Projecting Media: How One Source Becomes Two Stories

Depending the article you read, the next generation of television viewers is either growing or in jeopardy.

The Wall Street Journal reports an average of 5.8 million children between the ages of 2 and 11 watch television (broadcast, cable, and live) at any given moment. It's 1.7 percent higher than last year. The article concentrates on the big losses experienced by Viacom's Nickelodeon (down 15-20 percent) and Time Warner's Cartoon Network (down 11 percent) but cited gains in other channels, including the Disney Channel (up 5.9 percent) and The Hub (up 50 percent). The article alludes to more kids watching adult programs.

Ad Age, using the same data, ran a different story. It reported that Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney XD all experienced heavy declines, and only hinted at the gains at Disney Channel and The Hub, dismissing the latter channel's gains because the comparisons are drawn against the low-rated Discovery Kids. The article then shifts to television's increasing competition from other media, including social networks and gaming. It also cites a Kaiser Family Foundation study that says children ages 8-18 watch 25 fewer minutes a day.

What is especially interesting about the two stories is that they were prompted by the same research from Nielsen. And yet, the overriding slant of the Wall Street article is that Nickelodeon is in trouble despite growing viewership, underscored by the channel's plea to wait for upcoming fresh episodes. Whereas the overriding slant of the Ad Age article is that the entire youth audience is slipping, with Nickelodeon leading the way, even if Viacom claims a ratings glitch.

Expect both articles will be shared with new slants. The Hollywood Reporter already spun off The Wall Street Journal piece. Ad Age has had fewer takers, but mostly because what might frighten marketers isn't likely to frighten parents. The more compelling observation is how media is shaped and what that means.

The consequence of journalism's time crunch is accelerating different realities. 

I've been fascinated with the changing shape of media for some time, especially as it pertains to perception and reality. And while we can only infer that the journalists have different world views of television, comparing the two stories demonstrates how validation is increasingly prevalent in media, not only for how we consume media but also in how professionals report it.

In fact, there is enough content on the Internet today to prove that children are both watching more and less television than they did 10 or 20 years ago. And for some authors, it is even critical to prove it one way or another. After all, there is no reason to write about the dangers of television to kids (or the benefits of television* before railing on the negatives) unless it constitutes a threat or benefit.

But what that really means, as a marketer or parent, is the emphasis need not be placed on the delivery system (television) as much as the programs being delivered. The same can be said for how we consume information and make informed decisions, with the burden of fact-checking falling less on reporters (citizen or professional) than on consumers.

In the case of the two articles above, the net takeaway might be that Ad Age is correct in that kids spend less time in front of the television but more time with a variety of media, with a heavy emphasis on multitasking. But where The Wall Street Journal is right is in that some channels are losing young viewers to better programs, especially those with more engaging or interesting content. More adult shows included.

Equally important for marketers, they might place more measure on the psychographics of these viewers, asking tough questions like: Which types of kids are watching Spongebob and which aren't, and are those kids more inclined to like this product or that product? Likewise, parents don't have to be passive about programing, but rather take some time to balance what is appropriate while appreciating that kids might not be as corruptible as we think.

Challenging Good Deeds: Fragile Brand Theory

Unilever, maker of several leading consumer products including Dove soap, recently learned that no good deed goes unpunished. They now know better than most: attempting to maintain a brand as a good corporate citizen and environmentally friendly company is a tricky business these days.

Despite scoring at the top of global ethical and sustainability indexes during the last year, and being considered a company that takes environmental issues seriously, Unilever continues to be the target of Greenpeace because it buys palm oil from other companies that are destroying the rainforest, which is also endangering Indonesian orangutans.

Unilever is not alone. According to Greenpeace, the world's largest food, cosmetic, and biofuel companies are driving the wholesale destruction of Indonesia's rainforests and peatlands through growing palm oil consumption. In a report, Greenpeace predicts the demand for palm oil will double by 2030.

For an Advertising Age article, Greenpeace said it did not single out Unilever because of its high-profile environmental and social stances, but added that there “was an element of greenwash there.” In fact, he said, Proctor & Gamble and Nestle may be the next targets.

