2020 Messaging – The Flight from the Fray - (IOPs)
Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash
As Media Strategists we have successfully developed the skillset of fortune-tellers. Since 1977 we’ve been in the practice of buying time and space (combined with the needed skill of predicting what our demographics’ preferred media points of reference for decision-making will be in the next year). And, along the way we’ve seen “politics as usual” devour the media landscape from the perspective of both an active participant in the process, as well as, a victim of this full-on communication assault.
In our years of purchasing points we would expect the McDonald’s 300 points a week for the MacRib promotion to be surpassed by the political window, ideally absorbing 500 points a week purchased for a serious candidate six weeks out and increasing to the fevered pitch level of cacophony of 1000 points per week the last two weeks before the make or break election day.
We have been deep in discussion for the past six months to determine our best plan of action to deal with the anticipated “information overload” in the upcoming election year. The concept of successfully positioning top of mind by out spending the well-funded candidates is impossible for our clients. Not just because of inventory issues, instead it is the result of our demographics being victim to over stimulation, too much information, and the constant rhetorical dialogues screaming at them. These elements create a veritable behavioral stasis in the communities effected. The citizens don’t know what to believe. They can’t make big decisions, large purchases historically lag, life changes wait, all in all they adapt a reoccurring social syndrome, we professionally refer to tas, “The Hunker Down and Wait for the Fray to Subside Syndrome”.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
We will, of course, flight our messaging to avoid the intensive political windows of the Primary in March as well as the General Election in November. We have also encouraged our clients to focus the bulk of their energies toward their existing customer bases during 2020.
Luckily, we believe technology has evolved to provide us with a way to overcome this syndrome. Finally the fragmentation of our media use is working as a benefit to us. As we know, our demos have the ability to customize immediate access to desired information in a myriad of ways. We can see the growth of online sources and particularly podcasts, as a result of this expectation of immediate, custom tailored information, and we believe this provides us with a solution to the syndrome’s manifestation that is forthcoming.
We have created Informational Oasis Platforms (IOPs) to house our messaging in 2020. We will nest inside specific industry centric content and promote them via various trusted media sources. This will safeguard our clients’ brands from the smudges and smears that many news groups have embraced. Instead our brand will be protected by information in webcast / podcast formats simply underwritten by our client. This is a throwback concept to the vignettes that ran in the television arena years ago. The recall rate for the vignettes was about 3x that of a regular :30 spot. With the content that we will create with our media partners, we will continue to provide our potential customers with a reliable resource with which they can make decisions.
We believe these our small segments of sanctuary will aid our customers in their Flight from the Fray in the political nature of 2020. And, once they land on our oasis, the information we provide will help them move forward – avoiding election year overload and stasis - toward a beautifully informed decision.