In last month’s issue Angus looked at the importance of a brand sticking to its strategic principles, despite the mouth-watering savings on offer. But in the current softer media market, it’s likely you’ll be making savings on your media plans and if you are, what are you doing with the savings?

Do you write them straight to your bottom line? Do you buy heavier weights without increasing spend? Or do you use the savings to try something a little different?

The media continues to evolve, resulting in some great new innovations coming to market. And right now there are some interesting properties that will change the way we plan and buy media in the future.

So if you do find that you have freed up some media dollars, why not consider the below and take advantage of the low cost to entry of what will undoubtedly soon become an integral part of your channel plan:

Neil Burton, Strategist

Digital television

We’ve already seen the launch of Ten’s One HD (24/7 sports) and more recently Nine’s GO! (female orientated entertainment & lifestyle) to positive audience viewing figures.

The Free to Air (FTA) networks know they can’t just repeat the same content they run on their standard channel. What this means to advertisers on FTA is that they can now extend and expand their audience with the one station, while continuing to leverage the benefits associated with solus network buys.

Digital radio

The advent of digital radio provides a new outlet for brands and consumers to engage through a common passion, music.

Forget the technology (up to the second track listings, improved sound quality and the ability to pause and rewind), what makes digital radio so exciting is the choice and diversity of music that will be available. Yes, in terms of reach the numbers aren’t there yet, but brands can now target an audience through their love of a music genre.

This is something Smirnoff is doing a great job of with its weekly show on novanation.com.au

You can also associate your brand to a particular artist as Optus did here with its Optus’ Pink radio, which played nothing but Pink songs and interviews for the duration of her time in Australia.

Online video

It is what it says, it’s video content online. Breaking it down even further, it’s simply watching your favourite content on the box in front of you. Sound familiar?

What makes this innovation so interesting is that it’s now being used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your TV buy (being thought of as an additional TV network), not as just a nice-to-have addition to your online activity.

Online video delivers incremental reach by serving a TVC (or bespoke content) to a light TV viewing audience and its interactivity enables an advertiser to immediately capture and drive interest to a destination on the web for action or more information.

With the convergence of TV and digital, Mitchells has recently appointed a specialist TV planner and buyer to consult on all online and digital video activity.

These innovations are here to stay and they’re going to play an increasingly important part in the channel plan. By investing a small percentage of a brand’s overall media spend to new innovations, marketers will gain learnings and experience that their competitors may not have, enabling them to better adapt to the changing media landscape.

Especially if you can do it by offsetting the costs with some of those savings you’ve been making in the softer media market.

If you would like to talk about these innovations in more detail email me at nburton@mitchells.com.au

Posted by: Neil Burton