”Most activists of whatever persuasion on whatever issue tend to believe that they get most traction (and news coverage) by aiming at the biggest name rather than the biggest challenge," a Unilever spokeswoman e-mailed Advertising Age. "In most instances, it seems that the biggest 'name' tends to be the one that has done the most to attack the ... problem."

From a communication perspective, the spokesperson’s e-mail interested us the most because it supports our fragile brand theory, which suggests: the further perception travels from reality or the more unsustainable it might be, the greater the potential for brand damage. Overreach too much and, eventually, the brand might face total collapse.

It doesn't always matter that there are companies with much more environmentally or socially deplorable practices than Unilever. However, those companies do not receive a brand boost from the perception that they might be green.

So maybe it’s not always that activists are after the biggest names. They are after the biggest contrasts between perception and reality.

Our environmental policy sets out our commitment to meet the needs of consumers and customers in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner, through continuous improvements in environmental performance. — Unilever

In reading through the company’s environmental policy, it does seem to achieve some goals (packaging reduction, for example) better than others. Specifically, the policy states that the company aims to “ensure the safety of its products and operations for the environment” and will be “exercising the same concern for the environment wherever we operate.” If they are enabling foreign suppliers to do the opposite, then Unilever is not meeting those standards. That’s a problem, but not only in action.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making a case against Unilever as much as I am making a case for communicators to resist messages that overreach. The truth is that relatively few companies (and even fewer people) can produce a perfect environmental scorecard.

All I'm suggesting is that we don't claim to be avid recyclers if we’re sharp on putting newspapers in the bin but shoddy on plastic bottles (because they have to be rinsed out). Authenticity simply suggests that we stop at touting our efforts at paper products if that is the case.

Parading Biegel: Creatively Naked

Lawsuits are odd things nowadays, sometimes serving as smear campaigns rather than the pursuit of justice for which they are intended. The case of Biegel vs. Denstu, as amended and made available by Ad Age, is one where it becomes very unclear which category it belongs.

Part of the reason is that the Biegel’s revisions further muddle events and allegations while placing even more aim on Toyo Shigeta, CEO of Dentsu Holdings USA as well as another senior executive at Dentsu. The new complaint even includes the web address of the now famous brothel (pictured) where it all went down.

Biegel’s revised complaint now reveals he wasn’t just motivated to stand up just because he was subjected to two years of repeated lewd and sexually harassing behavior, which included forcing him to engage prostitutes, view photographs of crotches, and get naked to “parade” in front of the accused at a Japanese bathhouse. No, Biegel was motivated because another employee was scheduled to take a business trip with Shigeta about two years later.

So Biegel confronted his employer on the presumption that this employee would also be subjected to the same humiliating and sexually degrading experience that Biegel had allegedly endured for years. This was also the time that Biegel chose to disclose that he ought to have reported the bathhouse incident (not necessarily the brothel incident) to human resources.

According to the suit, Shigeta’s attitude toward Biegel changed from positive to negative after that, with Shigeta virtually cutting off all communication between them. (Ya think?) And this is why Biegel now claims he was not only fired because of complaining about sexual harassment, but also because he is Jewish. Huh?

Is there a connection here or is this something out of pulp fiction? In any case, religious discrimination and defamation are added to the case. The latter is presumably because Dentsu denied the charges, which made Biegel look bad. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, Dentsu is standing firm in insisting that the allegations are patently false, and filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. Biegel, they say, ignored formal procedures for making grievances about sexual harassment by lodging claims more than a year after the alleged incidents took place.

Applying Ethics Against Harassment

While I can make no assumptions that any of this occurred or did not occur, I can share what might have occurred had Biegel applied ethics.

• Biegel could have warned Shigeta that he was offended immediately upon being taken to a brothel and took action to leave the brothel, especially after receiving “orders” to participate with prostitutes.

• Upon further insistence or threat, Biegel could have immediately told Shigeta that he would be reporting the incident to human resources.

• Upon further insistence or threat or inaction by human resources, Biegel could have filed a lawsuit.

Had any of this happened, there would have likely been no other occurrences either because Shigeta would have either understood the point or may have been terminated. But then again, there wouldn’t be $1 million lawsuit several years after the fact either.

