If digital channels were all horses in a race, which one would you back?
Every channel in digital battles against the others for a larger share of the money brands make available to spend. This holds true in the media world as well as the creative world, decisions in both disciples have a large effect on where budget is spent.
I was putting together a slide on how much choice there is for brands in terms of channels nowadays, and started to cluster channels together based broadly (not using concrete stats) on their utilisation by brands, and by users.
This article is a bit of a prototype — I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, how you’d build on these thoughts and add more channels, maybe change some of this. I’ve purposely left off what I would call “layers”, like automation, AI, data, personalisation, and kept it simple.
After plotting these channels on my matrix, I started to think about the commonalities between the groups and named them.
Innovation Bets.
Few brands, few users. Every channel starts here, with no users and no brands using it. All tech has humble beginnings, in beta modes, being rolled out slowly and distributing developer kits for the community to help improve it. Virtual reality, Augmented reality and wearable technology are good examples, Blockchain is potentially the newest addition that people are trying to understand.
Innovation bets have a bit of an unknown potential, no-one is really sure if they’ll become mainstream and get picked up by the masses (hence the name). They also don’t have built-in opportunities for brands yet, which leaves it as a creative blank canvas — it’s often difficult to think of use cases, but the rewards for a brand who can create a compelling and interesting proof of concept is often a great deal of positive PR and industry admiration.
Most people wait for innovation bets to develop, the technology and user experience improves over time, attracting both users and brands. For brands, the perceived risk is high to trying out these channels — mainly because it’s a step into the unknown, people possibly feel out of control in creating work for these channels, how they’re measured, how much they’ll cost, where are the experts to deliver it?
It helps to take a ‘hack’ mentality into doing these types of projects, understanding it’s about learning, innovation, and searching new ways to interact with people. The story tends to be in the fact you did it, using other channels to tell everyone about it.
Also Rans.
Few users, many brands. It’s difficult to think of any examples that are live right now, but there’s quite a few in the short history of digital media; Facebook Apps, Google gadgets, Google+, Google glass, Microsoft surface (the pool table-sized ones). More recently Snap spectacles. The also rans — everyone knows they raced, but they’re now confined to history.
The thing they all have in common is they were all focused on the brand or business they worked for, an inward-facing problem — and solved nothing for the person who used them (the outward-facing issue). They quickly die, change format or get absorbed into other channels.
Innovation bets often become also rans when they focus too much on attracting brand money. People always speculate on how the next big social platform will make money, but the successful ones all focus on user experience first , and the needs of brand partners later in their development cycle.
Dark Horses.
Many users, few brands. My favourite category. Dark Horses are like the forgotten generation of channels, things people use without a second thought, highly developed user experience, fulfilling user needs. They use to be innovation bets, but have been developing in line with other technology, getting better, more advanced and more mainstream over the years. People like them, and talented creators are using them to great effect.
But they struggle to attract brands because, like innovation bets they have a limited formal brand offering (or a few uninviting ones), and only have a limited amount of PR for using them successfully (in comparison). Some dark horses are seen to have had their time already, fueled by out-dated view of what they are now — podcasts being associated with iPods and RSS feeds, branded games seen as the tiresome branded Flash games instead of more advanced mobile gaming or even PC & console game development (through platforms like Unity).
Dark horses are easier to get into than innovation bets, and have much more potential to drive results. For podcasts, platforms like Spotify and Audible are investing in their own original content, and a rise in the amount of platforms has made reaching people a much easier task than ever before (inc. Soundcloud, Acast). And the cost of entry can be as low as a mic and some editing software.
Even in gaming, there are hundreds of talented independent games developers across the UK, creating high quality games quickly using development environments like Unity. And mass reach can be achieved through mobile distribution platforms like Google Play / Apple App store, as well as gamer portals like Twitch and Steam for more advanced PC and console games.
While other people are waiting for the killer breakthrough, those who back the dark horse now can reap some amazing benefits.
Favourites.
Many brands, many users. As well as web and social media, mobile apps are in this as a channel because, although marketing-based mobile apps have probably seen limited success, many brands now have really useful mobile applications that make dealing with them easier and more convenient. When my local gym has an app for booking exercise classes, apps are now definitely mainstream for brands. I’m not talking about a fancy gym, either.
I don’t think favourites need much explanation, so I won’t go into one. But what I would say is — the favourite doesn’t always win the race, and sometimes the most obvious and familiar route isn’t always the best one to choose.
So — who are you backing?
I have a personal preference for the dark horse. The technology is advanced, potential reach is high, and yet there’s still opportunities to shine and design an amazing experience.
What you design comes down to your end user, and the need you’re fulfilling for them. If you don’t create something desirable for people, you won’t achieve anything else.
But of course you need to consider what you are looking to achieve within your own organisation — standing out from your competition? The PR, experience and benefit from taking a bet on innovation? Or are you simply trying to get the basics right? These are inward-facing objectives, but it’s important to have clarity across your business in what success looks like internally.
Ultimately every channel has it’s pros and cons — and if you don’t win, try to learn and win the next race.
