Technology alone doesn’t tell us where to anchor the value of digital to a brand.
Digital tools and systems are by now ubiquitous on both the demand and supply sides of the market.
It’s to affluent consumers themselves that we must look. Their expectations of complete control, “my time, my place, my terms” access, and their consistent avoidance of interruptive messaging, define the rules of attention.
Digital tools – the web, the mobile, IM and so on – are most usefully distinguished in this complicated landscape by their unprecedented closeness to the consumer.
If mass media provide a sort of background chorus, the new digital services, in sharp contrast, are leading players … they have the ear and eye of the consumer at close quarters. In other words, this is a new challenge of Intimacy between consumer and brand.
And Intimacy, as we all know, is not that easy.
Digital tools are as much guardians of consumers’ pet likes and hates as they are – more traditionally – vehicles of consumption. They express and enact the needs and values of the consumer.
Getting close to our consumer – getting inside the gate in order to communicate with any credible effectiveness against the background of media noise – now requires the delivery of “up-front value”, rather than a bland, one-size-fits-all brand promise.
It requires the sort of recognition and intelligent sensitivity that you’d expect from the concierge in your favourite boutique hotel.
This is all about what we can call The New Intimacy. And let’s be clear: owning information about an individual is nowhere near the same as having a meaningful relationship with them.
The intimate consumer relationship is built not in the database, but at the interface. Intimacy happens at close quarters, in real time.
And this, if you buy the argument so far, is both the real promise and the massive challenge of consumer connections planning.
The networked, digitally empowered consumer has created an “infinitely small, infinitely large”, intimate media space, owned no longer by the media industry, but by this increasingly private - yet increasingly tribal – individual
We can call this the I-zone, as in I for Intimacy
Crossing the chasm both into and across the heart of the I-zone, is perhaps the most urgent challenge in consumer marketing today.
Tribes as well as individuals have their I-Zones … both are ring-fenced by digitally managed preferences, and tend to vigorously resist invasion by uninvited guests.
Why? Because the I-Zone reflects and supports the identity of individual or tribe … just as we feel slightly mugged when we’re sent mobile spam: individual or tribal … it’s all Personal.
It’s no longer just “media”.
Where does this leave media then?
Stepping back, the most significant single impact of the digital revolution is a complete flip in value.
The Morecambe and Wise Xmas show – perhaps Carson in the US – in their heydays commanded the sort of audience numbers (and, importantly, their undivided attention …) that we dream of today.
Attention was everywhere – and media was very very scarce …
… meaning that consumers would happily pay for their entertainment by allocating their (cheap and plentiful) attention to brand communications;
Now media is everywhere, and the attention of the valuable consumer is the rare, precious commodity we must court;
This leads to a new model of media value and a new currency: Return On Attention.
So … what are the new rules of “ROA”?
Today’s consumer is spoiled for choice in terms of free, powerful, accessible and easy-to-use digital tools for play, creativity and communication: we can call these “Box X”: they’re what’s expected, almost a birthright for the younger consumer.
Attempts by brands to apply Box X-type offerings as engagement tactics (Coke’s early music downloads promotions service is perhaps a case in point) tend to be met with a consumer shrug.
However, when we a) understand what’s already happening in the Box X of our consumers’ digital life and then b) find ways to enhance those activities with experiences that are otherwise difficult for consumers to do themselves …
… we’re creating what we can call “Box Y”.
This is where the value-added Return On Attention begins, and where powerful, sustainable consumer>brand Intimacy originate.
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