E-business Briefing: March 2005

Prior to launching Big Picture Simon was a Partner in Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners - the most successful advertising agency start up in the last 5 years - and Founder/ Chairman of DLKW Dialogue, the award winning integrated division of DLKW. Since launch DLKW Dialogue has grown quickly and won numerous awards for its work including a Gold at the DMA awards.

Prior to joining DLKW he was one of the three partners who launched Poppe Tyson in Europe in 1996 and subsequently managed the merger with Modem Media in Europe. Modem Media Poppe Tyson grew to become one of Europe's leading interactive marketing agencies with offices in London, Paris and Munich.

Simon was responsible for strategy on all clients (including IBM, Amazon, Citibank, Sony PlayStation, Unilever, ft.com and General Motors) in addition to leading the Digital Media and Research teams. He has also worked at Young & Rubican, Zenith and Ogilvy & Mather Direct.

Outside of work Simon enjoys trying to enthuse his two young sons (Ethan 5 and Isaac 2) with his passion for obscure jazz and soul records, and the mighty Leeds United.

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E-consultancy: Can you explain a little about your internet background and what Big Picture is all about and what you're hoping to accomplish?

SA: When I started in the interactive space back in 1996 we thought we'd found something that would change the world, and it has changed most industries, but not advertising- yet!

As I used my Tivo and my pop up blocker to skip ads, and zealously opted out of junk mail I realised more and more people have become Ad Avoiders. And I saw that many of the biggest brands (Proctor & Gamble, Coke, McDonalds etc) are expressing concern that traditional advertising and marketing just isn't working as well as it was. Yet the traditional ad agencies are very slow to react - most tend to think the 30 second commercial is still the main event.

So I saw the opportunity for Big Picture.

We aim to be the "go to" agency for clients who recognise that the old ways of interruption are over and that a new approach is needed. Because we've expertise across all channels, we can develop channel agnostic marketing that the right consumers choose to spend time with.

E-consultancy: Which digital trends and technologies do you find most exciting? How far away is a truly integrated brand experience, across mobile, TV and the web? Any pointers/examples?

Anything that puts the consumer in control and allows them to generate content is exciting. But the imminent transformation of the web from a text medium to a video based one is the most exciting. Take a look at a very simple example; http://www.newprovidencetv.com/site/nptv_home.php

With broadband, IPTV, 3G and new devices like smart phones and the PSP, I think we can combine the emotional power of video based communications with the consumer control that the web has already given us.

We're starting to see interesting combinations of channels - such as mobile used as a way of adding interactivity to TV ads on Channel 4, iTV is coming of age for broadcasters such as the BBC and Spooks, and Amazon is using films on its site to promote products its selling. But no one is defining this space - yet!

E-consultancy: Some people claim that the internet is a direct response medium while others say it is actually a rather good platform for an interactive brand experience? What do you make of this response vs brand argument?

I think that is something of a lazy distinction. The web is a great place to do both. Branding is a tactic to sell, so it has to drive response - it is often most useful at the earlier stage of a sales cycle, when people are not yet ready to buy.

I think we'll see the two come together on the web once video is prevalent; if I'm thinking of buying a car perhaps I'll go on the web to look for 20 minute long entertaining video of a car being test driven (something like Top Gear) - and then once I've narrowed my choice I'll want to book a test drive myself. Is that branding or is it direct response?

E-consultancy: Intrusive marketing is supposedly in decline, yet floating overlays seem to have replaced pop-ups as the web's new evil. Do you think consumers perceive these abusive rich media formats as anything other than a pop-up (which hasn't been blocked)? Why do marketers continue to use these demanding ads?

Consumers don't see any difference - they're trying to read an article and something is getting in the way. People use them because the only thing that is measured are those who click - and the economics are attractive. But if you measure the effect on the 99% who don't click, I think you'd start to question their use.

We believe that people can and do choose to discriminate against brands on the basis of their perceptions of that brand - and annoying people with pop ups, junk mail and phone calls is not good for your brand in the long term.

E-consultancy: Broadband is undoubtedly reshaping internet usage trends but with sub-512kbps services peddled as broadband (with Ofcom's blessing), do you think a vast chunk of consumers are going to have their expectations crushed when they try to access rich services such as video?

I can't understand why Ofcom are allowing people to be ripped off in this way, or why brands peddle fake broadband in this way.

I remember working on campaigns for 56k - people always will want to improve their experience and they'll soon find out that they've been sold a pup (as they say up north) via their friends, or by comparing their access through work with their home experience. It is interesting that BT are the good guys here with the automatic upgrade for their customers.

