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The Ticking Time Bomb of Technological Novelty
New TV Strategies Sept 1998Mark Brown Planning Director @LeoBurnett
Interactive television provides us with a new and exciting medium. However there willcome a point in the future when it will be difficult to remember when interactivity didn’texist. All our TV programming will be interactive, our radio will be interactive, we havealready seen interactive posters and our daily newspapers delivered electronically will betailored and responsive. In short, we will scoff at the days before we had a two-wayrelationship with our media.It is not possible to say with any certainty how long it will be before this smiling happyworld of interactivity comes along, but come along it will.How different will we feel as marketing professionals when this happens? InteractiveTV will no longer be a new and exciting fringe specialism; it will be the norm. Every singlestrategy, every single piece of communication will be developed around interactivetechnology. It will have lost some of its excitement.If this is true for us, then the same pattern will inevitably exist for consumers.Our current ‘guinea pig’ interactive TV viewers are feeling different now to how they willin the future.
“This interactive TV thing is great fun. It’s so clever how you can do the things you can do. Friends come round and I show them. They think it’s great. When there is nothing on TV I switch to an interactive channel so I can play with the interactive ads.” 
But familiarity breeds contempt.
“What is interactive? Oh, you mean when you can change what you are seeing on the screen yourself. Well yeah it’s useful sometimes, but it’s nothing special. I only really bother with it if it’s something I’m really interested in. I mean if you messed about with all this stuff it would take forever.” 
Do you remember the time before cash machines, mobile phones, PC’s? For the child oftoday, online encyclopaedia are common place, the internet is just a part of their normalworld, they were born to it, it holds no mystique. As interactivity becomes common placethe novelty will wear off. This does not mean that it will not continue to be as useful tous as communicators, it means that we will have to work harder to engage people. We willno longer be able to rely on the novelty of the technology to do part of the job for us.This additional consumer response generated while the technology is innovative toviewers, I have called the ‘Technology Novelty Factor’.Consumer InterestTime
Consumer Response to an Interactive TVad when the technology is still new
Normal responseto creative ideaTechnology Novelty Factor
 
This means that, like all media, as time goes on we will have to make our creative workharder and harder to generate interest. However, whilst this will create challenges forus in the future, it actually gives us a problem NOW.We are currently experimenting with interactive TV. We are exploring differentapproaches, trying new techniques, finding out what works best for our individual brandsand clients. Our clients are funding this and I am sure that if you looked at the types ofclients who are investing in this experimentation, they will tend to be the largesuccessful multinationals. These companies are good at marketing. They know how tospend their budgets to best effect, to beat the competition. The very reason they areexperimenting with Interactive TV is because they want to find out if there is a greaterbenefit to spending their money in an interactive medium than a traditional one.Interactive TV is more expensive than traditional TV. It is more expensive to produce.It is more expensive to manage the development because it takes more expensive peoplemore time to get things on air. It is more expensive to support the back end.That is not to say it is too expensive. Quite the opposite. Interactive TV may beexcellent value for money IF the return on the investment is greater than fromtraditional TV. Our clients will not support interactivity for the sake of it, only if thereis profit in it. Now, I have no doubt that an interactive ad when designed properly can bemore effective than a non-interactive ad. However it is not enough to merely believe, ithas to be proven.Here is where we have the problem.In this experimentation phase, we will have to demonstrate the effectiveness ofinteractive TV. We will have to somehow measure consumer response to demonstratethat we are getting a greater return on our investment. (At least we will have todemonstrate that we WILL get a better return when interactivity is scaled up.) If wecan’t do that, we can’t justify the additional investment in an interactive ad.Measuring effectiveness is difficult at the best of times. However, it is even moredifficult in this case because of the of the ‘Technology Novelty Factor’. Whatevermeasurements we put in place now will be measuring in part consumer reaction to the‘clever’ technology. As we have already established, this novelty factor will wear off atsome point in the future. This will mean a diminished consumer response that will in turnmean a lower return on investment
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So, at some point in the future when Interactive technology is available to all TVviewers, we will find clients holding multi-million pound budgets who can choose to makeInteractive TV ads or to make traditional TV ads. A more expensive Interactive ad willmean fewer ratings but greater consumer involvement. This greater consumerinvolvement will have been proven in the past. We will have set the standards, set theexpectation, and if we are not careful we will be setting them too high. There is nothingmore certain than the behaviour of a large budget holder in these circumstances. Given achoice of the safe, traditional option that won’t get them fired, versus the new optionthat is not performing as expected, the budget holder will take the safe optioneveryday. And who can blame them. A deviation of only 10% versus expectation whendealing with these multi million pound budgets is enough to draw the attention of eventhe most forgiving Finance Director. Forgiveness is not an often seen quality of FD’sespecially when they return from a particularly heated grilling from their shareholders.So, back to our problem. We must ensure that we recognise the ‘Technology NoveltyFactor’ during the early stages of interactive development. If we can’t estimate itseffect, we must at least register it in all performance measurements. This might feellike we are selling interactivity short in the present but it will prevent many problems inthe future.
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