June 28, 2012

Multiscreening increases TV viewing!

We all know that we multitask, we all know that we multiscreen, but a recent study out of the UK has identified some key insights that go beyond the usual studies. The findings are highly significant for us as marketers.

‘Screen Life: The view from the sofa’ is a study undertaken by Thinkbox who filmed the living rooms of UK TV viewers and analyzed 700 hours of their viewing habits. This was coupled with detailed psycho-physiological analysis and digital ethnography (you can find the full details in the link at the end of my post.)

The key findings were that Multi-screening:

keeps more viewers present for ad breaks
encourages more TV viewing
does not negatively influence ad recognition
brings people closer to TV
appears to encourage more shared and family viewing

My findings from this insight

From an advertising perspective, this demonstrates a clear need for fully integrated multi platform strategies (and budget allocations!) if we want consumers to engage with brands in a deeper way.

This would also appear to confirm a post that I previously wrote back in January entitled The Future role of TV in a digital world where I quoted the Head of digital at Pepsi, Shiv Singh, who believes that TV should and will become a trailer for the whole story from a narrative perspective eg it will be a doorway to deeper engagement via digital.

If you agree with this POV, it will require an adjustment to the entire creative process with TV spots becoming more of a teaser in nature that encourage deeper digital engagement across several digital platforms.

This will, however, require new thinking, new procedures, new routines and new metrics within our industry in order to consistently implement and measure such initiatives – with time, as the younger demographic groups become the mainstream, that real time need for brand engagement is only going to increase in importance.

We as advertisers need to recognize that.

So here’s a concluding analogy for you that I just thought of using Disney World:

TV can make many people aware of the front door of your brand at a relatively low engagement level like this

But digital communications will allow you to invite many of those people past the entrance, and provide them with a deeper, more entertaining long term experience - the fireworks, the parade, the lasers, the giant candies.

This deeper engagement is the key to good CRM that will ensure that consumers will continue to be interested in future initiatives that the brand has to offer, and will subsequently come back for more.