One of my personal passions is the power of people, specifically understanding how companies can harness the unlocked potential of talent from their internal customers: their own employees. I began writing a book on the subject about six years ago. For some reason, I didn’t get to finish it, but I do get the chance to draw on some of the thinking I applied in putting together the first few chapters.
One idea centers on respect in the workplace. I contend that it’s not good enough just to respect someone you work with professionally; you need to respect them personally as well. After all, you see them and spend more time with them than you do with your spouse, child or significant other.
This insight resonates when you think about the amount of waking hours spent at work during a typical week. Assuming the typical person is awake from 6 am to 10 pm, which leaves eight hours for beauty sleep, and assuming he is a prototypical clock-watcher who punches in at 9 am and checks out at 5.30 pm, leaving exactly one hour for lunch, we would be talking about nearly 50% of his day surrounded by the walled confines of his cubicle.
That means 50% less time for marketers to reach and connect with this person.
The remaining 50% of media consumption is exacerbated by the changing face of how consumers use media and how they are slowly weeding out traditional forms of advertising. The hallowed drive time that was always positioned as the ultimate environment to capture the captive audience of commuters is slowly being eroded by Satellite Radio. Television has its mosquito-like Achilles Heel to deal with – TiVo. And don’t even let me get started with the trouble and strife of print. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have increased home usage of the Web through the ever expanding pipes of broadband, wireless connectivity, networked multi-PC homes and simultaneous media consumption.
Perhaps it’s time to cast our eyeballs on the other half.
The fact remains: No medium can reach the at-work audience as consistently and comprehensively as online can. It’s a fact – a simple fact that warns marketers to ignore the Web during office hours at their peril.
The Internet has given marketers the means to achieve critical media requirements of continuity, frequency and reinforcement throughout a given campaign’s flighting period. Oh, and it helps sell stuff too.
According to the well-known study by the OPA, the Internet is in fact the number one consumed medium among the 53 million at-work Internet users (based on 2001 Jupiter Media Metrix research) during the week.
Take some time and think about this for a moment. Could it be possible that the Web went from relative obscurity to the most consumed medium – not only during work hours, but after hours as well? Let’s go back to the dissection of a typical week day using the example offered up earlier.
According to the recently released UCLA Internet Report – Year 3, the average Internet user spends 11.2 hours watching television every week. That’s 1.6 hours a day (assuming hours are evenly allocated across all seven days) which would mean that for the OPA assertion to be valid, we would have to be talking about the same person consuming 1.8 hours of the Web during the same time frame.
This is highly conceivable given the number of hours at-work, together with the increased consumption of the Web at home. Furthermore, these numbers are reinforced by recent research from Avenue A, suggesting that this divide could be even greater. This apples-to-apples comparison could be taken even further once advertising to programming ratios are factored in, together with relative attentiveness levels for the two mediums.
If you’re lost or think I’ve lost it, here’s what this could mean:
- The idea of the New Prime Time being at work on the Web couldn’t be more apt.
- The implication is that media consumption of the Web is becoming a story of two parts: weekday and weekend. When setting aside the skew of decreased Web usage on weekends, the elusive reach offered by the Web during the week is profound.
- Even among non-work users (read: people who don’t access the Web from work), the Web is the number two consumed medium during Monday through Friday
Finally, let’s not leave out the lucrative nature of the make-up of at-work users:
- More affluent
- Better educated
- Younger
- Higher composition of the most sought after 18- to 34-year-old demographic
While I wouldn’t go touting the Web as having deposed Television as the premier advertising medium just yet, I do think the numbers strongly suggest there is a lot more going on right now than the dollars give credit to.
Here’s an example of a campaign that targeted the at-work consumer:
Situation: The Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology was established in 2001 to be an independent and objective source of credible information on agricultural biotechnology for the public, media and policymakers. With an online campaign, the PEW Initiative on Food and Biotechnology wanted to increase awareness of the foundation's expertise on a key issue, and directly influence public opinion and public policy makers.
Program: PEW ran an online ad campaign on news and information sites such as WashingtonPost.com, accessed by at-work audiences during the day. This allowed Pew to reach its critical audience of public policy makers and influencers during the workday and use the online medium to shape public opinion of the issues. The organization commissioned an ad effectiveness study to measure results.
Results: According to the third party research study, the campaign delivered 69% lift in overall brand favorability, 41% lift in brand awareness and a 53% lift in brand favorability among the target audience of key government workers and leaders.
Any media planner trying to reach an elusive segment, such as the 50+ affluent C-level male for example, wouldn’t hesitate to put Meet the Press and PGA golf on the media plan (or Must See Sunday to the old school). Second port of call would be to present a healthy mix of print in the form of the trusted Wall Street Journal and B-magazines such as Forbes, Fortune and Business Week.
The only problem is that these touchpoints are few and far between. And until the gaps are filled in by the number-one consumed medium during the working week, Tiger Woods will continue to get the big bucks every weekend.
