Messaging - The Billboard Metaphor

Today, marketing is dominated by social media. If you sell to consumers you must have a Facebook presence. If you market to businesses you must have a LinkedIN presence. Everyone is on Twitter. How does the marketer get their messages across in this media world? The old 30 second TV ad is too long these days. No one reads 12 page whitepapers any more, even if you now call them "e-books". No one is fooled. With ADD (attention deficit disorder) being a global phenomena what's the correct way to think about your messages.

The answer is the BILLBOARD.

“I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time”

This quote in various versions has been attributed to Twain, Cicero and Voltaire.  It doesn’t matter who actually said it first. What matters is it defines the role of marketeers today.  

To get your message across to overwhelmed consumers requires marketeers to sharpen their pencils and spend the time to write the shortest letter possible.  These “letters”, whether documents, presentations or videos, need to get the key message(s) across quickly.  The apt metaphor is the billboard.   

Billboard marketeers need to get their message across to drivers in less than a second.  Think of driving down the highway at 65 mph and glancing at a billboard.  You don’t have time to read lines of text.  You have time to grasp an image and a key phrase.  That’s why billboard marketing is the ultimate form of messaging.  Creators must boil the value proposition over and over again until they have it terse to the nth degree.  Figure 1 shows some examples that illustrate this point.

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Figure 1

Examples of Effective Billboards

Source: Google Images

These examples are effective since the leave the view with a clear message of the value of the product.    Looking at the first on, we see a tasty hot dog and are asked whether we love dogs.  If we do, we leave with the action to think Pink’s.  The second example hits the viewer with a simple message:  Natural, a pineapple and Skyy Vodka.  

Call  978 992 2203 to discuss how billboard marketing can work for you

Mobile Banner Ads: The Ultimate Billboard!

I use the “billboard” metaphor to address strategic messaging in an ADD-driven world. (See previous post: Social Media Marketing- The Billboard Metaphor: November 19, 2012).  The concept is to understand your value proposition and your customers so well you can effectively get your message across in less than a second.  Mobile banner  ads pose an additional challenge.  Traditional billboards you glance at while you drive by. They are there and you accept them for what they are.  

Mobile ads cause you angst and you want them to go away as fast as they can.  This creates an extreme challenge to the marketer.  Your message must be honed to a compelling image and three compelling words to get the annoyed viewer to first look at it and then to respond. 

Mobile Banner Ads are truly a case where you need to spend the time to write a “short letter”…. A wicked short letter!

The Settop Box: Love or Hate? Still a Missed Opportunity: Part I

The settop box (STB) has always been a critical part of the video delivery solution.  STBs enable the SP to deliver many revenue producing services including basic channel line ups, VOD, DVR, etc.   Hence, they love them.  STB are about 50% of an SP’s CapEx.  Hence, they hate them.  As everyone knew, and Cisco learned when they bought SA, there is constant downward price and margin pressure on STBs.  Vendors such as Cisco, and now Arris, along with Samsung and others have yet to change the dialog away from “speed and feeds” and “price”. 

Part of this arises from the “old days” where the STB vendor would not put engineering “pen-to-paper” until they had a signed contract for millions of units.  Armed with this contract they would then beat the living daylights out of their semiconductor suppliers.  I know; I was one of them.  I felt the large STB vendors (SA and GI) looked upon this beat down as sport.  They seemed to enjoy it.  (See “side-bar” below)

Even back then I felt the STB vendors and their SP customers were missing something.  They had a physical box the same size as the current PC that was situated, and visible, in living rooms throughout the world.  I began looking at them as a Trojan horse.

Competition among service providers and vendors has spurred many innovations in the market.  New entrants including Intel, Google and Apple as well as many startups have made forays in to this market.  Yet with all the talk of cord cutting, OTT only solutions are not enough.  Cisco’s Videoscape presented a story that was all encompassing.  Unfortunately, it was only a story.  Interactive TV and Apps on the TV continue to stutter.  Surfing the web with a 0-9, up, down, left, right remote control falls far short of a good user experience.  Social TV stutters as well.  Who wants a Facebook window taking up valuable TV screen real estate?  The industry has tried to address this in many ways.  Yet, adding single purpose boxes such as Roku, Slingbox, etc.  (All irritants to the SPs) became, among other things, a wiring nightmare for all but those consumers with structured wiring closets.

