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Rather than concentrating on total audience, media companies should concentrate on the net future value of each individual (reader). There are more ways to recognize value than in the traditional way of selling audiences to advertisers. The core value in media is not in the content and not in the size of the audience, the core value of media companies is in the trusted relationships with individuals; in the depth of data of individuals and in the generated level of relevance for each individual. Key question is: how to add and extract that value? People used to say that information is power, but that's no longer the case. It's analysis and use of the data that is the power.


Media companies must challenge every assumption about the role of content. Content is not a product to sell, but a device to generate and gain more signals & information about each individual content-user. Smart media companies are able to use that data to target (branded) content, services, m-Commerce, t-Commerce, e-Commerce, marketing partnerships, commercial conversations and advertising.

Media companies must also challenge their current, outdated, irrelevant, KPI's.
The challenge with KPI's is selecting the right ones. The key requirement for leading indicators is that we track them because there is a demonstrable link with key future outcome indicators.

In his book 'How brands grow' Byron Sharp proves that 'retention-percentage' and 'defection-percentage' are currently often used, but misleading outcome indicators. Key Outcome Indicators (KOI) are 'penetration-percentage' and 'purchase'/'sales'.

Neuroscience has proven that former leading indicators as 'awareness' and 'consideration' are misleading. 90% of our purchases are processed by the brain's subconscious. What should be Key Leading Indicators (KLI)? Our project 'Van hersen-scan tot kassa-scan' will learn us what kind of brain activation patterns will be Key Leading Indicators.

Everything is a Remix

The century of the self

Building brands & driving sales by activating mirror neurons

Mirror neurons - the neurons that trigger the same responses in our brain whether we do something ourselves or whether we observe someone else doing the same task - form the foundation of influencing decisions about what products and brands we purchase. Indeed, Future actions (i.e. purchase decisions) can be predicted from registered brain activity patterns .

Magazine advertising is fairly effective at triggering mirror neurons by visualizing other people enjoying, for example, Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.

Observing someone else enjoying delicious Häagen-Daz ice-cream will trigger the same reaction in our brain as if you had one in your own hand. This neurological response generates a desire for ice-cream that can only be satisfied by buying a real one.

Recent research shows that well executed magazine ads can be impactful enough to create a false memory of having tried a product that doesn’t even exist.

Researchers Rajagopal and Montgomery showed subjects either high imagery or low imagery versions of magazine ads for a fictitious popcorn product, Orville Redenbacher Gourmet Fresh. Other subjects were allowed to consume “samples” of the invented product which were actually a different Redenbacher popcorn.

A week later, all of the participants were surveyed to determine their attitudes toward the product and how confident they were about their opinions. Members of the group that viewed the more vivid ad were as likely to report that they had tried the product as the group that actually consumed the samples. The group that saw the low imagery ads were less likely to report they had tried the product, and had weaker, less favorable opinions about it.

Changing the brand to an unknown name, the fictitious “Pop Joy Gourmet Fresh,” reduced the false memory effect. I presume that the more ubiquitous the product and brand, the more likely these false recollections are to occur.

This study shows the power of magazine ads that incorporate vivid imagery – clearly, paper has once again shown itself to be an effective medium. These magazine ads can apparently create the impression of experiencing the product in consumer brains, and can increase positive feelings about the product.

Clearly, it’s worth taking the time to create superb images – mouth-watering, well styled closeups for food products, for example. For other products, images that emphasize the products sensual aspects – textures, scents, etc. – would likely work best, even though the sensory experience will be in the mind of the viewer.

(Sources: tdgNeuroBrand & R. Dooley)

Can neuroscience offer more certainty that your advertising pushes the right buttons?

The ability to predict consumer behaviour using neuroscience techniques is much greater than that shown by self-report methods. Neuro research may be useful to test the likely effectiveness of a campaign. But there are caveats.

Neuroscience offers very powerful methodologies, but it cannot answer all advertisers’ questions with any single method. Insight into neuroscience techniques is necessary to make good research investment choices and to be able to properly understand the outcome of the investment. It is worth the effort as neuroscience technologies offer marketers tools for designing effective campaigns and predicting success.

(source: Silvia Dalvit and Jane Leighton, Admap, February 2011, pp. 12-14)

Since October 2010, Sanoma Media Netherlands is using neuroscience techniques to gather - next level - consumer insights (media consumption, effectivity of campaigns, consumer oriëntation- and purchase-proces). More of our 'Mediabrain' project in this video (in Dutch):

"The conscious mind seeks answers to why, the unconscious mind knows why."