As I wrote in post yesterday, fearlessness can serve people in business — being “forced” to parade naked in front of your boss would certainly qualify as the time to apply it.

Considering Sundance: Social Media Measures

A few years ago, Sundance Catalog Company opened a store inside Boca Park in Las Vegas, a retail center that continues to offer great dining, apparel, art, and accessory boutiques. We were working for the developers of Boca Park at the time, the same developers responsible for the acclaimed the Mall of America in Minneapolis.

There was no question that Boca Park was the right place for Sundance. Boca Park is located in Summerlin, a master-planned community surrounded by more than 100 square miles of luxury, executive, custom, and gated residential developments with thousands of homes priced at more than $1 million.

From a social media perspective, Robert Redford’s brick and mortar store was a virtual gold mine. It had it all. A prime location. An attractive corner building. Friendly employees. A high traffic count. Celebrities stopping by. Great content. Dozens of “link-like” plugs from various newspapers and magazines. It was hot!

Oh, except for one little thing. Sales. Nobody bought anything. It was all eye candy; a window shopper’s paradise. I once bought a very nice light switch cover there. It cost about $10.

Not surprisingly, Sundance moved out. It was replaced by Tilly’s, which does very well at Boca Park because, well, people buy things. Sometimes I buy too many things.

Sure, I know precisely what was wrong with the Sundance store and how it could have been amazingly successful given the surrounding area, but that’s not really what this post is about. What this post is about is the growing pressure on social media measurements and why these measures are slowing down businesses that want to migrate to social media. More often than not, social media is measured like the Sundance store.

I’ve been brooding about this for some time now. And no, it’s not the kind of stuff that makes you popular in some circles, especially those who rank. However, other people are starting to wonder if I might not be right, at least a little bit.

Where does the hype end and the real measure begin? At least those are the kind of questions that Geoff Livingston, author of the new book, Now Is Gone, is starting to ask about what is now called the Ad Age Power 150. (We’ll be opening up more discussion about this later today at BlogStraightTalk on Bumpzee and BlogStraightTalk’s newest home on BlogCatalog.) But I wanted to touch on a question raised by Andrew Graham, an account executive for Cognito, on Linkedin.

“How should social media companies be valued?” Graham asked in response to my query, what social media question is not being adequately answered by communication experts? “Given a lot of these companies are more or less built for acquisition, I think it's a legitimate question.”

Exactly. Right now, traffic counts, clicks, rank, and links are considered the most relevant measures of social media. Don’t get me wrong; these measures can play an important role in the greater scope. But, unfortunately for businesses, they provide a skewed sense of reality.

In other words, there are a whole lot of Sundance brick and mortar stores (like the one mentioned above) online. They have everything going for them, except a tangible measure like sales. And the reason is pretty simple. Many of them are chasing social media measures instead of strategic business goals. To what end?

As preliminary answer to Graham, in my opinion, a social media company is worth what someone will pay for it, but the social media measures that are currently in play (like clicks and links) over inflate the value unless proprietary technology is part of the package.

In terms of blogs or other social media tools, the best measures are based on its ability to meet strategic goals: things that range from brand awareness and market share to member engagement and sales. All the other stuff, while helpful and not to be discounted en masse, are not really valid measures unless the buyer is equipped to turn traffic into something tangible.

Likewise, companies entering social media to expand their communication plan might consider what goals they want to meet on the front end. And no, I don't mean rank as much as bank. That's what we've been doing for several companies over the last few weeks, determining what real goals they can tie to their social media plan.

Spotting Convergence: Procter & Gamble

When I began writing that company-driven digital media was an emerging trend to watch with tangible income marketing potential, some people weren’t too keen on the idea.

Two days ago, Brian Steinberg with Advertising Age reported that Procter & Gamble (P&G) is in the early stages of producing a pilot focused on sketch comedy and the travails of the comics who devise it, which it hopes can become a primetime reality series for broadcast or cable. While this doesn’t connect all the dots between Internet-based digital media programming and traditional broadcast television, it does raise interesting questions around the concept well beyond the Cavemen.