E-consultancy: What are your views on branded content such as games, videos and blogs? Presumably we're going to start seeing a lot more of this sort of thing over the next few years...? Which companies are taking giant steps in this area?

JWT got it just right when they said "Advertising has a future as long as it stops interrupting what people are interested in and starts being what they're interested in".

I think product placement has a limited appeal but brands being part of the content can work really well - the BMW as hero in their films, the sublime targeting of the US army developing shoot-em up games to drive recruitment, Coke with their download service. In the UK the Orange Playlist is interesting.

And we'll also see brands facilitating or curating content that their audience will be interested in as a step towards creating a dialogue with that audience - essentially taking sponsorship a stage further.

E-consultancy: We've talked in the past about the value of consumer-generated content, with the best example of this being a certain auction site beginning with 'e'. Can you sum up the benefits of user-generated content and outline any examples?

People tend not to believe brands any more, but they do believe people - and as Pierre Omidyar demonstrated, people are honest.

Amazon sells books and music because of the user reviews; Ciao and epinions sells lots of good products and they slow sales of crap products; consumer "ads" like www.ipodsdirtysecret.com changed Apple's policy on battery.

We believe people are very happy to share their views and new technology like blogs and digital cameras make it easy for them to do so

E-consultancy: With almost 1 in 10 Sky digital households now using PVRs, ad blocking is on the increase and TV-focused marketers are reaching for the Nurofen. What are the core issues with ad blocking? How can interactive channels offset declining ROI from TV?

We saw that people actually change their behaviour when they have a PVR such as Sky + or Tivo. Because they know they can watch a programme as live, they start watching a few minutes in and then zap through the ad breaks to catch up with the programme by the time it ends. And once people have a PVR they love it and will never give them up - so a lot of the sales are generated by word of mouth.

All the forecasts predict rapid growth - and therefore a fast growing problem for everyone who depends on ads. Our research shows these Ad Avoiders are already a 40 million issue in the UK.

The technology within PVRs is pretty sophisticated and we expect lots of new opportunities for "addressable" (more relevant) advertising which should fetch a higher price. Sky knows lots about me and my family - and they could probably get me to tell them more - so why not use the technology to deliver content that I'd find useful or certainly less irrelevant? Car brands will pay to have their Top Gear type test drive programme added to the list of saved programmes on the hard drive of families within their target audience...

And because there are some types of content that need to be watched live (Sport, Big Brother etc) they're will always be opportunities for ads - and the scarcity value will again drive up revenues.

E-consultancy: The music business stuck its head in the sand as Napster v1.0 and other P2P networks were launched. Now we're reading stories about Dr Who episodes and new movies being pirated online in significant numbers. Will Hollywood repeat the same mistakes as the major record labels?

Hopefully not - just by synchronising release dates they could reduce the problem significantly. And they have a different business model - they sell their content to broadcasters who then get the ad revenue. Why couldn't a studio sell the new series of "Friends - Back Together" on a subscription site without ads? We've seen research which found that people would pay $1 for a video-on-demand show without ads, but just 50 cents for the same show with ads. That's attractive to a studio. Or they could sell it to Coke who would show it on their site - if you have a code from a can.......

But I think everyone will need to accept that this sharing of programmes is unavoidable. The latest Sky+ has a USB port (which is not yet activated) and I guarantee that someone will hack a connection between that and a PC to put programmes online. The new PSP had software available to enable it to play programmes even before it was released.

The BBC are making promising sounds about a jukebox and hopefully there will be a legal way of getting at this content. But a huge proportion of traffic on our site is from Google searches for "downloading movies"...

E-consultancy: If you had a budget of £10m to launch a new consumer brand online, where would you start, and what would be your areas of focus?

I'd spend the money creating a permission database of people who were interested in the product - I'd create some content that would attract the right sort of people, and I'd partner with a media property to get that content distributed.

I'd build some promotions around the content to persuade people to give me data on themselves. To start with I'd just need a home postcode as I could profile them from that, as well as their permission to re-contact them.

Then I'd send them stuff they wanted on a regular basis. For example, if you're selling bikes you could create the most interesting bike-related content. It could be text, it could be video, with interviews about the Tour de France etc - whatever - and within that dialogue I'd include my sales messages.

And when they bought I'd encourage them (and facilitate it through tools and incentives) to tell people how they found the product.

Simon was interviewed by Chris Lake, editor, E-consultancy
Send word to chris@e-consultancy.com

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