From 'one off perfect campaigns' to 'good enough, always in beta, partnerships'

5D Conference : New Television Pt 4 - Kevin Slavin from Dave Blass on Vimeo.

Moving beyond the business model of pushing ads; the art of commercial conversations

The effort and attention of marketing has always been focused on one aspect of marketing (pushing ads). We have to get used to leave this one dimensional view behind us, when one begins to realize that pushing ads is not a future proof business model. A more data-driven approach can transform - push-driven - advertising into more relevant - pull driven - sparkling (commercial) conversations.

As your mobile device becomes more and more the remote control for your daily live, you provide Sanoma - with your approval - the necessary data to improve our competence to serve you relevant and useful content, services, answers, solutions or utilities at the right time and the right place.

Do you belief in what we - Sanoma - belief in? Will you allow us to master the art of sparkling (commercial) conversations?

David de Boer, Head of Marketing Intelligence Sales, Sanoma

Opportunity: 4 cultural shifts driving new consumer behavior that offer new management principles

Speaking at TEDxKC, John Gerzema identifies four major cultural shifts driving new consumer behavior (moving from mindless to mindful consumption) and shows how businesses can best evolve to succesfully connect with thoughtful spending.

Gerzema identifies cultural shifts to:

1. liquid life (less is more)
2. ethics and fairplay
3. indestructable spirit (durable living)
4. return to the fold (cooperative consumerism)

Source: TED

Digital Trends for 2010

1. Facebook replaces personal email
2. Open source software starts making proper money, thanks to the cloud
3. Mobile commerce -- The promise that has never delivered, yet
4. Fewer registrations -- one sign-in fits all
5. Disruption vs. continuity -- alternatives to the "big idea"
6. The continuing evolution of web-driven, open source DIY culture
7. Info-art
8. Crowdsourcing
9. More Flash, not less

(Source: Nuri Djavit, November 05, 2009)

Media Eco System transformation changes the way of doing business

The fusion of sociology and technology in the Media Eco System has literally transformed the monologue of communication into the instantaneous dialog of a linked community. This linked community quickly and effectively shares profiles, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself.

Last 80 years, marketeers were are all into getting attention. You can buy attention (advertising), beg for attention or earn attention.

Last 3 years, the succesfull marketeers are not merely to gain the attention of their (potential) clients, but to gain trust; to create interactive one-on-one trusted relationships with the public at large.

Advertising campaigns can literally succeed or die in the momentous pressing of "send". Two major ad campaigns met their fate in the fall of 2008: Twitter users attacked and killed the new J&J Motrin Mom`s Campaign; and bloggers bombed and destroyed Germany`s Pepsi Max Campaign. Both were squashed immediately: one the first weekend, the other after the first issue of the ad.

Today`s businesses have a real challenge on their hands:

• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations more than traditional advertising.

• 80% of Twitter usage takes place on mobile devices, providing consumers the ability to broadcast news anywhere, anytime. As the number of "followers" and "friends" increases exponentially, it is likely that a business can plummet for poor customer service before the customer pays the bill.

But if a business uses it responsibly and effectively, the media eco system network can catapult a business ahead of its competition.

The media eco system network has the potential of accomplishing what no other medium has in the past: in numbers, message and network-effect. Utilize this potential, not so much for advertising, but to develop trusted relationships within your public niche.

Be not interested in advertising on platforms in the media eco system; be interested in getting in there and interacting with people; within the media eco system. Effective commercial communication is not a campaign, but a commitment. Businesses can, and should, use the media eco system networks in order to grow an active and interactive audience.

Companies need to participate in the media eco system networks, or they will be left behind. In a recent survey of 880 marketeers, nearly 81% admitted that their dialog efforts - their active participation in the media eco system networks - generated business exposure and more than half claimed that their tactics generated leads.

Three reasons why the benefits of online networking seem to hold even greater promise than face-to-face social networking, or conventional marketing:
1. It costs businesses primarily time instead of money.
2. Businesses can reach beyond the limitations of geography in gaining awareness and generating leads.
3. The potential for online referrals is huge.

Online socializing may be a radically different method of marketing-but in the near future, it could very well be the preferred method of marketing, one-on-one, throughout the world.

You earn trust customer by customer. Sanoma aims to construct an environment in which eco systems of trust will emerce; an environment in which privacy will be less important for many, more important voor some.

