Integrated Consumption

While I’ve focused mostly on interactive here, the reality is that there is more and more integration across different media. Integrated marketing takes advantage of that. Yet consumption behavior still differs across different media – TV, radio, PC, mobile and print . It’s important to understand the best use of each medium, because that will help you determine what provides the most “value” to a user in a particular medium.

Here’s an example. Ever use your iPhone or another mobile device to view a website? Sure, it can be useful, but you don’t really want to do that all the time. Scrolling madly to see a whole site in tiny pieces gets annoying pretty quickly. But while most users may still prefer to go to a full screen to experience a full site, that’s not always practical. So you scroll madly for a while – and then you start wishing the website would provide a streamlined experience with just the functionality pertinent to you when you’re in a mobile state. Say, just enough functionality to search for a product or find a store location directly through the mobile device.

This is why iPhone applications have really taken off. They solve problems in ways that are uniquely relevant to the user in a mobile state. Take, for example, the Sit or Squat app. The folks who came up with this originally brought their idea to the web as a rather idiosyncratic blog. They’d been online for a year or more with fairly limited visibility. But as soon as they came up with an iPhone app, the name was suddenly everywhere.

Why? Because an app matched the utility value of the idea perfectly. When you’re on the road, you really do want to know where the best and cleanest restrooms are. And what better medium than a mobile? Using this app when you’re parked in front of your computer makes little sense, but when you’re on your mobile phone? It’s brilliant.

Another thing that’s interesting about integrated consumption of media is how much different media cross-pollinate each other. Commerce and content have started to mesh, too. Add semantic tools to the mix, and you get something with amazing potential. When you can discern a user’s intent on the fly, based on what they might be watching or reading or listening to, you can offer them highly relevant product and even have the ability to tie that back to a CPA calculation.

The sooner you see that there is little division among different types of media – just unparalleled and ubiquitous access to your audience – the sooner you can think creatively about how to engage and deliver more value at different stages of the buying cycle

Wireless broadband, widely available cheap screens, a trend toward unified search and other factors have led to simultaneous multimedia consumption that’s even blurring the line between online and offline. You might think you are offline, but you’re not really. That new billboard you look at while you’re stuck in traffic is getting fed real-time weather data and switching from water park advertising on a sunny day to movies on a rainy day. Plus you’ve got a web-enabled GPS device that feeds traffic data, a watch that resets with the tides, and a cell phone sending you coupons for local eateries when you drop pins for restaurants on a Google map.

And this is just the beginning. Integrated consumption isn’t just cross-media integration. It’s also a combination of interactive experiences and tangible/non-tangible concepts that are a lot less linear than we might imagine.

Here’s another possible scenario – a user looks up the Mets score via mobile after missing the game the night before, and there happens to be a link to video of David Wright’s bottom of the ninth home run to win the game. Maybe, just maybe, the user is interested enough to watch a 12-second clip. So you may be able to squeeze in some links for Mets merchandise and tickets, or even the top ten plays of the week. But I wouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. You just can’t place an ad in any given format, walk away and expect money to roll in.

It’s your responsibility to think, not just filter down to select the best publisher to work with. Build a rich online ecosystem that’s is completely integrated in both the physical and digital space (not just media-based.) Then use selective media buys to stimulate activity.

We are approaching a stage of merging media types. TV bleeds into the Internet, where there are tie-ins to radio and print, and so on. Even outdoor billboards and in-store kiosks have gone digital, which means they can integrate all the more easily. There’s a meshing of content and commerce in media – and it’s all coming together into one harmoniously perfect experience.