Arguably the biggest shift in consumer behavior in the last few years has been the explosion of devices and the number of screens in a consumer’s life. That has a major impact on media consumption and how marketers reach consumers.
As Google reported, 90% of people juggle different devices when working toward a goal. As they move between devices, they expect brand experiences to be seamless yet specific to the nature of the device.
Figuring out how to bring a brand to life consistently from the TV to the laptop to the tablet to the smartphone is tricky. The ANA and Nielsen recently predicted that multi-screen campaigns would account for 50% of media spend in 3 years. Yet it’s only 20% today.
Measurement and tracking is part of the challenge. As ANA’s Bill Duggan put it, “The industry needs to adopt measures that are consistent, comparable, and combinable across screens to provide a complete picture of a campaign’s effectiveness.”
But the greatest challenge I think is cultural. TV media and digital media are frequently handled by different groups internally and different agencies externally. As I wrote before, we’re in the awkward adolescent stage of integrated media. There is still a great divide between traditional and digital brand communication. As consumers move ever more fluidly across screens and from traditional to digital, the pressure will be on marketers to catch up.
Our brands revolve around consumers, whatever ways they choose to connect with our brands.
(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post by 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)