Why privacy is less important for many:

• Mindset: to share is to gain
• You have to be open, to have your data shared
• More open means less privacy, but more personalization
• More personalization means more relevance
• Total personalization means total transparancy
• If you want total personalization, you have to be total transparent

Trend: Convergence of atoms and digital
Result: One media platform, with the same laws of media shared in common:

• Copies have no value
• Value is in the uncopyable
• Personalization
• Media want to be liquid
• Network effects-rule
• Attention is a currency (trust is a currency?)

The 4 stages of the internet:

• stage 1: link computers
• stage 2: link pages, sharing links
• stage 3: link data, sharing an idea somewhere on a page/sharing ideas (XML, RSS, API, RDF, OWL)
• stage 4: the internet of things
  

The next 5000 days, the web will be:

• Smarter
• More Personalized
• More Ubiquitous

Five marketing megatrends you can't ignore

1: Mass collaboration is powering upcoming business models in the media eco system and - in a broader perspective - the (new) economy
2: Constant (mobile) connectivity in an on-demand world
3: Globalization: Making the world a smaller place
4: Pervasive distrust in big corporations
5: A global sense of urgency to fix the problems of a modern world

Source: Adam Kleinberg, November 02, 2009

New rules of marketing

Last 2 months:

• Have you answered to a direct mail advertisement: 3%

• Have you gone to mainstream media to orientate for a buy: 22%

• Have you gone to yellow pages to orientate for a buy: 2%

• Have you gone to Google/search engine for a buy: 100%

• Have you tapped your peer-to-peer-network for a buy: 80%

We are all into getting attention. Ways to get attention. You can:

• Buy attention (advertising)

• Beg for attention

• Earn attention

Privacy is less important for many, more important for some

David Meerman Scott keynote at BMA 2009 national conference from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

Fluidity of the Media Eco System

Throw away all your marketing books you have read at university. These books - with lessons about the four marketing P's (price, product, place, promotion) - are useless by now. Sad, but true.

Forget about Michael Porter's Value Chain. The Eco System is the next new metaphor.

Try to mentally switch from the Value Chain concept to the Value Constellation concept.

Keep repeating: Media Eco System = Value Constellation = Syndication

I have tried to capture the notion 'fluidity of the Media Eco System' into four beliefs:
Belief 1: People-centric (real-time web)
Belief 2: The stream
Belief 3: Get ready to 'Google Wave'
Belief 4: Media companies framing their added value for 'companies, formerly known as advertisers' into advertising concepts limit their range of possible solutions. And, thus, limit their potential added value while exploring new business models.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma, The Netherlands

Sanoma will be moving beyond the serving ads advertising model.

Our mobile devices become the remote control for our daily lives. This will generate data (of a dimension which we have never had before), which in turn provides Sanoma the means to really increase our value for our B2C customers (providers of the data) and our B2B customers. It provides Sanoma the means to become more relevant at the right time and place, and transform the accepted practices of marketing, media and commercial communication.

Data has always been used in marketing, but it has been on a path of evolution. Three key stages can be identified:

• Stage 1: Socio-demographics: age, gender, postal code, occupation, lifestyle, mentality.
• Stage 2: Context sensitive: search domain/subject, time, location, mood
• Stage 3: Social Marketing Intelligence: the combination of market segmentation and context, combined with customer behavior and social network profiles.
  

Marketing-, media-, commercial communication-decisions and data need to be symbiotically connected to each other to optimalize value, and to optimalize (marketing) resources for all partners (B2C customer, B2B customer, Sanoma). It this way the resources of Sanoma and our partners can be deployed intelligently at the right place and at the right time to create optimal value for all partners/participants/actors, while applying the optimal business-model(s) for that specific 'constellation' at that specific moment.

The decision on how much to spend and where to allocate (marketing- and media-) resources will evolve:

• the once-siloed 'static'data warehouse becomes a living 'enabler' of making realtime (marketing- and media-) resource-allocation-decisions on a continiuous basis.

The effort and attention of marketing has always been focused on one aspect of marketing (serving ads). We have to get used to leave this one dimensional view behind us, when one begins to realise how a data-driven approach to marketing can be transformational by offering an opportunity to remove 'static' organisational silos that truly hinder that continious, fluid, dynamic process of resource-optimalization.

The way forward is to better understand what data Sanoma (and Sanoma's partners) do already have and will generate. We have to think about how that data gets better through user-interaction [through interaction with our B2C and B2C customers] and take care of 'co-produced offerings' (services/products/applications) for those partners that give them back the value of that data.

Which players in the media-industry are (culturally) able to make this fundamental change of mindset and transform succesfully? The timing of this necessary transition is crucial. So time will tell us.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands