The great juggling act.

By tids

Thanks to digital media, we’re doing more multi-tasking than ever - and it’s having a profound effect on marketing, as Simon van Wyk writes.

Does it feel like you’re cramming more and more into every day, so much so that you end up doing several things at the same time? Well, that’s not surprising, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

Multi-tasking is the norm for consumers today. A recent study on media consumption by Nielsen found that as overall media consumption grows - more than 140 hours watching TV and nearly 30 hours on the Internet per month - more than half of people are doing both at once.

That multi-tasking increasingly involves duelling video, as Internet video consumption has risen 50% year-on-year to more than 3 hours per month, with 83% of that short-form video.

Interestingly, the multi-tasking trend is equally strong across all age groups, not just the province of teenagers. And although the amount of time spent multi-tasking is increasing, according to the Nielsen study it’s only 10 minutes per person per month, which I reckon is severely under-reported.

Chronic distraction

Tony Surtees, executive director of iPrime and an Internet pioneer in both Australia and the US, delivers some compelling observations about multi-tasking in the most recent HotHouse podcast. He cites a Yahoo study which concluded that if you took all the pieces of media an average person is exposed to each day and laid them end-to-end, they would add up to 43 hours per day. That’s a lot more than 10 minutes per month!

“People move between different modes of media consumption,” according to Tony. “We’re all multi-tasking – our kids multitask more out of pleasure than necessity. It’s quite natural for teens to have four online chats open simultaneously, while they’re listening to music, doing homework, etc.

“Does this mean we’re going to end up with chronic attention deficit disorder-laden individuals? Not necessarily,” he says, although he points out there are some risks of excess distraction for heavy multi-taskers.

A recent study by a group of researchers from Stanford University found that people who chronically engage in media-multitasking “have more trouble ignoring distractions, keeping irrelevant memories from interfering in their present task, and switching from one task to another, mostly because they can’t help thinking about the task they’re not doing,” according to lead researcher Eyal Ophir. However, as he points out, heavy multi-taskers also respond more quickly to events in their environment.

For marketers, evidence is mounting that these heavy media multi-taskers are, as Tony Surtees says, “a growing audience of active and engaged consumers that can be targeted more effectively.”

He points to recent research from the European Interactive Advertising Association that indicates that media multi-taskers are heavy communicators online, particularly via social networks. They are also more inclined to take in information from brand websites, price comparison websites and customer website reviews when researching products and services, and they are 33% more likely to actively change their mind about a brand than non multi-taskers. Importantly, media multi-taskers buy more things online than non multi-taskers and spend 26% more on the items they buy.

Pieces of information

So if multi-taskers are increasingly dividing their attention between different information sources, they have less focused attention on that TV spot, or that magazine ad or that banner ad, because they’re too busy responding to that Facebook chat pop-up that’s grabbed their attention. And it may be that chat that drives purchasing decisions.

Tony Surtees has labelled the phenomenon of getting product information and recommendations from a variety of sources, not just advertisers, the “confetti economy”, and he says the most powerful pieces of confetti are those from our social networks.

“Peer support is important in the confetti economy,” he says. “We’re going to get influenced by peers, family, friends – we will tend to like what they like. They’ve effectively pre-tested it for us.”

“Social media is increasingly a catalogue of the intentions of an entire community. It reflects what’s going on in their heads/life. It’s very hard for a marketer to use traditional methods without taking into account all these specks of influence that affect the audience they’re trying to attract.

“We need to participate in the conversation of an entire community, and listen carefully to what they have to say – the feedback they provide and the consumer behaviour they’re displaying.”

From comments to boycotts

You also need to be careful not to piss them off. New Australian research indicates that nearly 25% of online consumers are prepared to boycott an organisation if they read a negative comment on social networking sites. A survey conducted by StollzNow Research for RightNow Tecnologies found that negative comments made on social networking sites by consumers about their customer experience with certain companies were enough to convince potential customers to not do business with them.

It will probably come as no surprise that when the Australian respondents were asked which industry generated the most comments, telecommunications topped the list – and 71% of those comments were negative mentions. Government agencies came next at 63% negative, while travel and leisure companies were the most likely to earn positive comments at 73%.

There are a growing number of examples of consumer backlash via social networks. In Australia, a campaign against the Cotton On clothing company’s slogans on t-shirts for babies (in particular, the line “They shake me”) started via the mamamia blog in August.

mamamia

Meanwhile, back in July, a country musician in the US, angered at being ignored when he complained about the treatment of his musical equipment by airline baggage handlers, posted the ode “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube. It now has more than 5 million views and more than 22,000 comments, and it looks like no amount of money offered to the singer (after the video went viral they offered to pay $3,000 in restitution, which he told them to donate to charity) can overcome the effect of the incident on United’s reputation.

But it’s not just about dragging companies down. More than half of respondents in the RightNow study indicated that if they did leave negative comments about an organisation on a social networking site, they would invite that organisation to respond in an attempt to help resolve their product or service-related issue.

As Tony says, “If you don’t do the right thing by your community, it has the means to address it. You can’t delegate this to your PR company or outsource it – you need to engage with your community.”

Multi-tasking means multiple media

Marketers relying on their traditional media experience can take comfort in the fact that all this multi-tasking means there is future for the traditional media models in the digital age. According to Tony Surtees, “Consumers are taking information in multiple forms and simultaneously. Traditional media will survive as long as they adapt – they will blend into a different architecture of engagement. There will be innovative combinations of messaging – online and mobile, mobile and TV, online and print, etc.

“You’ll still have ‘hits’ and large-scale productions, but they will be embellished and reinforced by the collective efforts of communities. You need to reinforce and build on your message – focus on content, not product.”

Tony’s advice to marketers? “Figure out what your consumer wants. Realise your consumers move in groups. Recognise that market opportunities happen much faster than you realise and time frames for acting have become shorter and shorter. Integrate your ideas and concepts into a community.”

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