TV in the Millennial Age

The paradigm effecting media began with the entrenched attitude of a by-gone era. 

"Talking pictures? No one wants to listen to that chatter. They want to see acting."

"Television? No one wants to squint at that tiny screen. They want the experience of the big screen. The Silver Screen." 

"The Motor Car? Noisy smelly toy for the rich. It'll never replace the horse." 

Next: 

We had channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, & 13. But let's keep the math simple. 

100,000,000 viewers, 10 Television stations. Each station has 100,000 viewers and sells advertising time accordingly. 

 The "tech" explosion. We now have 100 stations. Each station has 10,000 viewers. The advertisers spend accordingly. 

Then you have M&A. Then target marketing. Then television companies become part of a large corporation's "agglomeration". 

Now, however, we are dealing with millennials. The market demographic has shifted. It has become more segmented. That, and computers are better able to identify viewers and tailor the advertising to "interest" the viewer and appease the advertiser. Well, assuage the advertiser.


This is analogous to Gillette's new strategy to challenge the competitors who sell razors on-line to men who embrace the scruffy 3-day fashion statement. Their new pricing policy comes across to me as a promotion. 

I read the circular. $3.99 after coupon. Okay. I go to CVS. It appears that the slot for what I want is empty. But I can't find what I'm looking for. There are other models with various prices touted by flashy signs. 

 I speak to a very helpful manager. He gets a circular. It is no real help. It looks different. Maybe I had last weeks circular. (not likely, and not the case.) He offers a substitute. Happy customer. The coupon doesn't scan. They override. The discount is applied. I go home to check the circular. I see the small change. An eye-catching black box with white letters 

Your Final Cost 
$3.99 

is in my circular--not the store circular. That's okay. I got a better razor. Except that it has one of those swivel heads that I don't want. However, for $3.99 it's worth a try as a marketing and product design study.


My suspicions are raised when the manager tells me these blades last longer.  This will last a month--so you don't just use it for a week and toss it.  I know this.  Gillette blades last longer than a month.  My suspicion is raised when the manager and the full page newspaper ad draw attention to the quality of the blades--a given for a long time.


Back to television.  

The media giants are attempting to approach a new market, a new paradigm with old [ b-school] thinking.  I went to b-school.  I can see their doomed course.

What happens when millennials who buy on-line  (Amazon)  buy razors on-line. Pricing will be the issue. That for the few trendy hipsters who still shave.  Our generation is fading away.  Will "razors" go down the path that barber shops did back when hippies grew their hair long and barbers  lost a generation of customers?

Fortunately, the computer can analyze and select the ads tailored to each viewer.  But only companies like Facebook and Google and perhaps, YouTube know that.  The large corporations are trying to solve tomorrows problems with yesterday's thinking.

If you find anything here to be helpful, please don't hesitate to send me a really tricked out Mac Pro and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note.  Slim

Bob Asken
Box 33
Pen Argyl, PA 18072


Marketing to Millennials

Ad Revenues & the Media 


Mob Technology: Retail & the Media


Warmest regards,

Slim.

Slimfairview@yahoo.com

Copyright (c) 2017  Bob Asken
All Rights Reserved.

Mob Technology Retail & the Media

    
     Clix v. Brix.  Cord Cutters.  Anything else?  Much. However, I will focus on the two above.

     Years ago, my great, great grandfather was in the custom-made, upscale buggy whip business.  (Not really. This is merely a fictive device to introduce the metaphor.)  Pap-pap was known behind his back as Slimviews. A play on words using his name.

      As time moved forward, the motor-car appeared.  And the market for custom-made, upscale buggy whips began to whither.  Well, Pap-pap knew he had to do something.  He called a meeting of all his managers to announce that the industry was in jeopardy.  That he had to move with the times.

     “I went out and invested in some knew equipment.  As much as I am loathe to do it, I am going into mass-production buggy whips.  And once we cut the cost of the buggy whip, folks’ll flock back into the donkey-wagon showrooms and we’ll do a booming business.  Besides, the motor-car is just a passing fad.  A noisy smelly toy for the rich.  It’ll never replace the horse.” 

     The rest is history.  And now you know why I have to work for a living.  But I digress. 

     The reason why I bring this up is because so many people, experts, are unable to see the writing on the wall.  The Facebook wall. And the real irony is that they know what’s coming.  They talk about it constantly. And still get it wrong.

     We know mall traffic is off. We know the millennials are spending their money on “eating out and gadgets”.   

     We hear people discussing repurposing the anchor store real estate footprint.   

     And we hear about millennials moving to their I-phones, and apps, and on-line shopping (e-tailing), and the growth of Amazon, Fed-Ex, UPS, drones, and the like.  

     And we hear about cord-cutting.  Recently some cable company or other announced that they will be making “the full season” of some shows or others” available on streaming media.   

