Context Is King - Michael Kassan - MediaBizBloggers

I travel constantly. Changing climates, changing environments, different meetings, and different topics. And it's hard to stay a sharp dressed businessman when I'm rushing all over the place. What's fabulous in L.A. won't fly in Philly.

So the key is to keep my wardrobe flexible--to make sure my sartorial content is consistent with my geographic context.

It's a constant reminder to me of the essential need to create content that "plays well" across many different channels. Now, new research from the Association of National Advertisers' Alliance for Family Entertainment offers quantitative evidence of that need.

The Alliance data show that ads for mass brands, particularly family brands, are much more effective when aired in family programming--30% more effective. The study also shows that 10.7% of audiences changed their mind about purchasing a product based on the content in which they viewed the advertisement that promoted it.

This is a critical lesson for every communicator, as we spread our messaging and our storytelling across an ever-expanding number of distribution platforms. The Alliance has learned it well.

The group, formed 11 years ago as the Family Friendly Programming Forum, now boasts 40 members, including some of the most famous brands in the world. It has helped bring 22 family-friendly prime time TV shows to air in the past decade or so. But its mission, not surprisingly, has expanded in recent years to include the whole range of channel options, including online and gaming.

As it seeks content to support and nurture family friendly cross-platform and digital content, the Alliance is learning--fast--how important it is to consider context, even before you've developed content. And that online, marketers must adopt a new approach than the one they've used so well when doing business with TV's content makers.

On TV, the Alliance can reasonably expect that when one of its shows clicks, it will be viewed at least part of the time by several generations watching together. Online, of course, the goal is not to get the whole family to watch together but to create programming that families will engage with and talk about at the dinner table.

Marketers' relative power in digital is very different as well, explains MediaLink's Managing Partner Xavier Kochhar. "In television, there are marquee brands, like 'American Idol,' that marketers seek to associate with," he says. "But in the digital world, not so much. Digital content owners won't even go further with an idea unless a brand is involved. So relative to TV, marketers are extremely hands on."

That's good, right? Sure, but with great power comes great responsibility, as a certain webslinging superhero once learned from his family. And here is a content best practice that does travel well from one screen to another.

The Alliance has enjoyed success in network television because it supports storytelling that accurately reflects the modern American family. It didn't try to recreate Ozzie and Harriet. Instead, it found Gilmore Girls and Friday Night Lights. Marketers need to take the same responsible approach to family-friendly partnerships in the digital space and resist the temptation to be too overtly promotional just because they can.

As Xavier puts it, "Let digital develop its own hits."

So the promise of online family programming is there, in abundance, as long as context is properly considered. Just make sure your content strategy is properly dressed for digital success.

Michael E. Kassan is Chairman and CEO of Media Link, LLC, a leading Los Angeles and New York City-based advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing, advertising, media, entertainment and digital technology. Michael can be reached at michael@medialinkllc.com

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