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Fiona McDonnell, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, researches marketing and advertising in consumer markets with a specific focus on consumer loyalty, integrated marketing, and marketing/consumer interactions throughout the purchase cycle. Prior to joining Forrester, Fiona spent 10 years in the consumer goods industry, working in various commercial positions at Kraft Jacobs Suchard, The Kellogg Company of Great Britain, and most recently at Nike European Operations in the Netherlands, where she was Strategy and Projects Manager, EMEA and later Manager, Mail Order Business.
FIONA McDONNELL
You actually hear this?
So no pressure to come up with anything David. But thank you for the introduction. I actually started life as an engineer, so the left brain mark to me really comes out here now. I'm actually allowed to put facts around the more fluffy things of business. But what I do want to do is just put a perspective on this.
And not to disagree with what David said, but actually build the case to show where this has come from. So as marketers, we want to attack and use mediums, it really helps to understand where these have come from, and what's actually generated them, so we can understand the consumer's how to use them going forward. And we think we might actually want a personalized and social media experience.
And, in getting to that, I want to throw three things on the table. First of all, we know it's about media fragmentation. And I have the statistics to show just fragmented that is at the moment. But, more importantly, the consumer's actually online, which is where most of this happening or changing.
And they're actually gathering, in many different ways, including blogs, a lot of consumer power. So why does that actually have to say something to you? Well, first of all, we're looking at places to get to consumers with ads and PR. And, essentially, everybody's feeling overloaded.
And these are just some of the ways which actually tell you you can't really go unless you change your messages. So online spam filters are a general thing at the moment. Fifty-four percent of consumers are actually using them. Which is not great news. Telemarketing is slowing down.
And people want to find themselves on a list, then they're no longer called. Online ad blockers, you know, they're quicker at blocking them before we've even developed how to really successfully communicate in these media. And, lastly, when we look at the TV medium, the actual sort of, you know, crowned jewels in marketing marketer, 55 percent of consumers have now got the ability and the desire to skip the ads.
So that's the burning platform for us to actually get behind some of these new media pieces. Fragmentation, that's quite a clustered slide here, but everybody talks about, you know, new media that's coming in, and it's taking over. Well, it's doing that, but there's a whole mix to be looked at.
And old media has not gone away. So down the left-hand side there, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, the core of where we've been communicating, is still actually pretty well received and read. Consumers, you know, consuming the most TV as they are about the mediums, which I'll show in detail in a moment.
But radio and newspapers, you know, those high percentages of your population are still being reached by those mediums. The new channels on the right, however, it's not just about the internet. You do have, of course, there are at least sort of more than 60 percent of the adults only having PCs, which is a pretty high penetration of something as a new phenomena.
But mobile phones. It's taken 15 years, I mean, to get to this particular stage where people, and it's probably the most personalized device people have. But, you know, 86 percent of adults that have a mobile phone. And we're not showing the statistic, because we're not supposed to advertise to the younger people.
But if I was going to include in there the teenagers, and everybody else who's got a mobile phone, it's still about 80 percent of total consumers who've got that device. And that's the next thing. You know, SMS is now at a good 20%.
And instant messaging is starting to follow it. So people want to communicate. And let's not forget digital TV, which is perhaps the biggest thing that makes marketers wake up to the fragmentation. That people can skip out, and digital TV gives choice and power to the consumer.
And if we're just focusing on the internet here, what sort of goes on in this, you know, fueled situation, where consumers are getting louder and louder, you have a mixture of that experience, the broadband infrastructure, but also the collaborative content, which is where we see things like web blogs starting to come in. And it's quite simple, consumers the longer they're on, the more they want to do and the longer they stay on.
As broadband reaches each country in varying speeds, they've got the ability to stay online, and what we do, with what we call this new snap and wear. If you're like me, you leave it on all the time, and you go back to it instead of getting phone book, yellow pages, movie guides off the coffee table or out of the cupboards. It's simply there for you.
And, lastly, the collaborative content which is the sharing capability to people is what's starting to drive more networks, between pairs, which then gives them more experience, keeps them online, etcetera. And that's why this is worth taking note of, because it's a spiral that's not finished.
The PCs we talked about. This is the penetration we have between the US and Europe. And it's not a huge difference there, so it's a global thing for PCs. And, in 2009, we're going have more than 70 percent of people certainly having PCs.
Of that population, not everybody's online, but it's not a huge way behind. So the US leads the way here. But Europe is not a million miles away, as it has actually been quoted as being so. But, you know, consumers generally are online if they have a PC.