     Still, we are not fully attuned to the changes that are happening even as we are switching over to mass-market buggy whips to propel our donkey-wagons. 

     These are some of the reasons I wrote:

Ad Revenues and the Media

Who Moved the Store?

Old Mall, New City.

      

     Herein lie a few insights.

     E-tailing is a clever word that hipsters (people my age who try to act hip) have coined to show they are tuned into what's happening.  Yeah, okay. Meanwhile, more people are buying online and the increase will continue.  In fact, the increase may accelerate.  What does this mean?

·       Lower return on investment in brick and mortar stores

·       Less Mall Traffic

·       More difficulty for the Advertising Industry to reach increasingly larger demographics

      The decline in Brick & Mortar retail means Less Money to go around among: 

·       The Construction Industry

·       The Mortgage Finance Industry

·       Real Estate Tax Revenue Industry

·       Youth Employment Industry

·       Commercial Industry Suppliers 

·       Mall Owners

·       The Secondary Retail Market served by The Multiplier Effect. 

 And so one.

      Mad Men: Ad Men or Sad Men?

     The single most read article on my blogs, all time, is

     "Mad Men: Ad Men or Sad Men?"  

     Indeed, this may have much to do with the popular TV series. However, the article was an insight into how a potentially great commercial can be defeated by a small detail.  More recently, the media has been refocused on three of its own major concerns.  Paradigm shifting, industry altering concerns.

     First:  The buying and selling commercial time is shifting.  This is a major concern to those in the advertising industry.

     Second: The consumer relationship with media is changing. 

     Third: The change in television commercials themselves.  Some of which may be tied to MTV.

      The Last Minute Scramble

 

     In the first, people within the industries will renegotiate their relationship.  However, the over-riding factor is the audience.

Too many questions are being asked. Too many studies are being done.  And little will change. Well, little will change until change verges on too late and then there will be the last minute scramble.  How do I know? Well, 

     First: because too many questions are being asked.

     Second: because too many studies are being done, and 

     Third: because this is the way it always is. 

     Why?  I shall not be coy.  Because an Industry within an Industry has been created. We have 

     Market segmentation:  Young People, Old People, Rich People, Poor People, and so on.

     Transmission Segmentation:  Television, Cable, Dish, Internet, i-Phone, i-Pad, et. al. Facebook, Nextflix, and so on.

     And, to add to the problem, 

     A Legal Donnybrook is about to break out over retransmitting the signal over the Internet. Op. Cit. Cable and streaming.

     Eventually, everything will balance out.  Right now, it's 

     Mob Technology. 

     We've become so charmed with our ability to discuss the matters at hand that we've lost touch with some of the basics.

     Brick and Mortar stores can go with the flow. 

     They can become hands on catalogues with a drop-shipping paradigm.  (I wrote this 31 January 2013. No one said a word.  William Lauder said it to Becky Quick on Squawk Box on 11 December 2015. “Amazon catalogue stores with the top 1.000 selling products.”  Irony.  I bet no one will heed his admonition either.)

     Old Malls can become New Cities: 

Read the Articles. 

The Mall as New City.

Who Moved the Store

     Co-opt the MTV Model:  

Ad Revenues & the Media

     To Sum it Up 

     Right now, Retail and Advertising must join together to resurrect Marketing.  Remember Marketing?  And they must include the Media. 

      From the Definitions of Slim Fairview: 

     “Find a need and fill it”. 

     You don't convince the consumer to buy what you want to sell. You sell what the consumer wants to buy.  Op. cit. JCP. 

     Best of Luck. And if you find anything here to be helpful, please don’t hesitate to send me a really tricked out MacPro or I-Pad and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note.

Warmest regards,

Slim

slimviews@gmail.com

Copyright © 2016 Bob Asken

All rights reserved.

Ad Revenues & the Media

       The sky isn’t falling. However, ad revenues are a different story.  To explain this I will begin this way:

       Newspapers are in the advertising business. They sell ad space to the advertisers and they sell ads to the readers. However, customers won’t pay for a newspaper full of ads, so the newspaper gives away the news as an inducement to buy the ads. Don’t tell me no.

       Television, regardless of the format, is doing the same thing.  However, as people will not pay to watch advertising (In time or dollars), Television gives the content away as an 

inducement to watch the ads. 

       This brings us to the viewer.  What’s in it for the viewer?  What does the viewer want?

       No one, no one, my age watched more television than I did. Viewers’ tastes are changing and doing so at an accelerated rate.  

       Case in point: In only a few years, cooking channels reduced the number of cooking shows replacing them with cooking competition shows.  Home design shows have changed from interior or exterior design to shows that repeatedly show designers and homeowners repeatedly smashing walls and cabinets. Repeatedly. 

