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The aftereffects of the two fuel price hikes at the end of
2005 are still being felt by a number of sectors. The new car sector is
one of them, and the media is another. When people are focussed on
putting food on the table and keeping the kids in school, some
sacrifices need to be made.
When the news on TV becomes a substitute for buying a newspaper, when
the life of the battery in the radio can be prolonged, it affects the
way people use the media. Almost everybody is watching television as
usual but just about every other medium has lost some patronage, some
more than others.
These conclusions are based on Roy Morgan Single Source, Indonesia's
largest syndicated survey with 25,000 respondents annually, covering 90
percent of the population over the age of 14.
Newspapers took the hit the hardest after the second hike in September
2005. Since then, some major titles, like Jawa Pos and Kompas, have
been leading the way to recovery.
However, with almost 20 percent of the reading public having given up
the newspaper-reading habit, it will take some time for normalcy to
return.
Radio continues to slide gradually as an industry, with some stations
more affected than others. The same is true for tabloids and magazines,
with the cheaper prices of the tabloids cushioning the blow. That is in
sharp contrast to the more expensive magazines. At the bottom end of
the media spectrum, the dip for cinema has been marginal, while the
cost of spending an hour at the warnet (Internet kiosk) has had its
impact on internet usage.
To state the obvious, any across-the-board recovery will depend on a
further decline in inflation, and a consequent recovery in consumer
spending.
The reality is that while people may have more cash in hand in 2007,
that cash is not buying as much as it did in 2005. The best signs for
the immediate future are the continuing upward curves in consumer
confidence, and that other indicator of economic buoyancy, ad spend.
If the partnership between producers and consumers continues, it will
pave the way for a quicker and fuller recovery. It is not a
chicken-and-egg situation. The onus lies on producers of products and
services to stimulate and encourage the consumer to spend, to find ways
of keeping him happy even if it means making some painful sacrifices in
the near term.
The sad reality is that agencies and advertisers alike throw money at
television as if it is going out of fashion, across the entire products
and services spectrum. Many marketers use television in much the same
way (and for the same reason) that you would use a shotgun and not a
rifle.
Not surprisingly, the awareness of many brands are at unnecessarily
high levels, even among audiences that are irrelevant to the prospects
of these brands.
What good all this awareness is doing is another question altogether.
If you are promoting real estate or financial services, holidays or
airline tickets, high-end appliances or electronics, high-end cosmetics
or apparel, cars or other big-ticket toys, you would be wasting an
embarrassing percentage of your money if you threw it at television.
By contrast, the focussed audience of a newspaper or a magazine, the
sensory feel and gravitas of paper itself, the time and attention
devoted to the written word, are all immeasurable contributors to the
power of the printed medium.
Its ability to convince, not just shout, is incalculable. Innovative
inserts with application forms and the humble supermarket catalog work
harder with thousands of readers than a 30-second commercial does with
millions of viewers.
As citizens, not charlatans, we all have a role to play in the greater
good of society as a whole. If a nation stops reading, it will "dumb
down" over time. Fortunately for Indonesia, the book-reading habit has
not diminished for that loyal 10 percent of the population, despite the
hard economic times.
Around the world, the book industry continues to flourish. Legions of
pundits had forecast the demise of the newspaper by the turn of the
last century. However, all have been proven wrong thus far. But the
signs of change are noticeable -- witness the changing mode of
readership as experienced by The Sydney Morning Herald.
The number of readers who read the "dotcom version only" is up 53
percent, the number of who read the "paper version only" is down 7
percent, while the number of readers who read "both formats" is up 23
percent. The Herald as a whole added 13 percent more readers in 2006
than it had in 2003. The "medium" is indeed changing.
Old fashioned publishers will have a hard time accepting this change,
forgetting the reality that the only constant is in fact change itself.
Add to the changing milieu this month's announcement by Plastic Logic,
a British manufacturer that has successfully produced a plastic version
of the electronic chip.
With chips as cheap as potato chips, the plastic newspaper the size of
an A4 sheet can become a reality. It can be tailored to your wants, it
will be interactive and it can become a reality in your mailbox every
morning. I don't have the courage to say when that's going to happen,
but I'd have to be a dinosaur to ridicule the possibility.
More people will want more news, some of it delivered by V-mail to
mobile phones or via podcasts to their shiny new Macs. And while paper
might become plastic and silicon may become a hologram, the
news-reading habit isn't about to die any day soon.
That's because analysis and opinion are always going to be valued, well
beyond the sound byte, the reality show, the movie or even the blue
movie. Informed opinion requires the weight of the written word and the
static picture, and the ability to revisit both at leisure. Now imagine
that combined power working for your brand!
If you haven't got an intelligent reason for being on free-to-air
television, then save your shareholders' money. Just because
everybody's watching isn't a good reason to be there. It maybe
fashionable to be on TV, but tread carefully, it can also be a mark of
professional incompetence. If I appear to be anti-television, let me
confess that I'm a couch potato myself. What I'm advocating is
appropriate use of media, with good reason.
The "magic shot" for Sunsilk, the "appetite appeal" for Indomie, the
"ringtone world" of Nokia, or Zwitsal's "mother and child" are best
presented by the moving picture.
All of these products, to name but a few, are aimed at tens of millions
across the country and the reason for using free-to-air television is
obvious. But ignoring radio's ability to inexpensively remind, the
reassurance and the gravitas of print, or the sheer impact of the big
screen could be opportunities lost, even for these brands.
None of these choices need to be made by guesswork or assumptions
anymore. Target groups can be sharply defined and media vehicles
directly chosen to reach them. Target definitions need not be
demographic any longer. For example, there are currently 1.4 million
"pregnant women", 800,000 "credit-card intenders", 168,000 "new-car
buyers", 41 million "main-grocery buyers".
Their preferences across the product and media spectrum are
straight-line connections, not dotted-line assumptions. Post-buy
analysis of media expenditure is almost a perfect science now, based on
360-degree research data updated every ninety days.
Conventional media, like broadcast and print, are competing with an
ever-growing number of electronic media: in the home, out-of-home,
on-the-desk and in-the-pocket. But more about the fascinating world of
information technology next Tuesday.
The contributor is an advertising professional turned researcher and
consultant, based in Melbourne. He has lived and worked across the Asia
Pacific region, including Indonesia. He remains a regular visitor.
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