All of these problems are individually solvable and many efforts are underway to do just that.  However, I’ve yet to see anyone, SP or vendor, figure out the real solution.  I though Google had it when they bought Motorola, but was proven wrong with they sold the video part to Arris. 

In Part II, I’ll elaborate on the solution that I believe if adopted by SPs will give them an economically attractive long term solution to capture and control the home.  This solution is found at the turbulent intersection of technologies ranging from Video, Cloud, Mobile, SDN et al and addresses market and business realities, dynamics, and trends.  I don’t mean to leave you in suspense but few will read longer post since we all have ADD. 

Sign up to receive Part II or contact me at 978 992 2203 or gwhelan@verizon.net

Side Bar (OK it’s not on the side)

In one meeting at the dominant STB at the time, I had brought a senior development engineer who was pitching his new component.  This new component had features that were state-of-the-art.  The STB vendor on the other hand had some basic requirements that started with “Two Bucks”.   They had architected the box down to each component and had assigned a dollar value to each and every one.   Every time the engineer went on about some secondary feature such as spurious free dynamic range, the Director of Engineering kept saying “Two Bucks”.  After a few rounds of this I tried to change the conversation but the engineer kept pushing, what were now tertiary features.  It literally took an under the table kick and the evil eye stare to get him to stop.  The message was “give us the best for performance for two bucks”. 

ADD is a Global Phenomena

ADD or attention deficit disorder has been widely discussed at the latest condition affecting young people today.  It seems that all childhood issues ranging from misbehavior to poor grades is attributed to ADD.  Perhaps it's the manufacturers of Ridilin(R) that are driving this epidemic.  Let's not belittle those that suffer from some maladay, rather let's adopt the concept of ADD in modern day life and how it impacts marketing today.

ADD is a global phenomena.  It's not limited to the US and advanced western economies.  People around the globe are overwhelmed with information and advertising and are awash in choices.  Whether it's a the beer store, the supermarket or on the TV, global consumers have more options today then even one year ago.  

The causes of ADD are many.  We can point to the proliferation of texting and twitter for example.  We communicate with 140-160 character messages that would make english teachers cringe.  Our verbal vocabulary has expanded to include "words" like OMG, LOL, .  These acronyms have even entered into our verbal conversations.  

What does this mean for marketers in the 21st century?  The answer is what I call “billboard marketing”.


“I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time”

This quote in various versions has been attributed to Twain, Cicero and Voltaire.  It doesn’t matter who actually said it first. What matters is it defines the role of marketeers today.  

To get your message across to overwhelmed consumers requires marketeers to sharpen their pencils and spend the time to write the shortest letter possible.  These “letters”, whether documents, presentations or videos, need to get the key message(s) across quickly.  The apt metaphor is the billboard.   

Billboard marketeers need to get their message across to drivers in less than a second.  Think of driving down the highway at 65 mph and glancing at a billboard.  You don’t have time to read lines of text.  You have time to grasp an image and a key phrase.  That’s why billboard marketing is the ultimate form of messaging.  Creators must boil the value proposition over and over again until they have it terse to the nth degree.  Figure 1 shows some examples that illustrate this point.

c

Figure 1

Examples of Effective Billboards

Source: Google Images

These examples are effective since the leave the view with a clear message of the value of the product.    Looking at the first on, we see a tasty hot dog and are asked whether we love dogs.  If we do, we leave with the action to think Pink’s.  The second example hits the viewer with a simple message:  Natural, a pineapple and Skyy Vodka.  As you can see each of these takes advantage of the number 3.  

Call 978 992 2203 to discuss how billboard marketing can work for you