Which media and how to manage them
The term “new media” could be considered a misnomer as it has been around for more than a decade and the shift from print to digital has been a work in progress since well before the turn of the century. Yet, it is also appropriate as the forms that media take today are constantly evolving and changing direction.
“It’s a new era”, said Kent Wertime, president and representative director of Ogilvy & Mather Japan. “The shift that has happened, from traditional to digital marketing, has come about because of the proliferation of tools and channels that are digital. And as that’s where the people go, it’s where the marketers have to follow”.
Kent Wertime
“The dot.com crash confused a lot of people because they got it so wrong”, he said. “They were looking at the stock market as the barometer instead of looking at usership. The dot.com bubble burst, but usership has grown in a straight line, both in Japan and globally.
“The story of digitisation is not one of spikes and troughs, but of tectonic shifts over 15 years, and that is ongoing”.
Joseph Schmidt, a partner at Kreab & Gavin Anderson, agrees that the dot.com bust was a watershed that separated the winners from the losers. “The winners provide what consumers and businesses really want”, he said.
Schmidt and his colleagues spend a great deal of effort encouraging firms to work on their “reputation management”.
“Everyone now has the opportunity to be a journalist and everyone is now a public figure”, Schmidt said. “How we conduct our lives on a daily basis has become more important and anyone involved in any sort of misbehaviour will have their reputation—and that of their firm—tarnished very quickly when blogs or videos go viral”.
Such was the case when Greenpeace supporters effectively hijacked the Nestlé Facebook page, using word-of-mouth information through the social-media site that created a multiplier effect of scorn over the environmental impact of some of its product sourcing. Ignoring the issue being debated, Nestlé was criticised for failing to manage its social media presence when under attack, inflaming an already bad situation for the firm and leading to additional negative press coverage in the mainstream media.
Fortunately, such is the scale and pervasiveness of new media that very few world-class CEOs are unaware of the potential impact of new and social media on their operations.
Which just leaves the question of how best to take advantage of it.
“As recently as a year or two ago, social media and digital PR were considered separate services, delivered by separate teams, within most agencies”, said Andy Oliver, the Singapore-based senior vice-president of Lewis PR. “Today, however, campaigns are far more integrated, with social channels considered a critical element of any communications programme.
Andy Oliver
“This trend will accelerate, making the public relations industry faster, more global and more technical”, believes Oliver.
Foreign firms looking to build a business base in Japan are using social media to jump the queue, according to Dan Underwood, managing director at Tokyo corporate communications firm Ashton Consulting.
“We’ve had dramatic results taking our clients directly to their target market, bypassing traditional media channels”, he said. “One client said it was like peeling off reflective tape; suddenly they could see and understand their Japanese customers, in a way that only a few years ago would have been impossible or hugely expensive”.
Underwood says that despite the instantaneous feel of new media channels, they actually serve to magnify the long-term communications qualities that underpin successful firms — sincerity, consistency and openness.
“It’s still better to be right than fast”, he said. “The thing is, smart firms are using new media tools to be both right and fast”.
Other firms in this area have a similar approach.
“We now work in video, audio, pictures and interactive applications as well as words”, said Fred Tanaka, general manager of Lewis Communications’ offices in Tokyo. “We now think about how content can be optimised, how it will be shared and augmented. We’re using a far wider range of tools to communicate, listen and evaluate”.
The firm’s services are based on four campaign stages, starting with content creation — which includes video production, podcasts, microsites, blogs and so on — before moving on to content optimisation, followed by engagement — which involves media relations, blogger relations and involvement in social media — and concluding with monitoring and measurement.
“In a true social media campaign, the emphasis is on the engagement between a brand and its customers — that’s truly an ongoing communication task that must map back to the business objectives, not a technical one designed simply to gain attention”, said Tanaka. “We know that getting people to make recommendations on social networks is very powerful and we understand the tremendous influence of word-of-mouth PR”.
But with the growing number of options firms have to communicate their message, the key question boils down to identifying the right channels to reach and influence the target audience.
“There can be a tendency to be overwhelmed by the need to take advantage of all these channels and jump on the bandwagon, which may not be the right thing to do”, emphasises Tanaka. “At the other end of the scale, there are those who stick their heads in the sand and don’t investigate the opportunities of new media, which may be being used to competitive advantage by other organisations”.
Ashton Consulting’s Underwood points out that all foreign firms excited about working with new media in Japan can be surprised at the number of channels and amount of content that localisation requires.
Fred Tanaka
In his book, Wertime devotes the first chapter to the shifts that have for ever changed the rules of the game for the media, pointing out that media proliferation will continue and become more pervasive and invasive, which will lead to tensions between marketers and consumers over the issues of intrusion, personal data and privacy, while there will simultaneously be a shift among marketers to operations in social networks, games and online content, but in the form of “one-to-one” channels as opposed to mass media.
Similarly, traditional media is adopting more digital formats to survive, more digital devices are being given new functions that turn them into media, while the physical and virtual worlds will increasingly overlap and mesh, he said, with people interacting in different ways as they participate in social networks and share more information virally.
“We spend a lot of time teaching our clients how to use new channels effectively and there have been some clear shifts in how we operate”, said Wertime. “There has been a shift in lifestyles that has triggered a shift in the amount of time that consumers spend in these channels, leading to a shift in the way in which marketers are required to go about their business”.
Business owners generally grasp the concept, although not all are able to refocus their operations to make the most of the changing situation.
“It used to be that the cost of entry for a small business made it very hard to advertise on television, for example, so they were restricted to small, local adverts”, said Wertime. “But nothing stops them from having a website now and talking to as many people as want to talk to them. And that’s a real game-change for a small or medium-sized company”.
Yet the simple rule still applies: content is king.
Dan Underwood
And if clients are coming to you after locating your content, she added, you have a much more highly qualified customer leading to higher conversion rates.
“It’s also about balance, as events are still valid”, said Jambert. “How you promote them and manage RSVP has changed due to technology; people still enjoy events, concerts and so on”.
And while “traditional marketing” was all about interrupting people in their daily lives, she said, by developing great content, a firm now gets to take advantage of social-media tools that allow the content to be discussed and distributed across the web and enable people to find you.
Lewis Communications’ Tanaka agrees: “Great content will set firms apart and help pique the interest of target audiences.
“Yes, there are many communications channels to use but, without having a compelling story to tell, creative ways to engage with targets, or clever ways to stand out from the competition, promotional campaigns may fall short of expectations or the initial buzz generated”.
“What is clear is that no firm, whatever its shape or size, can afford to ignore the social media revolution that is currently under way. The risk of being left behind is too great”.
An apt analogy has been made regarding firms in the 1990s that did not believe they needed a website as they were not in the retail business. Eventually, everyone had a website, but it was clear which firms understood the way a website could add significant value to their business.
“The same applies to new media”, said Tanaka. “There are those who are actively engaged in this and finding ways to generate more revenue, build a better brand, grow a customer base. Those that are slow to do so may find themselves falling behind in the market categories”.