Ideas versus platforms: what wins in the modern media landscape

Creativity remains one of the biggest multipliers of advertising effectiveness, but, what role does the media investment landscape play in this process?

James Boardman is chief strategy officer at Wavemaker AUNZ

Australia’s marketing landscape is constantly being reshaped by the rise and fall of media platforms and changing consumer behaviours. The ebb and flow of these platforms, the changes in viewing and shopping habits, and the ways people choose to interact and value digital technology is a constant challenge for marketers and business leaders.

As emerging advertising platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime jostle with growth platforms such as TikTok and Google, it leaves marketers with seemingly endless questions. How fast should cold-hard-money follow trends in consumer behaviour? If people watch less TV and consume hours and hours of TikTok, how should brands muscle in on the act? Should they try? Do we risk pulling away from the tried and tested channels such as TV too fast, leaving huge audiences and growth opportunities untapped? How do we get a message across in multiples of seconds on a mobile phone versus tens of seconds on a TV screen?

However, while the central task of engaging customers remains the same, the optimal channel or platform to reach them is constantly changing. Sometimes it’s a gentle evolution but sometimes more dramatic overhauls are possible or required.

While we often have a tendency to focus on the new and different, it’s always useful to reapply some age-old truths to a new landscape.

Advertising planners often like using media partners with an ecosystem of different communication options (for example, those companies who offer digital, podcast and print options v those who do one thing well), to help them achieve the scale they need. Those who could provide a one-stop-shop across channels made campaigns more effective and the process for implementing a strategy easier.

Marketing science has also long shown that channels have a multiplier effect on each other – for example, adding TV to a Search campaign ensures Search works 7 per cent harder than without, according to one study.

In all the noise about marketing revolutions, these facts haven’t changed. We still need scale and getting channels to work together is still critical.

What is different is that it is now being accelerated by a new breed of platform offering brands connected opportunities not seen before – in particular when they involve access to a TV screen.

TV has historically been the best channel at making all other channels work harder.

Increasingly, as younger audiences move away from traditional ways of watching TV, marketers are tasked with finding ways of keeping the engagement that the TV screen has always delivered but replacing the delivery mechanism.

New partners are needed who can help bind stories together across an entire customer journey, multiple channels and deliver broad audiences.

Take Amazon’s ecosystem as an example: take a central idea, activate it within a gaming environment on Twitch, sponsor a show on the big home screen through Amazon Prime, engage influencers and creators as a new kind of salespeople, and then collaborate on a retail event (for example, Beauty Week) through Amazon.com.au, and finally add advertising within loyalty communications.

This joined up media planning could deliver campaigns that are more exciting and effective, more simply.

As the privacy landscape shifts in favour of less intrusive uses of customer behavioural data, a privacy safe, compliant platform, able to add relevance to communications is incredibly compelling. Even better, these platforms can do so in a near-globally consistent way.

It all sounds perfect. But there is a catch.

A global platform, be it a born-of retail player like Amazon and eBay or a social platform spreading its wings like TikTok, Meta or YouTube (over half of which is now watched on a TV screen) is just a workbench. It isn’t an answer. An incredibly powerful, globally exciting workbench, yes. Exciting prospects for growth, sure. But not an answer.

The biggest multiplier of advertising effectiveness is still creativity.

A great idea can make consumers sit up and take notice, as well as make your brand appear distinctive from all the alternatives. According to one study, it improves ROI by up to 12 times. In this area, humans, with a healthy assist for AI, need to bring the magic. The new holy grail for brands selling in the modern media landscape is ideas that power an entire customer journey within a single platform. From inspiration and entertainment, through to key moments that matter, to sale and loyalty.

It’s in the alchemy of great creativity, scaled and connected to the real world through these new platforms, their channels, screens and data, that marketers will find their magic.

James Boardman is chief strategy officer at Wavemaker AUNZ