"If it's not entertaining, then it's not going to engage, and if it doesn't, then it's a failure," said Peter Tortorici, president of WPP Group's Group M Entertainment. "Consumers aren't looking to be entertained by brands. They are looking to be entertained by characters and stories."

Tortorici is right. Under the existing model, advertisers rely on networks to develop and nurture entertaining shows to capture an audience. Then, assuming the measures are right, they buy time around those shows. However, most people agree that the old model is broken.

"The market is so fragmented, and because you have DVRs out there, we know that people are fast-forwarding through the commercials,” contributed Pat Gentile, head of P&G Productions, to the article. “If you can create something that is interesting and that resonates with the consumer, for Procter & Gamble, that's a pretty big deal."

It is a very big deal. P&G is among the biggest spenders on network television despite steadily shifting away from television advertising since 2005. Considering P&G currently commands an advertising budget of $6.7 billion, producing its own pilot it seems like a modest investment.

Some might say it’s almost a necessity. Even Fortune’s Geoff Colvin framed up his question to P&G’s James Stengel this way: Fortune’s Geoff Colvin: “Now that mass media is losing its dominance, what's the new model?”

“It's about understanding these consumers in a complete way. Our research has changed a lot. We do much more immersion research, much more anthropological research. We really try to get at what we can do through our brands to make a difference in people's lives,” Stengel said.

Although P&G is developing a pilot for broadcast or cable this time, we would not be surprised to see even more immersive experimentation in digital media, which provides better tracking through analytics and an ability to nurture niche markets. (We can think of hundreds of programs that P&G could develop to engage audiences on the Internet.) As Steinberg pointed out in his well-written article, P&G already has precedents.

Hmmm … suddenly, company-produced programs doesn’t seem so silly anymore. And while I am not suggesting that company-produced programming will or should completely replace broadcast penetration, it does make a lot of sense to consider programming as a viable part of the marketing mix.

Acquiring Social Media: Ad Age

A few days ago, Advertising Age (Ad Age), which has a combined online and print reach of 697,000 readers (approximately half online), acquired Todd Andrlik’s “multi metric” methodology, the ranking system used to create Todd And’s Power 150, which is probably the most quoted blog ranking system around.

What does that mean?

That seems to be the question of the week. The acquisition has created a buzz, especially among those who have submitted their sites and are currently ranked. In fact, enough social media insiders like ExperienceCurve and The Viral Garden have asked "What does it mean?" that Andrlik went back and compiled the answers from Jonah Bloom, editor of Ad Age, asking: What does it mean?

“The fact we’ll now also be ranking the media and marketing blogs says a lot about how important that community has become in a very short time,” said Bloom. “Here at Ad Age we have no immediate plans to monkey with Todd’s subjective evaluations. I like that the ranking does have a qualitative filter, and that Todd is that filter.”

What does that mean?

It means more than it says. It means magazine editors are becoming much more adept at talking like public relations practitioners. It means Andrlik will be sticking around as long as it suits Ad Age. It means Ad Age will keep the ranking system in place for the short term. It means Ad Age has acknowledged the growing influence of blogs at a time when print media prefers to ignore them (not one print publication has formally announced the acquisition, including Ad Age). And it means Ad Age, given its close proximity to communication-related industries, recognizes that the time to position a publication as an online content leader is right now.

What does that mean?

It means convergence through quiet acquisition. As I have written before, the future of social media will likely play out much like the Web site boom in the early 1990s. On the front end, advertising agencies called Web sites a fad that targeted too small of a niche audience to be acknowledged whereas IT people saw it as a pristine time to charge tens of thousands of dollars to do what no one wanted to do.

It didn’t take long before advertising agencies realized that the high price of Web site design was cutting into their advertising budgets. So, they quickly and quietly bought up the competition. While there are still a few Web design firms in existence today, the field has been largely absorbed by communication-related companies.

Social media will likely go the same way over time; this time with advertising agencies, public relations firms, companies, and print publications all quietly taking a keen interest in and then acquiring social media content providers. Unlike Web sites though, there will always be new start up content providers waiting in the wings.

When will this happen? Um, long before yesterday.