       At the end? We never have the opportunity to appreciate the results. Why not?  Cut to, Cut to.  A candlestick, a chair leg, a cuspidor a door knob, cut to, cut to cut to.  And the paradigm extends to the real cooking show: an egg yolk, a lemon slice, a pinch of salt—cut to, cut to, cut to….

        This should clue you in to something important.  Short flashes of a series of images reminiscent of MTV when music videos embraced or perhaps initiated the same paradigm.  Result?  Short attention spans and desperation to be entertained in a manner consistent with short attention spans.

        The Media-Suits are befuddled. Yes, you are.  (Disclosure: My wife and I watch CNBC all day, except for 2:00 when we watch the talk.  And we have cable. Therefore I know what I said is true because I listen to you talking about it all the time.)  Don’t be disheartened.  You are not alone.

       One of the world’s most celebrated geniuses, Thomas Edison, clutched retentively to his belief that Direct Current (DC) was the future. Others believe that Alternating Current was the future.  Edison made every effort to discredit AC.  I short, Edison tried to bully the customer into buying what he wanted to sell, instead of selling what the customer wanted to buy.

       In my review of the book, Business Results Revolution, I wrote, “If Ron Johnson had read only the first three pages of Sandy Richardson’s book, Business Results Revolution, he would still be CEO a JCP.

       Mr. Johnson tried to convince his customers to buy what he wanted to sell—everyday low pricing, instead of selling what the customers wanted to buy—discounts and coupons.

And they are not alone.  

       A very brief history.

       Talkin’ pitchers? Folks don’t want to hear all that jibber jabber. They want to see real actin’.

       Telly, vision?  Folks don’t want to squint at that tiny, little screen. They want to watch pitchers on the big screen.

       And we have the paradigm of Odious Bilgewater, the owner of the Kansachusetts Buggy Whip Company.

        The solution to competing with the motor car is mass production to cut the cost of the buggy whip.  As much as I hate to stop making custom made buggy whips, mass production will cut the cost of buggy whips and folks will flock back to buyin’ buggies. Asides, the motor car is just a noisy smelly toy for the rich. It will never replace the horse.

       But the joke is in the way I said it. Not in what I said.

       Remember 8-Tracks v. Cassettes? Then came CDs.

       How about VHS v. Beta? Then came DVDs.

  

       Remember the brouhaha over Napster?  i-pods are now the gold standard. Not just the device, but the concept of downloaded music.

       DVDs? Now? Streaming Video.

       This is why I am shocked to hear that Television stations have shifted to content that will appeal to people who don’t watch television.  

       Yep. That’s what the Media Suits are really saying. We are trying to attract [millennials] to television because that is the audience that the advertisers want. Really?  The audience that brought us the technology to “skip the ads.”

        “There are no unintended consequences. Only unwanted consequences.” From the Quotations of Slim Fairview.

        When you changed content to attract viewers who don’t watch television, you are driving away viewers who do watch television.  

        Does it occur to anyone to sell “ad time” to people who are trying to sell to Boomers instead of selling ad time to people who are trying to attract Millennials? (Who are designing technology to block or skip the ads?)

        None-the-less, the Media Suits are so fixated with trying to convince the customers to buy what they want to sell, they are not spending enough time trying to sell what the customers want to buy.

       What do they want to buy?

       It does sound like market segmentation.  

       Millennials, who may well be viewing content on an i-phone or a tablet v. Boomers who may well be sitting in front of a television set.

       But “value” in advertising is important.  And Facebook has the right idea.

       If I post a comment saying I’m looking for new tires, 

Facebook may post ads for tire dealers in my area:  Joe’s Tire and Battery on Union Blvd. in Allentown. Or Sam’s Club on Northampton Street in Easton.  Each is a good company in my shopping area. I want information. Facebook provides it.  And I am far from being a Millennial.

       Conclusion?  Stop quibbling: Cable, Cord cutting, Comcast, Direct TV, et. al.  

       The technology is changing. Direct Current lost. Buggy-wagons are no longer the preferred choice of transportation.  Get ahead of the curve.

       “You can’t stop the arrival of history, you can only delay it.  History is coming.” The Quotations of Slim Fairview.

       Warmest regards.

       Slim.

       Slimviews@gmail.com

       @slimfairview

       If you find anything here to be helpful, please don't hesitate to send me a really tricked out Mac Book and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note. Slim.

Bob Asken
Box 33
Pen Argyl, PA 18072




      Disclaimer.  Any products mentioned are done so at the author’s discretion and for the purposes of information only. There are no endorsement fees, compensation, remuneration or quid-pro-quo solicited or accepted.

        Sandy Richardson’s Book, Business Results Revolution.  I wrote a review for this book on my blog.  With all that I write, whether about China’s global and economic strategy, the EuroCrisis, or the Economic Crisis among emerging nations, my Review of Sandy Richardson’s book is the 9^th most read article on my blog—all time.

Copyright © 2015 Bob Asken,

All rights reserved.