An article in this morning’s FT reported that the UK government intends to ban product placement, and suggests that digital media would need to be considered on the same level as traditional broadcast media.
Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, responding to the new EU directive that requires member states to declare publicly if they will permit product placement, said:
“There is a risk that product placement exacerbates this decline in trust and contaminates our programmes,” he said. “There is a risk that, at the very moment when television needs to do all it can to show it can be trusted, we elide the distinction between programmes and adverts.”
But perhaps of greater concern to those of us working in the digital industry was Burnham’s suggestion that the government should ensure that the same standards they expect from broadcast media are also upheld by digital media.
“If a clip on YouTube gets a million hits, it is akin to broadcasting and it doesn’t seem to me to be too difficult to have an alert on that clip, an alert for language, or violence or sex,”
The problem with this comparison is that broadcast media and digital media are simply not the same. Burnham was clear that advertising should come between editorial content on TV - so it’s okay to advertise before or at an interval of a programme, but not during it. But online these firm distinctions are not clear. In the world of social medi, video and photo merge with content and adverts. The medium is much more dynamic than TV broadcasting, and a more dynamic approach would be needed by the government if it were to intervene here. A simple ‘complain’ button would not suffice.
I suspect that this debate is only just beginning.
I was delighted to see Lee win The Apprentice last night. I’m sure he’s not as capable as Claire, but on a personal level he seemed like a great guy who really needed an opportunity like this.
I find that The Apprentice is a bit of a marmite show. In our office, people either shout about how great it is or complain that “this is just another trashy reality show” and “I’d never hire any of those idiots”. I understand the criticisms, but I think there’s something beyond the pure entertainment that makes it an important show and it’s why I love it so much. Here are three great things about The Apprentice:
It hails the salesman as king - I have always been upset by the prejudice graduates have against a job in sales, yet I think it is perhaps the best possible place for most grads to start. It is so rare to see such an importance placed on selling as a skill. In some ways the show over-exaggerates sales, but for me this is a polemic worth airing.
It celebrates entrepreneurial drive - both by acknowledging Sir Alan Sugar’s achievements as an entrepreneur (whatever you think of him, he’s done very well) and also in rewarding the team whose business nous wins the task each week.
It’s meritocratic - OK, so there is a bias from Sir Alan, but in general it puts a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and experiences on an equal footing in an open contest. I can’t think of any employer who’d see such a range of candidates for the same job. Lee was perhaps the least well educated person this time round, yet his drive, ambition and interpersonal skills helped him win through. A great message for the thousands who, like him, never got a degree.
What does it teach us about online communications with your customers? Nothing. But a little light relief never hurt anyone. Well done Lee.
Last night I was at an event organised by Results International called Winning in Changing Times. One of the speakers was Christopher Satterthwaite, Chief Executive of Chime Communications. He gave an excellent talk about how brands and organisations need to change the way they engage with customers. Key points included:
From Deference to Reference. We’ve left the age of Deference (where consumers yield to the judgement of a marketing message) and moved into an age of Reference (where we can and do check claims against feedback from others who have already purchased or experienced a service).
He showed a great slide that demonstrated the importance of “What you DO” over “What you SAY”. I think it was called “Moving Annual Targets” (MAT). For each month he’d picked out the brand/person most talked about in the press. E.g. NorthernRock for Sept’07, Alistair Darling for Nov’07, BA/BAA for Jan’08 and Bradford and Bingley for June’08. Each of these had hit the headlines because of something they had done which directed a lot of (often negative) attention their way. you can see the diagram showing this below.
This led onto a point about Reputation. Reputation comes from what you say, what you do and what others say about you. This has always been true and continues to be true. The change is the importance ascribed to each of those three drivers. The order of importance has now been reversed: what others say about you is paramount, then what you do etc.
It was great to hear about how this large communications group has developed it’s thinking in response to the way consumers now consume brand and political messages.
