Rather than displacing television, the internet, including social media is doing an excellent job of building the medium.

From an article titled, “7 Things You Need to Know About Social TV Right Now,’ the writer provides proof:

Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to "Glee" to Major League Baseball to "True Blood."
Over time, it dawned on us that more than anything else, TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the U.S. and the U.K., Twitter's trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter.

Why is this? In a word, behaviour.

Social TV is about watching TV with other people -- think of "50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch "I Love Lucy." Only now the living room has gone national.

In fact, it’s reversing problems such as time-shifting.

"We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year," said TVGuide.com's Tanner, "and what we found is that 20% of them said they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid "social spoilers.'"

It’s not just TV that’s benefiting from social media, but brand campaigns running on TV as well, such as Old Spice. The brand was resurrected on television and only somewhat later extended to social media. However, had there not been a huge spend on TV, the social media effort wouldn’t have even been considered.

Pepsi learned this lesson the hard way last year when they shifted much of their budget away from TV to social media. Pepsi is now in third place behind Diet Coke.

So, contrary to the current crop of vested interest ‘experts’ claiming that traditional media such as TV will give way to social media and that, once again, advertising as we know it is dead, the opposite is happening.

Why is this? Why does TV continue to be so dominate? I think there are a couple of reasons. For one, it’s not about the conversation, it’s about what causes the conversation. And TV is really, really good at that.

For another reason, and not to belabour the point, it’s about behaviour.

People understand the internet differently than other forms of media. For one thing other than your hookup, the content is largely free. For another it’s an information medium first, whether that’s checking up on friends or family, or finding out the latest info or price on something you’re interested in.

People fan brands online mainly to get deals. They don’t recommend brands because they like the brand so much as they like their friends and want them to benefit from what’s on offer.

As a CEO of an online media company recently wrote about in Ad Age:

It's time to face the reality that the Internet sucks as a branding medium. I know that statement will rile up a few people, but I am starting to believe that the Internet may not be the right medium for brand development, at least in its current form. Trust me, it doesn't help my business if TV dollars don't come online, but it appears that online advertising is destined to become the greatest direct response medium in history and the greatest branding disappointment ever. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

The thing is, as an advertising medium, the internet and social media have their own value proposition and purpose. It’s an arrow in the quiver, not the whole quiver. It’s up to smart marketers to integrate these tools in the most effective way possible, based on an idea that can be executed across platforms.

It's odd that with over 10 years of facts piled up against 'click' based banners, marketers still employ them.

Well, here's another bit of research proving you'd have to be a pretzel to logically keep buying them.

99% of cookies examined never click.

More than expected, a tiny fraction of people ever click on an ad. In fact, 99% of stable cookies examined never click on an ad. This is a more pronounced disparity than was reported in comScore’s study. Further, users who have clicked in the past are twice as likely to click again in the future.

Many clicks are accidental.

Nearly 20% of ads that received any click activity received multiple clicks within the same impression, suggesting that these clicks were unintentional. This effect is especially seen among online gamers, who clicked 43% more often than non-gamers, and on mobile devices where users clicked 123% more often.

Intentional clickers are lower income.

An examination of who tended to click paints a picture of an audience that may not be attractive to most advertisers. Clickers tend to be lower income, older and late technical neophytes.

More here.

Apart from pretty much everybody roundly disproving that the rise of digital means the death of TV, Deloitte’s “State of Media Democracy” survey says that 71% of America rates watching TV as their favourite media activity. And 86% say that TV advertising has the most impact on their buying decisions.

Some highlights:

• Despite the continued growth of access to television content through other channels, with more than half of U.S. consumers preferring to watch their favorite shows on their home TV system.
• Nearly three-quarters of consumers prefer to watch their favorite TV shows live — even given a variety of other options, including recording systems or online video service.
• TV programming continues to be the most discussed content, ahead of social networking sites, music, websites and movies.
• Flat-panel TV ownership has increased dramatically, with 59% of households now owning at least one.

TV and traditional advertising sells. Digital is a nice compliment in extending the sell. That is, as long as you’ve got a good idea.

Here's some research that every CMO should be aware of. An analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Awards shows a substantial return on marketing investment is based on creativity. The study shows that the most creatively-awarded advertising campaigns are 11 times more efficient at delivering business success.

The study - which builds on findings from an earlier study by the IPA, Marketing in the Era of Accountability (2007) - involved analysis of a wide range of award-winning and non-winning campaigns,

The Thinkbox/IPA analysis examined both the effectiveness (in terms of a campaign’s ability to drive business effects such as share, sales, profit and loyalty) and the efficiency (in terms of share growth per point of Excess Share of Voice) of creatively-awarded and non-awarded campaigns.

Key findings include:

• Pound for pound, creativity makes ad campaigns more efficient; on average, creatively-awarded campaigns (i.e. in major awards competitions recognised by The Gunn Report) are at least 11 times more efficient.
• 

The vast majority of Gunn Report creative award scores (74%) are for TV commercials, showing that TV creativity is at the heart of the success of these campaigns. The remaining scores cover press and online.


