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Paid/Owned/Earned…. What Happens When Marketers Stop ‘Paying’?
Judy Franks
Monday, February 28, 2011
Marketers and their agencies are considering a new media paradigm: ‘paid/owned/earned.' The idea is quite compelling. In its most basic form, paid media serves as a catalyst for a longer-term engagement with customers that is either ‘owned’ by the brand and/or ‘earned’ through organic conversations. When you stop and think about it, advertising has always been about connecting brands with audiences in hopes of creating a deeper form of customer interaction. In the new media world, the 'paid' customer/brand interaction is only the first step in a multi-step opportunity. Paid media used to be an end-point in media planning. Now, it is just the beginning.
The paid/owned/earned model makes a lot of sense for marketers. Ideally, marketers hope to gain exponential value from every paid media investment they make. Naturally, one of two outcomes from the 'paid/owned/earned' paradigm will occur; either (a) marketers will be able to significantly increase customer expressions for the marketing dollar; or (b) marketers will be able to reduce paid media spending and still yield high returns on customer engagement.
How will the media themselves fare in the paid/owned/earned paradigm? If marketers attempt to shift focus away from ‘paid’ media and toward ‘owned’ and ‘earned’ media expressions, the media will be left with a funding deficit that will be more profound than anything we’ve seen in recent economic recessions. The media must do a better job of participating in, and facilitating customer engagement across the paid/owned/earned spectrum, in order to protect its revenue stream. What are the media selling? If the media focus solely on paid access to editorial content that has a firewall around it, it’s only natural that investments in owned/earned opportunities will shift elsewhere.
If paid media continues to lose funding, the entire model will undergo extreme stress. Investments in paid media ultimately fund content. Content is the true attractor that aggregates audiences in the first place. If we lose our ability to fund great content experiences, we weaken the potential of the entire media system to work. Unfortunately, we have trained marketers through years of selling that the media are distribution conduits to audiences. We have talked about circulation numbers, demographic readership, readers per copy, and potential/actual ‘exposures’ to ads. We calculate economic value based upon opportunities to see (OTS). We have done little to sell marketers on the value of the content experiences, themselves.
Consequently, content is devalued relative to its true worth.
Ironically, content is the fuel for dynamic conversations in the paid/owned/earned media model. Consumers need common cultural experiences to talk about. The media serve an invaluable role by supplying the content experiences that we can all relate to, and engage with. Can marketers create this phenomenon on their own, without the help of mainstream media content? Let’s hope we never have to debate that question!
minsider Judy Franks is the founder and president of The Marketing Democracy, a consultancy that helps world-class marketers bridge the creative and media divide that exists in today’s unbundled marketing services industry.
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