Jen Berman

This is definitely true! It doesn’t matter that fewer people are watching shows together. People can watch TV on their own schedule and discuss it with their friends later or on social media. Because of this, I would argue that the success/failure of a show is even more reliant on word-of-mouth advertising than ever before. Think of the wild success of Squid Game (https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/netflix-s-squid-game-sensation-here-s-why-it-s-n1280646). So many people were talking about the show online that it spurred a global sensation. Had the show aired on tradional network television, it would have relied on compelling ads to convince viewers to tune in. Now, the amount of online buzz compels people to give it a watch.

I know I personally usually let the Internet review a new show for me before I give it a watch. What about you?

10 years ago (I know I’m dating myself again), I had the epiphany that we were doing TV buying wrong.

I was lucky to be at a company that let me lean into it, and so I devised an in-house tool that let us equate digital impressions for services like YouTube and Hulu into their traditional TV equivalent (rating points).

I won’t bore you on the details, but it got the attention of Hulu and I was able to work with their sales team to scale up my approach to better align their inventory with a traditional TV buyer mentality.

A decade later, the tool has long since been retired, but the philosophy has never been stronger. How do you define “TV”?

We internally no longer use “TV” as a tactic. It’s all variations on video and we’ve developed a nomenclature of equivalence to blend the experiences we know vs. the ones that emerge.

The easy way of thinking is that services like Hulu are “Primetime” just as most their content would be on-air. YouTube and the ‘gram equate to “Daytime”, less because of the quality of programming than the quality of “attention” (i.e. you watch it when you unexpectedly have time to burn; note: this is Primetime for younger target audiences). And so on…

The challenge to “TV” then isn’t that we don’t recognize the value of video content and its increasing power, but that so much is ad-supported and that model is under incredible strain.

Consumers prefer ad-free experiences, but how much can they really afford? Where ads do exist, digital impressions are almost always sold at a discount relative to their on-air equivalents.

And then, the major elephant: its considerably more work for a station / network to sell individual impressions than blocks of airtime. When an 30 min episode aired back in the day, around 11 minutes was reserved for ads. That’s ~22 advertisers if you stick to :30 spots. Now, given how many ways you can slice and dice an audience, you could have hundreds or even thousands of advertisers existing in that same audience (it’s not typically that high, but you see how it could be via our convo on programmatic last week).

Boiling all of this, how is it that “TV” has never been more popular and yet, the business model is still under considerable strain?

I know that this was a huge driver behind Instagram taking down the like numbers for people to view. I agree though that social media can really become a problem to mental health. Too many people feel like they aren’t “living their best life” or try to keep up with the Joneses. I hope that we can find a way to balance social media, without it becoming overwelming.

Great post, Jen. I made a blog post about this a few semesters ago. Here is a quote from this article that talks about the same thing regarding Facebook which I thought was interesting.

“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,”

That quote was shown in a 2018 presentation. I have definitely seen proof of that within my own circles and experiences on Facebook. I agree with Amanda’s and your last sentiment about if it’s not adding value or putting good out, then walk away. As we talked about in class, we don’t always have control over the messages we are putting out as employees, but I think finding a company with similar values as you is a good place to start.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-algorithm-bias-right-wing-feed-a9536396.html

This is super interesting Jen! I completely agree with social media causing an impact to mental health, which is why I try not to use it often. The only thing I can think of is, what should we do? We can try to limit social media usage, but you’ll probably get a lot of people protesting that it’s unconstitutional. I feel like social media is so ingrained now, that it’s somewhat impossible to stop it. I feel really bad for kids nowadays. What’s going to happen to Facebook? Is the government going to step in and force it to separate Instagram into whole new entity? And what about mental health? If social media doesn’t get regulated, how should we approach mental health?

