Thought Leadership: Digital has become synonymous with instant

In our latest Media Playground Thought Leadership piece, Peter Charlton, UK Sales Director at CBS Outdoor, says that the rise of digital has created a world of real-time interaction where consumers are no longer mere targets of advertising messages.

You can’t read anything at the moment without being told that change is good and that it’s desperately needed. That maybe true, but in the media world change has been progressing at a faster pace fortunately than in the political world. Back in 1997 Google, iPods, Twitter, blogs and broadband didn’t exist and most people didn’t even have internet access at home, let alone on their mobile phone. In fact, come to think of it, how many people had mobile phones? We could go on.

The consumer is more savvy than ever before and their lust for instant gratification shows no signs of abating. The TV channels screening the leaders debates ran snap shot opinion polls just minutes after the programmes ended. The online world has made instant gratification even easier to obtain and ‘digital’ has become synonymous with ‘instant’. We expect it all at lightening speeds. If it is too slow or difficult to navigate, we simply click away and find a substitute immediately. But consumer expectations on speed of information are moving beyond the digital world to new highs in the ‘real’ world as well.

Speed is of the essence. There are countless research studies that show consumers are trying to save time and cram as much into their daily lives as possible. They have upped the game and now expect ‘real time web’. They are ferociously seeking out up-to-date information on people, products, events and news and are becoming obsessed with real-time reviews and price comparisons.

So if the word ‘digital’ has become synonymous with instant, how has the media world evolved to take this into account? Well there aren’t many of the leading media brands that have not adopted a digital strategy of sorts to keep hold of their audience. However in most cases, it has been a defence move to shore up audiences who can find content faster and for free elsewhere. News Corp are in the process of installing a pay wall on the Times website to try and recoup some of the revenues being lost from falling circulations of printed editions. The market is watching closely to see if this new business model is the way forward or whether it gives them the chance to go in for the revenue kill.

Outdoor too has invested heavily in digital in the last few years. However, digital in the out of home arena is not a defensive strategy to try and retain audience. With more people spending more time out of home than ever before, digital brings a new dimension to traditional outdoor planning and opens up a new channel of communication. The growing need for real-time means that conversations with consumers need to be able to take place anywhere, which is where digital out of home comes into its own. These screens, for example, can play out HTML feeds rather than just relying on pre-shot video. Nokia recently ran a campaign on the London Underground that used live feeds of Reuters news and Facebook updates as part of the creative. This campaign was all about pushing smart phones, with the penetration of these phones growing daily amongst consumers, marketers will have more opportunity to bring real-time information to consumers.

Augmented reality is a term that did not exist when Labour first came to power but is now common parlance amongst media planners, and this is an area where brands can really win and can be innovative with use of traditional media rather than limiting themselves to pure digital. With consumers spending more time out of home, the need to have a mobile device to hand facilitates that immediacy to consume or purchase. Applications already exist that can take a photograph of a product on a poster and then send real time reviews of the product along with the best available prices for it. The product can then be purchased online or by using Google maps the purchaser can be directed to the nearest store.

These applications are only going to grow and to some extent the technology will dictate how, but marketers will still need to remember the tried and tested rules of marketing. An application still needs to be useful for the consumer and not done because it can be done. The advertisers that follow the rules and use it wisely will not only just be able to reward the consumer with instant information but will also be able to turn the information into a vehicle leading to purchase, making it commercially viable.

So, the convergence of technology and the increase in consumer expectation means that advertisers must embrace real-time in some way too. Consumers are no longer a mere target for advertising messages they are also production partners and generators of ideas. As we face a new a new political era, marketers also need to be aware of the need to collaborate creatively with consumers to improve services and products in order to win. Those who can then turn this into purchase and cold hard cash will ultimately triumph.