With a large focus of this year’s conference centred on video, I wanted to use this opportunity to encourage brand owners to look inside their own organisations and question how well they have prepared for the onslaught of media convergence.

How many of the online plans of those brands represented in today’s audience include video?  How many have thought about producing a podcast, or funding their own TV show for the web?  When it comes to the communications teams’ delivery to the media, how many think to offer something more than a press release, realising they can talk directly to their audience themselves?

With almost everyone who accesses the web in the UK doing so via a broadband connection, the expectation of what we see online has been raised further than text and images, or a bit of Flash animation.  Video is what we want now, and high production values with it.

An example of where this expectation to be able to see and hear from a brand direct is never more prevalent than in the area of crisis management. Take the two very different examples where online broadcast opportunities have been used well or handled poorly via the contrasting media positioning of Mattel and Northern Rock respectively.

In August, Mattel were forced to recall over 20m products globally due to safety concerns. As part of their communication strategy to avoid mass panic amongst their consumers they produced a video of their Chairman and CEO making an impassioned statement on behalf of the company. The video was available via their website to all territories globally and was picked up by news desks internationally. Their personalised approach was a success in reassuring people that all was in control and being handled with the customer’s best interests.

In comparison during the perceived collapse of Northern Rock there appeared to be little communication emanating from them aside from an interview on Radio 4 and a limited message posted on their website. Consequently their lack of information fuelled speculation and fears, leading to media hype and scenes of investors queuing to withdraw their money. There was no wide spread communication telling people not to panic, no human face, Northern Rock lost control of the situation, allowing the media to dictate the agenda. Questions pertaining to protecting investments and savings could have been pre-empted and the responses made accessible and available in various formats via their website, satisfying the requirements from the media and their customers. This is the age where people demand to have information when they want it, where they want it and through multiple devices.

Both these instances are examples of where consumers have gone to the Internet for assurances from the brands involved, and therefore it is those involved in the digital media space that have the opportunity to influence. 

The IAB continue to show how budgets for online media increase year on year, but the key question is whether they are spent wisely?  For example, do those teams who design pop-ups really think that by putting the close button far away on the other side of the webpage that we won’t go looking for it, cursing them as we do?  Recent research by HowTo.tv revealed that not only are such online ads seen as intrusive, but they are also having a negative impact on brand perception.*

In the year since the last Engage conference, online advertising, whilst increasing in spend, has also come under fire due to some arguably lazy planning and buying strategies.  The BBC’s Panorama programme earlier in the summer exposed a few guilty parties who didn’t stop to think where their run-of-site activity might appear on the likes of YouTube or Facebook, some of whom were allegedly made to pay the price by their clients by losing their accounts.

The findings of the research are quite concerning with 94% of web users saying they have experienced online advertising that is totally unrelated to the site they are visiting. Furthermore, 95% said they had had ads served on them that were not relevant to them or their interests and that 94% of people experience pop-up ads online that are of no interest to them.  The research also pointed out the need for media owners to also be weary when chasing the increased online budgets as 50% of respondents said they had left a favourite website because of intrusive/annoying online ads and pop-ups.  

Most important of all, however, is that online advertising that is involuntarily served on the viewer through pop-ups, moving screens, or non-existent segmentation through run-of-site purchasing irrelevant to content, has a negative impact on the brand. An incredible 95.2% of people said annoying and intrusive ads make them less likely to buy the brand and most significantly, 95% of people said that this type of online advertising makes them think unfavourably about a brand.

Online advertising has long been seen as the media to deliver highly-targeted results due to the ability to segment the audience and deliver less wastage.  However, based on this research, planners and buyers need to take a long hard look at their digital strategies and remind themselves that ultimately; content is king in an online environment, and not the advert that appears over it.  The marketing industry needs to change the way it approaches online and find better and more effective ways to engage with users, to their benefit, as opposed to taking a counter-productive shotgun approach by serving ads upon them.

This is where video driven content comes in to play, but not video content for the sake of it.  For example, I am not suggesting we all simply move our adverting budgets into the pre-roll video advertising market.  Goodness knows just how frustrating it is to see the same advert appear over and over before each news story on a video player on a national newspaper website, for example.

Those individuals at Engage 2007 who work in the digital media have the opportunity to help communicate brand character and contribute to enhancing and protecting brand reputation. As it is conclusively affecting the profit and loss of the brand it subsequently delivers a massive opportunity for them to have a higher presence in the Board Room and a greater slice of the budget for brand communications and online advertising.

The avalanche of new media, including user-generated content and convergence, with their exponential rate of growth, present constant opportunities to add value and enhance existing and new media communications techniques.  Targeted messages are fully achievable as access to potential communities and audiences continue to grow. 

With the fact that Ofcom regulations do not extend to the Internet, brands have the opportunity to relinquish editorial constraints enforced on them previously in other broadcast mediums, and the web is, after all, now a truly bona fide broadcast media. In this environment brands have a greater influence, with less reliance on the media owner, as long as they protect the editorial integrity of the medium.  Furthermore as content, in the form of video, can now be repurposed and made available across multi platforms it can help to satisfy consumer’s on-demand culture - information and content when it is convenient to them, rather than forced on them.

* Opinion Matters, June 2007, sample 1,444 respondents