uncommunicative name is that because of the aforementioned characteristics it will stand out from all the clever, smart cool names like Truffle Pig and be noticed.
Vice has what is in effect a multi-year sponsorship deal with Unilever but it will also involve “co-content” in support of Unilever brands such as Dove soaps, TRESemme hair products, Sure and Vaseline.
As is well known, 78 per cent of Unilever’s sales are made to women, and as the company explained in Cannes, they always learn the most when they get involved in a new project from the beginning.
The new Broadly channel, or online video site, which will launch sometime this summer with daily editorial including longform documentaries, will be run by Tracie Egan Morrissey, formerly of Jezabel. Now there’s a name and a half for a female-focused channel – great pity it was taken already.
The only surprise is that the female-focussed Daily Mail is not involved with this one too, although there is always time and space for new partners.
Truffle Pig and Broadly – and there will probably at least three more new launches by the end of the week – are interesting examples of the current levels of creativity and innovation in the media.
Blink and you have missed another emerging trend.
The fact is that native advertising and co-content, or whatever euphemism you care to use, will not go away and even the editorially fastidious will have to develop ground rules to make it workable as an additional stream of media revenue.
In difficult, financially stretched times it is, alas, no longer a case of trebles all round.
It’s much more about getting snouts in every trough.