Convergence is one of those industry buzzwords that cynics love to deride, much like media neutrality or multi-platform. The cynicism largely stems from the hype that surrounds the phrase. Brands, media owners and agencies have been talking about converging media for years, and in many respects, offline advertisers have been creating campaigns that span more than one platform, like TV and radio, for decades. So why the fuss now?
Well, for a start, there are far more media platforms and therefore advertising opportunities than ever before: the web, social media, mobile, iTV (interactive TV) and games consoles are all relatively recent additions to the traditional media mix of TV, radio, press and outdoor.
Alongside the media owners and agencies restructuring their businesses to deliver multi-platform capabilities, brands are also keen to invest in cross-platform campaigns - not just for the extra reach but also because they're deemed to be more effective. In 2007, a study by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) found that multimedia campaigns were more effective than single-media campaigns.
This is due in part to consumers themselves becoming increasingly multi-platform in their behaviour - surfing the internet while watching TV or accessing TV shows via their mobile phone. As such, says Mark Cross, communications planning director at the COI, "the rules about how we attempt to build dialogue and engage consumers have changed. We are now required to develop a dialogue across multiple platforms in a coherent way."
Spirit of the time
But what makes a multi-platform campaign successful? Why do some fail while others capture the zeitgeist?
Last October, Samsung Mobile created a campaign to launch its new eight-megapixel cameraphone, the Samsung Pixon, into Europe. The centrepiece involved photographer Nick Turpin, who was set a 28-day challenge to take a picture every day and upload it to the web. Consumers were then encouraged to click on an object in the picture. Whichever object received the most clicks became the subject for the next day's photograph.
The campaign was largely digital - banner ads showed the latest picture and social media sites such as Flickr and Twitter directed consumers back to the main site, www.thephotographicadventuresofnickturpin.com. Digital and offline PR helped raise interest in the campaign and such was the level of feedback that Samsung held an exhibition of the photos to mark the end of the campaign in London.
"Judging by the take-up, anecdotal feedback from consumers and amount of spend behind this campaign, it was a huge success," says Tom Bazeley, managing director of Lean Mean Fighting Machine, the agency that created the initiative on behalf of Samsung.
What impressed Ian Crocombe, senior digital planner at Lida, was the fact that it concluded offline, like the recent 'LiveGuy' initiative created by Dare for Vodafone. In this campaign, consumers had to work out where LiveGuy was at a given time using clues in his blog. They could either track him down online and tag his location or find him in person to win a netbook. "That reminds me of old radio promotions, which ended with someone chasing a car down the street to win a holiday," says Crocombe.
Like all good ads, what both these campaigns had at their heart was simple: a good idea. "Your starting point is a single idea that you think can work across a number of different spaces," agrees Mark Creighton, managing director of i-level.
Obviously, that idea needs to tie in with a marketer's brand objectives. "We don't work with brands that pursue a multi-platform campaign just for the sake of it," says Jason Dormieux, managing partner of MEC Interaction. "It's simply about using a variety and plethora of touch-points to achieve a communications objective."
Practical considerations
The most effective cross-media campaigns take a central message and adapt it to deliver a different experience on each platform in a way that suits that medium. The principle is the same if you are creating a campaign spanning TV, radio and outdoor or the internet, mobile and iTV.
Lida's Crocombe refers back to Vodafone's LiveGuy: "If you were on Twitter, LiveGuy would follow you back and answer your questions directly, taking full advantage of the micro-blogging channel. But on Facebook, LiveGuy was represented through a sponsored group and was less direct, playing to the fact that social networks are more about collating information in one place," he says.
When it comes to the practicalities of creating a multi-platform campaign, Wayne Brown, deputy managing director at Glue, believes having a clear process is vital: "One of the challenges is that different digital channels move at different speeds and have different requirements and ways of working," he says. "A common problem is that the task of developing the idea is given to the agency that can supply its ideas very quickly. This can cause problems with media that require a longer lead time, like a piece of eCRM that needs to be sent out six weeks in advance."
But who, if not the agency that supplies ideas quickly, should assume the lead role in a multi-platform campaign? And will that campaign be more successful if one platform in particular takes centre stage?
Brown says it's a matter of finding where "the centre of gravity" for a campaign falls. So if the good idea lends itself particularly well to a digital platform or begins in this medium, then the relevant digital agency should take the lead.
