Insight in the middle

Let's start with an insight - 'Tiny moments become meaningful when spent with the people you love.' An insight is simple statement that is seemingly obvious and reveals a human truth. It explains 'why people do the things that they do?' The insight mentioned above, explains why we make that one phone call to our closest friends and family to share any good news, or just to hear their voice. How did we come up with this insight? Let's say this insight came from an observation about people that live away from their family and how much they value connecting to their families or friends at every chance they get.

The answer to 'why people do the things they do?' comes from two things, firstly understanding of who a person is, for instance their life stage, marital status, number of kids, location, etc. The second part is understanding how a person is, which involves identifying their values, habits and actions. A combination of both the factual and fluid aspects of a person help us reach a deeper truth about them. Thus, an insight, like the one we started with, sits in the middle of - the factual information that we know about a person, which is their demographic and their behavioral characteristics. We need both demographic and behavioral data to get a complete picture and land on a meaningful insight- insight in the middle.

Why study media consumption?

A class activity on ‘favorite story of all time’ revealed a crucial thing- uncovering an insight requires us to understand the context. Insight is a very subconscious thing, therefore when you ask someone to reveal an insight about themselves it is difficult for them to identify one correctly. On the other hand, for instance, if we ask someone to describe their favorite movie, it becomes much easier to uncover an insight. The prompt provides the person a way to easily express what they like, prefer, their values and so on without actually thinking too deeply about it or even knowing it.

In today's digital world, media consumption of a person can give us a snapshot of people's behaviors, allowing us to dig deeper than the demographics, which gives us more context and a fuller picture of a person. Furthermore, this provides us with an understanding of not just what consumers want but also why they make certain decisions. Knowing the ‘why’ helps us to uncover the underlying motivations of people’s actions. This is very useful to create an effective marketing strategy, as we can connect with consumers based on their deeper needs, by creating a the right message that resonates with them on a deeper level. Instead of addressing what a brand’s product can do for consumer, we can first address the underlying motivation or need and then provide a solution.  

The Coca Cola Hello Happiness ad uses storytelling to shed light on South Asian laborers who move to Dubai for a better future, but earning low income makes it difficult for them to connect with their families regularly. It then shows how Coca cola can help with the situation. Coca cola used an insight based on the happiness that comes from connecting with family.

What can we learn from media consumption?

A person’s Media consumption repertoire can help us study the type of content people consume, and the underlying motivation for the choice of content and media channel. We can obtain a consumer’s individual, community and cultural aspects. People consume media to fulfill their want and needs on an individual level to form a sense of self. Media acts as a social glue as people use it to stay connected to others and the broader society. Understanding all three dimensions is key because consumer decisions and choices are not only influenced by individual themselves by also their community and culture.

The underlying experiences consumers seek through their media consumption helps us understand their media influence, which is key for forming a media marketing strategy. The media channel a consumer uses to kill time, for taking a time out or to collect information is different, and each is a different media experience. This data helps us decide the right place and right time for our message, because we do not want to interrupt someone who is watching cooking videos on YouTube with an air conditioner’s advertisement, rather it could be the time to show a microwave ad. We want to enhance the experience of the consumer when they are on the media platform, therefore it is important to keep the relevancy of the ad in mind in relation to the content being consumed. Media influence audit also helps a brand to break away from where there is too much clutter and position itself strategically for maximum impact.

The media insight and marketplace insight give an idea about the digital media landscape and the general, brand, and business landscape at the time. This is important to keep in mind because Culture and Time play a key role in how a message is perceived.

IMC perspective

As mentioned in the Coca Cola ad example, the key is to deliver a solution to the consumer instead of talking about the product/service because consumers care what the product can do for them instead of the product itself. The media consumption approach discussed in the paper is audience centric as it builds the strategy around a key insight and delivers the message to fit consumer’s media experiences instead of disrupting it. Media consumption helps us uncover an insight that which helps with crafting the right message. Understanding the media experiences allow us to prioritize the media channels that are influential based on the situation at hand, thus, informing the right time and right place for the message. This shifts the focus away from individual channels and allow us to allocate the budget rightly based on the influence audit. Thus, increasing the effectiveness of an Integrated Marketing Communications plan by communicating the right message, at the right time and right place.  

Conclusion

How media fits into a person’s day informs messaging decisions for the brand. Although content and customer journey are a part of a media consumption approach to a marketing strategy, the media consumption approach focusses on the contextually relevant moment of truth. The medium itself is the message. Unlike old times, where there were limited ways (TV, radio and newspaper) to connect with consumers, today’s digital landscape provides an opportunity to enhance engagement by utilizing the right surrounding content.

Media is not just a channel to communicate, advertise or entertain anymore, it has made it possible to collect data and learn more about our consumers. Insight is key to an IMC approach and media consumption has made it possible to uncover these insights as it provides behavioral data and context. This not only makes it more effective for marketers but also for the consumers themselves as we can now figure out how we can enhance their media experience instead of interrupting it.