How media planners can work with generation tl;dr

Tl;dr – tech-slang for too long; didn’t read – captures the acute problem brands now face when communicating with audiences. So what can we do? asks OMD UK‘s Hamid Habib.

Almost fifty years ago Intel co-founder Gordon Moore suggested that the number of transistors on computer circuit boards would roughly double every two years, thereby enabling computing power to increase exponentially.

The rule has more or less proved to be accurate over the last half century, but what Moore didn’t consider was the impact the exponential growth in computing power would have on the speed of our everyday lives and our behaviour.

Over the last year OMD UK has been running a series of studies as part of our Future of Britain initiative. We’ve been looking in particular at the connected consumer and the sometimes contradictory impact that consumer technology is having on our behaviour.

For the field of media planning and buying, one theme in particular has stood out; the increase in the pace of our lives driven by very fast smart devices. We are all now, whether we like it or not, living at speed.

One piece of tech-slang that has emerged recently, tl;dr (too long; didn’t read), neatly captures the impact that superfast delivery of the terra-bites of digital choice – whether that’s information, entertainment, retail, banking, dating, or socialising – has brought us.

Tl;dr captures the acute problem brands now face when communicating with audiences or increasingly, on an individualised level. If someone posts, shares or sends something that looks a bit long, it is rejected.

Brand messages are competing not just across the vast range of channel choice; apps, media, retail, work, social channels, etc., but they are competing with a huge increase in frequency and volume of message too. There are no commercial breaks in the connected world.

Tl;dr is also a mind-set that’s bleeding into many aspects of our lives. We don’t have time to cook a dinner; YouTube is ‘conditioning’ us to skip an advert after five seconds; Vines are six seconds; Tweets 140 characters. We are becoming a nation of media and information snackers and grazers and are, as journalist Grace Dent put it, managing our attention spans much more efficiently.

But while we might be deliberately restricting our focus on information that’s too long amongst the daily digital deluge, there is a flip-side. We are, in the right circumstances, deliberately creating space for big content.

The box set binge trend and the 5:2 diet are both good examples of how we are flipping from short-form behaviour to long-form.

It’s also the case that consumers are asking themselves whether this overwhelming access to information and always-on digital culture is doing them any good. Some are beginning to create off-time in a bid to digitally detox.

There’s growing evidence too that experiencing “real” things is increasingly important to us. This can be seen in the continued growth of admissions to museums, art galleries, cinema and the importance of holidays and live events.

This combination of forces has profound implications for the traditional form of linear media planning; paid media campaigns running across different media in parallel along a finite time-line.

But what’s the alternative? Our Future of Britain study points towards a different planning perspective, one built around a more varied pallet of creative media and technology options.

This multi-dimensional mix can be made of communications that are fast and slow; leverage context; deliver big or small content applied through a variety of tactics and through a variety of different content or commercial forms.

For example, planners should work in media layers: This could mean synchronising TV with multiple tiers of digital activity across paid, earned and owned media at a given point in time, or followed through into the real world. In effect planners should work with people’s propensity to flit from one screen to another as they watch TV rather than focusing on a primary medium to drive engagement.

Length: Planners should consider multiple content or ad formats from snippets to big content that complement each other and tell the story best. Branded TV is a great example of big content that might act as pivotal element in a diverse mix. For example, earlier this year Chipotle introduced its own TV series airing on Hulu; a comedy titled “Farmed and Dangerous” which was comprised of four 22 minute shows. The TV show itself was virtually un-branded but was surrounded by conventional spot commercials.

Context: Pepsi Max’s recent Oxford Street installation of a transparent screen digital 6-sheet which surprised bystanders with various approaching threats such as flying saucers and tigers superimposed over the street scene, is a great recent example of paid media playing with context, which then went on to earn social and PR amplification.

If the consumer is a moving target and one switching between fast and slow, brands need to mirror this behaviour. So, for example, Rimmel recently launched a special offer Flash Sale in Celebration of its 180th birthday. With its Rockin’ Curves Mascara available in the online sale for just 180 minutes and Twitter acting as a count-down clock, in this case the brand was in control of time.

Oreo continues to play with time and context too; another great example is its Daily Twist series which in effect is a series of day-long integrated mini-campaigns linked by a creative theme; customising cookies in honour of personalities, causes and events. The campaign prompted consumer’s to ask what’s next and played on curiosity to drive brand exposure.

In effect these tactics work with the tl;dr consumer rather than against them. Instead of considering integration and creative use of media as an added extra to traditional blocks of planned linear media, the matrix approach to media planning works on the basis that the media plan will be inherently creative.

It’s a more sophisticated approach in tune with the speed of our lives and complexity of our digital media environment; engagement is built in many pieces through a variety of media and content forms in different places at different times and at different speeds.

This approach to planning is certainly more challenging, but considering the appropriate channel according to the speed of the execution or content and the audience’s likely attention span should come naturally to planners. After all we are all part of generation tl;dr now.