It's not always as fair and balanced as this in the real world; egos, relationships and budget have a part to play in any marketer's decision about which agency heads the campaign. And in many ways digital, mobile and iTV remain the underdogs.
"There's still a tendency to skew it more to the creative agency that does TV," says Guy Culshaw, head of strategy and planning at Carlson Marketing. But he adds: "It's becoming less so, and obviously it's changing with certain brands like Orange announcing it's putting all its money into digital."
A consistent message
Regardless of which agency takes the lead, all parties need to be involved from day one of the campaign planning process and the brand should act as moderator during multi-agency meetings to ensure - in Culshaw's words - "that it doesn't become a bunfight".
Media planners and buyers also have a valuable role to play throughout in ensuring that the message remains consistent across different media and that the campaign comes together at go-live date. I-level's Creighton suggests involving the media owners early on in any discussions too: "They can help you understand what assets they can support the campaign with," he says.
Doing so might also push media owners to think in a more multi-channel way, he believes. "Senior people at media companies often claim their organisation is 'multi-platform', but they are not the ones going out to talk to brands and agencies about what they want," says Creighton. "And what's clear is many media owners are not very well structured for multi-platform work. KPIs (key performance indicators) tend to refer to one platform and there's no ability to work out a combined value for spending across TV, online and mobile, for example."
One reason why some media owners have been reluctant to adapt is the sheer pace of change. Games consoles and mobiles are emerging with an incredible amount of advertising potential, but they also come with complex technical challenges. "I keep badgering Microsoft about when it's going to link all of its digital platforms together," says Creighton, "as one of the most interesting areas is how the Xbox can be brought in and linked back to the internet."
This year though, the biggest hindrance to multi-channel campaigns might be something that's altogether more familiar to advertisers: budgetary constraints.
Financial matters
The sheer practicality of involving more agencies and platforms means that multimedia campaigns usually work out more expensive. "I think it'll be a tough year ahead," says Lida's Crocombe. "This kind of stuff really needs a good business case behind it."
The problem is that measuring the effectiveness of a multi-platform campaign is much harder than measuring an ad that runs across one medium: there are more variables, more data sources, and comparing like with like is almost impossible (especially when data from emerging platforms is scant).
"It's an issue that preoccupies us a lot," says the COI's Cross. "We conduct an awful lot of tracking research, increasingly across new platforms.
"But what we also need to do is consider the overall context of the campaign: did we achieve our objectives? What were the key benchmarks of success in the campaign? High-level KPIs are what should drive evaluation techniques and we're constantly striving to build evaluation into our planning culture."
It's clear there are a number of significant challenges still to be overcome if more campaigns are to integrate different media platforms.
But that doesn't mean the cynics have won out: the reality is that multi-platform campaigns are likely to become commonplace as they follow an increasingly multi-platform public.
CASEBOOK - HOW THE ROYAL MARINES SPANNED MULTIPLE PLATFORMS IN SEARCH OF NEW RECRUITS
The Royal Marines are the Royal Navy's amphibious commando force. A previous campaign tapped into the tough nature of the job with the strapline '99.9% of people need not apply'. This dissuaded many suitable applicants from applying.
As such, the Directorate of Naval Recruiting came up with a brief for a campaign that would remove any preconceptions potential recruits might have. For agency i-level, this meant presenting the Marines not just as elite killers, but as normal people who are very focused and dedicated to what they do.
It came up with an idea for video content showing Marines pitting their skills against those of extreme sports professionals. These were shown on a Marines campaign site and on Extreme.com, website of the Extreme Sports Channel.
The result? There were almost 70,000 visits to the campaign site and 134,000 views by the target audience. More importantly, the next three potential Royal Marines courses were at capacity.
SMART THINK!NG - SUCCESSFUL MULTI-PLATFORM CAMPAIGNS
1. Know who your target audience is and what your communications objectives are
2. Understand how consumer behaviour differs for each touch-point - a viewer will be in a different mindset watching a TV show on a 32-inch screen compared to when they're watching it on their laptop
3. Don't replicate content across channels. Tailor content to the way consumers use that medium
4. Encourage agencies to share ideas. Appoint a lead agency and moderate sessions
5. Be flexible and don't over-plan: some of the most successful campaigns evolve naturally.