Why context trumps audience
Photo by Mélanie Villeneuve on Unsplash

Why context trumps audience

…and what that means for wedding speeches

The best man cleared his throat and stood up. The assembled wedding guests took an extra slurp of wine and settled back in their chairs... “This should be good – he’s a funny guy”.

But after a brief introduction, his speech went downhill fast as he began a graphic account of the groom’s rather promiscuous past. Smiles froze on faces, but still the best man blundered on, digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself before finally sitting down to stunned silence.

But what went wrong? He’d told pretty much the same stories a week before at the stag night. Hey, all the blokes from that night were here today and they’d loved it last time. He just couldn't understand it.

The difference of course is context – whilst the message was the same and much of the audience was similar, the context was completely different.

Context is a hot topic once again in media, maybe as a backlash against ‘audience-led planning’ where it seems that as long as you reach the ‘right’ person, it matters less where or how you reach them.

In a recent media research project, I spoke to a range of digital media buyers and was stunned to hear that some were regularly planning major campaigns wherein they were unfamiliar with both the brand’s creative message and the media environment into which it would be placed.

For them, it was all about the numbers - using algorithms and optimising campaign performance via programmatic platforms with scant consideration for the real person who would be receiving their message.

For starters, this kind of (non) thinking about context can cause potential harm to the advertiser.

Consider the negative publicity following last year’s revelations by The Times that YouTube were allowing messages to appear in wholly unsuitable media environments. The resulting fall-out from advertisers worried about their brands led to some tightening of the rules and a potential boon for the Brand Safety industry

This issue can also lead to other unintended problems where digital advertising appears in contexts that are unfortunate to say the least – airline ads alongside news reports about plane crashes, or tourism ads next to stories about negative occurrences in the same location. Or this cracker from McDonalds...

But context is not just all about damage limitation. On the contrary, there are many potential upsides in utilising media context as a way of positively enhancing how a brand message is received by its audience.

This narrative is understandably being led by media that offer a premium context to advertisers and they are starting to amass a compelling body of evidence in support of their position.

In a recent white paper, industry bodies Newsworks and Magnetic collaborated to produce a joint point of view called 'The Power of Context', highlighting context as a key benefit of newspapers and magazines.

Newsworks then built on this theme in its neuroscience-based study, ‘Context Matters’, conducted in partnership with the Association for Online Publishing (AOP).

Channel Four carried on the baton, recently picked up the Grand Prix in the 2018 Mediatel Media Research Awards for its innovative ‘Contextual Moments’ project.

And Richard Shotton devotes a chapter to media context in his excellent book The Choice Factory.

But how does a regular advertiser tap into this thinking around context without the benefit of large research budgets or highly advanced analytics capabilities?

One simple technique I applied extensively during a previous role at a media agency was the ‘Mediacept’ – a qualitative methodology (a little like a media version of a creative Adcept), designed to identify the sweet spots where brand positioning, creative message and media environments intersect.

Its application led to some ground-breaking work at the time and was all achieved without the aid of machine learning, AI or programmatic platforms, just a deeper level of understanding about customers and their relationships with both brands and media.

The thinking behind this approach remains as relevant today as it ever was, challenging brand owners to think about the answers to three key questions:

Firstly, what do customers really come to your brand for?

Secondly, what do they go to (specific) media properties for?

Thirdly, how can your brand's messaging connect the two?

Whilst understanding audience remains a vital challenge for today's marketers, understanding (and leveraging) context provides an additional opportunity to differentiate brands in a way that can really resonate with customers. In an attention deficient world, surely that has to be worth a try.

And in the meantime, I hope that anyone reading this with a wedding speech looming on the horizon, heeds the warnings of the opening anecdote and goes a bit easy on the risqué jokes.

Peter Sharples

Senior Account Director/Senior Shopper Marketing Contractor - Available for both Perm & Contract roles.

6 年

Great article Sean. And loved the McDonalds ad!

回复
Nicia Rodwell

International Brand Director at Marie Claire International

6 年

brilliant. Great read!

回复
Johnny Wenzel

I Make Advertising Better Through Tech

6 年

Love it. That McDonalds graphic was perfect. Placement exclusions are key in today's display advertising.

Mike Follett

CEO at Lumen Research, the eye-tracking technology company - turn attention into action.

6 年

Good thinking, Sean

Phil Barden

MD of DECODE marketing ltd. Author of 'Decoded. The Science Behind Why We Buy'. Fellow of The Marketing Society

6 年

Great article Sean Adams. The old adage 'you're known by the company you keep' springs to mind. We did implicit testing of a brand advertising within a TV programme and on a certain TV channel and found significant differences between the brand associations in these contexts versus the brand tested in isolation of context. Channels and programmes can shift associations, which means that the same piece of creative can be used for efficiency. Also, new brands can 'borrow' associations from the context. Used deliberately, this can be very powerful. Used without care and attention, it can have unfortunate consequences!

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Sean Adams的更多文章

  • Will you walk a mile in their shoes?

    Will you walk a mile in their shoes?

    Reflections from the Media Research Group conference Last week, I spent three days at the Media Research Group’s 2018…

    11 条评论
  • Bow ties and the demise of creativity

    Bow ties and the demise of creativity

    Why advertising needs to rediscover its mojo A long time ago, in a place far, far away (well, Sydney, to be precise), I…

    3 条评论
  • Trust me, I’m a researcher

    Trust me, I’m a researcher

    What media research has in common with the healthcare industry Last week, the Media Research Group (MRG) held their…

    3 条评论
  • "You're right, I'm wrong"

    "You're right, I'm wrong"

    … said no one ever on social media I live in Lewes, East Sussex, the unofficial bonfire capital of the UK, nay the…

    2 条评论
  • "Keep your eye on the ball"

    "Keep your eye on the ball"

    What business has in common with cricket. This summer, I started playing cricket again after a hiatus of many years.

    7 条评论
  • Wake up and smell the roses

    Wake up and smell the roses

    What time out of the corporate world has taught me Amidst the flotsam and jetsam that flows through my LinkedIn feed on…

    10 条评论
  • Celebrities, Influencers and the art of selling

    Celebrities, Influencers and the art of selling

    Why authenticity is ultimately better than borrowed interest There were times last week when I felt a bit like a little…

    2 条评论
  • Building a brand without research

    Building a brand without research

    8 things I learned from a chocolate magnate I always enjoy hearing from entrepreneurs who have built successful…

    24 条评论
  • When the customer loses her voice

    When the customer loses her voice

    Why companies need to listen more to avoid humiliating back-downs. So, McDonald's have become the latest company to…

    7 条评论
  • Not another conference?

    Not another conference?

    Why I’ve changed my approach to get more out of conference season Been to any good conferences lately? On May 25th, I’m…

    4 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了