Great post Jen! I definitely find myself falling into a trap on Instagram sometimes – especially during the pandemic. Regular people don’t look like Instagram models and when I wasn’t actually seeing normal people in real life it was easy to feel like I wasn’t good enough since those were who I was looking at so much more often. I can imagine how much more difficult that would be for young girls.

As for the political side of Facebook – leaks like this scare me. It’s easy to forget that these days everyone is truly consuming information made for them and almost no news on social media is objective. It’s scary how Facebook feeds into this knowingly. I wish the government had stepped in earlier – I am honestly deeply concerned with where society will go at this rate.

Jen, couldn’t agree more. This report confirms what many of us intuitively know already. It also validates what sociologists and psychologists have been studying for years: Things like confirmation biases, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (belonging, anyone?) and more.

In many ways, humans are predictable creatures. And, let’s not forget that humans write the algorithms.

One could argue, sadly, that we should have seen this coming.

Tie in Instagram Shopping and Facebook Marketplace, and you have an experience catered to make women feel bad, while making them spend money on “feel-good” or, much worse, “look-good” products. It is too easy to find the links directly to the clothing, shoes, jewlery, makeup, (candles), etc. that may be specifically cultured in the internet environment to create the best possible viewable experience. It’s highly disappointing to find whatever you bought does not automatically give you the look or lifestyle of influencer (nor will it ever), and at no point does Instagram or Facebook warn you of the experience they are delivering to their users. Thanks for posting about it Jen!

Love that your embracing this. If we can extract the data as XLS, I am more than happy to lend a hand visualizing it. While a picture says a thousand words, a thousand lines in a spreadsheet are much more useful.

Let’s connect if you want to brainstorm on ways to document this that might be able to “feed” your larger perspective at semester’s end.

As much as I love this idea, I am quite embarrassed about mine since I do have TikTok downloaded and spend way too much time on it. The infinite scroll on social media is dangerous, get stuck in a black hole basically until you realize it’s past your bed time and have watched TikTok’s laughing to yourself for almost an hour.

Jen, I really appreciate that you’ve drawn parallels between both the HBR reading and Daniel Rowles’ book. As I read, I kept thinking one thing: the device is just that – the device. The means of making your business idea come to life and find success. If you don’t have a solid business idea and strategy, a mobile strategy means nothing. This quote really spoke to me: “Because when it comes to digital transformation, digital is not the answer. Transformation is,” because I think it really drives home the idea that the *digital* aspect of digital transformation is the vehicle to making that transformation. The transformation itself is key and needs to be specified… mobile is just going to be how it’s done. (At least that’s how I’ve been interpreting it!)

Jen – great post and thanks for making it a digestible “listicle” ! Your reflection on the first quote, “Mobile Marketing is actually all about understanding the user journey” really stuck with me. It’s so true that understanding the user journey is truly the basis for any (well thought-out) business strategy. Also, coming back to the basics is KEY to understanding the mentioned user journey and developing a well-thought out strategy (once again), whether it’s marketing-specific or like you said, another similar discipline. Really for me, mobile marketing is marketing in the modern world BUT doing it well really comes back to the basics, the tools and channels have just changed.

Thanks for pulling these quotes, Jen. To build on our convo about the communication model, by isolating the words, you create space to add new context and the comments below are a reflection of that feedback in action.

Let’s also respect the effect you have as the “source” of this information on the recipients who read this blog.

While the words are not your own, the act of communicating them through your post has irrevocably affected their delivery (at least among people who have read the text and now your post).

Information is always evolving. The saying is that “information wants to be free”. I’d add that the reason information wants to be free is because it needs to grow and evolve, just like us.

This pull quotes in this post remind me of a Drake album, especially as you describe them: “hooky, powerful, and spark curiosity”. Canada’s greatest export released his sixth studio album earlier this month and much of the criticism was similar to yours of Daniel Rowles. There may be some great, Instagram worthy lines here, but the oversimplification here leads some of these lines to pop without the surrounding substance or context. Not that Rowles didn’t acquit himself with some of the well laid out explanations — readers brains may just have led them to focus on the most digestible lines.