What's not quite as progressed is where broadband sits. And here the US is further ahead, and that's got many things to do with actually the rate that the various countries in Europe, the Swedens, the UKs and the Netherlands as well actually the way that other companies are lacking in their ability to put broadband in. But, simply, you know, you've still got 40 percent of European consumers in five years time are going to be on the rich media, fast paced media. Which is a huge, you know, a huge proportion of people. Just talking about now to all the media which we use is to see actually how consumers are spending their time. And the way I phrase this one here is, not just simply what people are spending their time, but that, if you're online, you're also using more of everything else, which starts to give evidence of this integrated approach to talk with consumers wherever they are. So this is your online person.
And they're still, despite being online all the time, still watching a hell of a lot of TV. And they're listening to the radio. If you were to look at what they do online, both personal and at work here, which is down at the bottom, it's pretty much the same level as radio.
Which is a great medium for you to access them where they're actually more actively involved whether in radio it's quite often passive. I mean, not all our online consumers are doing less of everything. Which, you know, not only are these consumers online, but they're the type of people you want to get to, because they're consuming more media, therefore, they're there to listen to more of your messages.
This is an interesting one, which wasn't sort of really obvious until recently, of putting the time of day next to certain media. And, you know, we all consume a bit more TV and radio perhaps in the morning whilst we're having breakfast, or on the way work if you're driving, and, you know, you're stuck in a traffic queue in the Netherlands, you consume quite a lot of radio. But, on the way home again, it's those things in the evening where usually marketers are fighting over those 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM hot spots on the TV.
But the internet users, they're there all day. And they're actively listening. And it's almost a consistent medium for us to get into. The special content, the collaborative content then, which is actually driving the experience, and what bloggers, users online are hearing is not simply just the blogs. We've got bulletin boards. We've got the wikis we talked about. And we have anything that's connected with RSS feeds. In there, there are things like podcasting too. This day-to-day file sharing, and this chats and instant messaging communities, all of which have created a huge amount of traffic on the internet.
And the ability for consumers to talk is something in which they're snapping up rapidly. And-- things like dating rituals, I'll throw out those statistics, are probably one of the highest things people do online. Like, previously, we may not have talked about it because it wasn't a cool or done thing to do. These collaborative content pieces make it not only easy, but also a quite more respectable.
Matching back then to people who have been online. So we've talked experience driving more things. If we look at those different types of collaborative content here with about, you know, five or six years online, that's when a consumer is in a place to start doing these sort of blog pieces that are then introspective.
However, things like sharing photos, or looking at other people's views on line, is a bit more towards end case of consumers. They're actually wanting to connect, and they're also liking what they're hearing from other people. So this, you know, it's definitely taking off from experience. But some things are working faster than others. And they're largely the community ones.
Now that's not, don't forget, on top of that, the consumer is, not only are they deciding what medium they want to have, but they're changing the way they're consuming it. They're more in control of the consumption patterns, as well as what's there. And, on top of internet, we've got the TV, where people do TiVo. Which is basically coming in, consumers are skipping the TV, and they're also controlling what they see and when they see it. And another extension of that, which we're starting to see at the moment, is the podcasts.
Which is the audio on demand, or almost like audio parts of web blogs. And, you know, people may not find that as a major threat to media. But me myself, this week, actually got a piece of information, it was an event on in Seattle last week. And I wasn't actually at that. But, before reading about some of the summaries in the newspapers are actually heard in over other Adam Curry’s daily source code podcast, because it was quicker out there. And it suited my need for consumption at the time. And, therefore, I have no need to go search for information anywhere else.
So just bringing this home for marketers and PR people as to what, you know, difference does this sort of make. We actually asked consumers, Forrester talks to consumers quite a lot about what they do and don't do. And what we said to them, “which types or forms of advertising do you actually trust?”
Top of the list there with, you know, about 80 percent of consumers it's the consumer's own information, the recommendations which they've received from each other, which they actually value. And fourth on down the line we have consumer opinions posted online, which is not only when consumers do it themselves, but when companies take consumer feedback, and refocus it back out to them, and sort of close that loop. It's trusted.
More worryingly, perhaps, is, say, TV and radio, which don't even get 50 percent of trust. But they always take the lion's share of marketer's budget. And so there's a great argument there, if only to transfer a small percentage of those media budgets to some of these newer forms.
If its brand sites and email too, they're all online, and, to some extent, personalized for consumers. And these guys want to hear that stuff. And it's not that expensive. So to close with one sort of comment, my take on this is that companies need to give control. And, once you've given control to consumers, the smart people are those who harness it as a power of information rather than resist it happening because they don't want to give away control of their ground, which is the crowned jewels of the company. Thank you.
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