• The more creatively-awarded a campaign, the more effective it becomes.
• 

Creatively awarded campaigns are much more likely to be ‘emotional’ than ‘rational’ (44% vs. 19%). This partly explains the prevalence of TV in creatively-awarded campaigns as TV creates emotion better than other media (source: Marketing in the Era of Accountability, IPA).
• 

Investing in creativity is a powerful way to achieve fame (i.e. buzz). The study shows that brands can buy awareness but not fame; fame is proven to be at the heart of the most effective advertising (source: Marketing in the Era of Accountability, IPA).


• Creatively-awarded campaigns that invest strongly in Excess Share of Voice (ESOV) perform particularly well, suggesting that many creative campaigns could further improve ROMI by investing more in Share of Voice (SOV).


• Despite generally being disadvantaged by lower levels of ESOV, creatively-awarded campaigns still generate more and greater business effects than non-awarded ones.
• 

With the same level of ESOV, creatively-awarded campaigns would have driven twice as much market share growth as non-awarded ones.


• Creative awards strongly reflect consumer liking of ad campaigns. On average, 35% of consumers ranked Gunn awarded campaigns as ‘highly liked’ versus just 20% for non-Gunn awarded campaigns. Liking an ad is the best predictor of business success (source: Marketing in the Era of Accountability’ IPA).

The often overlooked, hidden value of creativity is that it can also drive down the cost of production execution. People want to attach themselves to better ideas and will cut prices and over deliver just for the opportunity. "A great idea has many fathers. A bad idea is an orphan" is as true today as ever.

The problem that remains, though, is the fact that not every agency, or everybody can come up with truly great ideas. Fallacies like, "A great idea can come from anyone" are just that, fallacies, typically spoken by those who don't have a clue. To make matters worse, given an ever increasing aversion to risk, not every CMO will approve great creative over the mediocre. Or, as often as the case may be, even recognize it in the first place.

And what should be understood is great creative is only half the effort. Great creative ideas that actually see the light of marketing dollars will always require great salesmen to sell through and around, shepherding the fragile thoughts past the various kill zones, such as focus groups, politics, committees. And yes, the bosses wife.

 

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” – Ecclesiastes

 

For all the histrionics about a new marketing paradigm, few things are actually all that new.

 

We've all heard the parroted memes, "The consumer is in charge," "The consumer expects more," "It's all about the conversation," etc., etc., ad nauseum. This thinking is based on the assumption of a wholesale consumer migration from traditional to digital media which will inevitably cause fundamentally different behavior patterns.

 

However, this is not the case.

 

TV viewership is at its highest point ever with 99% of all video being viewed on TV, not the internet (Nielsen Three Screen Report, Q1 2010). 96% of all retail activity is done in a store (U.S. Department of Commerce, Q2 2010). Meanwhile, 99.9% of people do not click on online display ads. In fact, Since the 1990s, click-through rates for banner ads have dropped 97.5% (DoubleClick, Benchmark Report, 2009).

 

 

What's more and despite social media, the consumer neither has the time, or desire to "be in charge" or, "own the brand." They've got a life, after all.

 

In a post, titled,"Digital Primetime Arrives Just in Time to Crush the Net," Steve Rubel talks about the idea of "Digital Relativity:

Regardless of which side of the debate you buy into, one that sees superficiality rising versus another that envisions a new Renaissance, one thing remains clear. Space on the Internet is infinite. Time and attention, meanwhile, remain finite. Therefore, “Digital Relativity” will become a major challenge.

Taken in context, when you do the math it’s easy to see that it’s going to be harder than ever to reach people. On the one hand, social networking sites like Facebook consolidate audiences. (The average user spends five hours/month on the site.) On the other hand, social media is forcing us to make hard choices every day – Bieber vs brands, Forbes vs families, business vs. babies.

 

 

 But then, it doesn't take a blog post to state the obvious. Time is scarce and everything else is abundant. People have little time to "interact" with brands. What they expect from a brand name is a unique product at a fair price, backed by solid customer service - in order to have a good user experience.

They also want a deal. When ranking the most important reasons why (people) follow brands on Facebook, respondents cited promotional benefits first.

 

How is any of this different than it's ever been?

 

In 1954, Peter Drucker’s “The practice of management” placed marketing at the center of the organization and proposed what became known as a marketing philosophy of business − “Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all. It is the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view.” Again, Peter Druker, in his 1973 book “Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices” wrote that “…because it is the purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two-basic functions: marketing and innovation…"

 

This, of course, is exactly what Apple, Google and all successful companies are doing.

 

In terms of creative, Howard Gossage was producing interactive campaigns in the '50's and 60's. Mary Wells was producing immersive experiences over 40 years ago.

 

"Pure Michigan" is a successful and much talked about current campaign which Forbes named as one of the 10 best tourism campaigns. It has won lots of awards and is being called "ground breaking."

 

 

Here's a campaign for Prince Edward Island that was also highly successful, awarded and also called ground breaking. It ran in 1993.

 

 

The scripts may be a little different, but the thinking, sentiment and construction are the same. Nothing new.

As innovative and exciting as modern times have become, it doesn't replace common sense or well established marketing fundamentals. Digital tools do not replace the whole toolkit. Neither does technology change essential human behavior and the art of persuasion.

Stats thanks to adcontrarian.blogspot.com