“You don’t need a digital strategy, you need a better strategy, enabled by digital” reminds me of a line like “Why they always act like we can fix it with a meeting? All that linking up, man, I’ma see ya when I see ya” from the song “No Friends In The Industry”.

YES. YES YES YES YES YES JEN. There is so much noise and clutter out on social media, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to find myself getting sick of MYSELF scrolling on social media, because sometimes, very little of what I’m seeing is actually providing me value. Instead, it’s just sucking me in and distracting me.

One of my favorite quotes ever comes from Ron Swanson – “Never half ass two things. Whole ass one thing.” – and I think about this quote a lot when it comes to managing and posting to social media (esp. managing multiple accounts). You can’t expect your social media presence to flourish if what you’re posting doesn’t provide value to your followers, so if you’re posting just to post or not giving it enough thought and strategy – don’t bother. BUT – to your point – that “thought” and “strategy” should be rooted in the people who follow you, or the people you’re trying to get to follow you. So be thinking about what matters to them in order to inform your strategy.

I see we’ve struck a nerve, here. 🙂 One of my favorite catch-phrases when it comes to social media strategy: “Why care? Why share?”

It’s a simple way to frame the conversation with your partners and stakeholders: Why would your customers/audience CARE about this content you’re proposing? Why would they want to SHARE it with their friends/family/connections on social media?

Another way to ask: What NEED is your content fulfilling (back to our discussion on focusing your strategy through archetypes…)

I mean you all know how I feel, I wish social media never existed. As humans we do not need it (true for a lot of technology things). Hell, as business’ we probably don’t need it. I’m pretty sure there were business’ before social media.

Alas, until I finish modifications on my Delorean I can’t change the fact that we have it, I just try not to use it as much.

Great conversation.

My question to you all is to ask if this wasn’t the aim all along?

Advertising and marketing, at the core, are just communications attempting to express value of a product / service to a party that “should” be interested in it.

The limitation has been the means (technology), not the ends. So evolution is absolutely the right term. If we agree that marketing was always about creating an experience, do you agree with my perspective that technology is merely helping us to deliver the experience we always aspired to, without the waste and inefficiency (and maybe more interactivity)?

This immediately brought to mind Spaceship Earth. At Epcot, this 16 minute ride has no whips, dips, or fast turns, but what an amazing experience! You travel back to the dawn of humanity, from when men were painting on walls to the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press. As the end of the ride nears, the experience continues. The ascension inside the geosphere concludes with a fast forward to the future. A touch screen on the back of the seat in front of you (read that slowly if you just got turned around) prompts you with a few questions about the most tedious parts of your day. This personalized information provided is used to design solutions to your future world! Who/what immediately came to mind was Disney. They understood that marketing was about the experience then and they understand that even more today!

I agree with Forbes. I think the digital evolution of marketing has made brand voice more important. A brand ID was a thing before then. However, it was more of a guide post for the development of advertising. Now the brand ID is the center point and advertisement is just there to support it, not create it.

I also enjoyed the tie in to DNA and the Law of Accelerating Returns. It almost makes me scared of the future. Changes will start coming so fast that humans will not be able to keep up with them. The next one will be coming up before society can make the shift. Or do you think that will become the limiting factor in any future changes?

Very provocative. To Sean’s point, my theory culture is changing at the sometime technology is changing, and our culture is becoming more dependent on it because of our rationalization that we sacrifice what we are accustom to for the benefit of society and efficiency.

Take the town clock for instance. For us, it has become ubiquitous in how we schedule our time when in fact the town clock was never always there. There was in fact a time in history when people revolted when town clocks were constructed for the purpose to keep everyone on schedule and work more efficiently in textile plants.

Though many of us might be reluctant to adopt mobile technology, and share our own cynicism of social marketing and the technologies , we our again rationalizing technology for the sake of our society.