Opening Note

As U.S. networks adjust to the shifting paradigms of control that govern the space in which television is produced, distributed, and consumed, the nature of the television network is being re-written. The industry focus on 'engagement' across platforms requires a re-imagining of what a television network looks like, how it behaves, and how it constructs its audience. Though not completely dead yet, the network ident, historically crucial to the construction of network identity, has been stretched by these new conditions.

Network idents themselves seem to have been absent from U.S. television for a while now. Though the network's featured promos for the fall line-up advertises the highlights of the coming season, ongoing promotional material selling the network itself is, in the words of ABC marketing chief Michael Benson, "fairly low on the totem pole." (McPherson 2006).

Indeed, ABC's Yellow "I Like TV" campaign of the 1990s is still popularly remembered as the last network-wide branding campaign that had any real impact (Friedman 2007), and the current emphasis seems to be on promoting programs as sub-brands rather than focussing on network "cheer" (McPherson 2006). This approach resonates with current discussions about the changing nature of television's form, particularly the decoupling of television programming from the television schedule and advertising modes (Carlson 2006), and the increasing disconnect between content and the broadcast medium (Dawson 2007; Hills 2007; Kompare 2006).

The absence of overarching branding campaigns articulating the nature of the television network - advertising, consequently, it's appeal to audiences - raises a question, however, about what a television network looks like in the current climate. Television branding, Benson told Broadcasting and Cable in 2003, "is not simply graphic packaging; it is developing a voice, personality and feel for a network and its programming." ("Brand Builders", Broadcasting and Cable June 2, 2003). Reflecting on his time at VH1 in the 1980s, Benson remarked, "It dawned on me that we needed to take more of a packaged-goods approach to branding [television] - to create our 'Coke can' or 'Cheerios box,' - and then prove to our audiences who and what VH1 was about." ("Brand Builders", Broadcasting and Cable June 2, 2003).

While a little blunt, the 'packaged-goods' metaphor seems a useful one to describe some of the work television idents have traditionally played. In the U.S. cable market, this description would still seem apt (consider USA's "Characters Welcome" or Bravo's "Watch What Happens" campaigns), and, though it doesn't account for the community-forming role idents play, it would also seem to describe, to some extent, the role of ident campaigns in places such as the U.K. and Australia.

U.S. networks, however, have progressively eschewed this model of television branding, moving further towards program-specific promotion at the expense of network identity campaigns. The germ of this movement might be traced to the watermarking of content in the early 1990s in response to the increased mobility of viewers in a multi-channel environment. ABC introduced watermarks as part of their 1993 attempt to position the network as a 'superbrand' (Mandese 1993), promoting programs rather than the season's lineup and marking their programming with the now standard visual reminder of the content's origin to make apparent the link between program and network.

The emphasis on program brands as opposed to network identity makes a certain degree of sense given the declining role of the schedule as a way to structure audience engagement, increasing personalization of both content streams and sites of consumption (Carlson 2006; Dawson 2007), and move further toward first-order-commodity relationships with viewers (Hills 2007; Johnson 2007). And yet, the Networks have not fully transitioned to a status as program producers or content providers. The organizational form of television still relies on individual programs contributing to the cumulative success of the network, meaning there may still be some value in promoting the network brand. This brand, however, is one that now stretches across not only multiple content types but also multiple sites of consumption or engagement, and this requires a shift in the way the network is constructed through ident materials.

Despite the current elusiveness of network identity material on American television, ABC's "Start Here" provides an insight into the way US Networks are adjusting to the challenges of representing the network in the current market. Rolled out with their Fall 2007 line-up, "Start Here" presents ABC as the launching point for engaging with their content regardless of platform. Built around a graphics package featuring revolving icons representing a TV, computer, iPod, and cell phone, it features a prominent "play button" on the flip-side of the ABC medallion and a reminder to viewers the Network is the official source for accessing content.

Expressly offering viewers the promise of content available "anytime, anywhere", the campaign attempts to establish the significance of the Network in an era of textual and viewer mobility. As Dawson (2007) argues, 'mobility' as it pertains to the current television moment needs to refer not only to the physical mobility of viewers but also to the mobility of television texts, available and portable across platforms. Having traditionally only made limited offerings available through official or sanctioned sites, the Networks are yet to ascend to a status as the predominant sites beyond television viewers can access content through.

ABC's approach, then, attempts to establish the network not only as the party responsible for the production of content, but also as the site responsible for the distribution of this content across platforms. This campaign represents a determined shift away from network branding strategies of old which positioned the Networks as sources for the experience of television. Consider, for instance, NBC's "Come Home to NBC" or "Be There" campaigns from the 1980s where the network was actively constructed as not only domestic but the site itself through which the television experience took place.

If anything, "Start Here" serves to drive viewers away from the television set, responding to the fact the consumption of television content is no longer medium or temporally specific. Similar tendencies are present in the break bumpers NBC uses during commercial pods to remind viewers they can consume more - additional content, encores, two-minute recaps and the like - over at NBC.com. These break bumpers play with the feathers of the NBC peacock, using one feather each spot as a substitute for a mouse pointer while the content available online is promoted (a similar strategy is employed by NBCU owned cable channel Bravo).

What is significant about ABC's campaign, however, particularly in comparison to NBC's break bumpers, is the way it constructs the television network itself as a multi-platform object. "Start Here" portrays ABC as a network that exists across multiple platforms, rather than emphasizing (as NBC does) that the television experience is supported by extra-medium materials. Referring to ABC in the first person (suggesting viewers "start with us") and presenting the platforms as virtually equivalent or interchangeable as sites for consumption (which in practice is untrue), the campaign re-imagines the television network as a network oriented around television content, rather than one organized around the television medium or the shared experience of consumption.

Works Cited

Carlson, Matt. (2006) "Tapping into TiVo: Digital video recorders and the transition from schedules to surveillance in television," New Media & Society, 8 (1): 97-114

Dawson, Max. (2007) "Little Player, Big Shows: Format, narration, and style on televisions' new smaller screens," Convergence, 13(3): 231-250.

Friedman, Wayne. "Peacock Ruffles Feathers, Launches Brand Effort", Media Daily News, 07/17/2007, accessed September 17, 2007.

Hills, Matt. (2007) "From the Box in the Corner to the Box Set on the Shelf," New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5(1): 41-60.

Johnson, Catherine. (2006) "Tele-Branding in TVIII: The network as brand and the programme as brand," New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5(1): 5-24.

Kompare, Derek. (2006) "Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television," Television & New Media, 7: 335-360.

Mandese, J. "ABC's 'superbrand': Net powers up plan to bolster programming", Advertising Age, 6/14/1993: 2.

McPherson, Steve. "ABC's Benson Pushes "One" Campaign," Broadcasting and Cable, 6/12/06: 2, 24.

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Closing Note

Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world.

Bart Simpson: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?

CBG: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.

Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.

CBG: Worst episode ever.

Source: The Simpsons Archive: Comic Book Guy File, http://www.snpp.com/guides/cbg.file.html

After a short hiatus, we return to the questions raised two weeks ago in my previous installments of this thought piece on beginning to quantify fan engagement based on previous qualitative work that C3 has done on categorizing fan behaviors.

In this installment, I will revisit our index from last time, and discuss in more depth what it might mean and how we might use it to understand the potential value of fan engagement.

Back To the Index -- Feedback and More Analysis

To recap, the chart is a visual representation of different forms of fan behavior and engagement, based on criteria for loyalty set out in the marketing literature, and the three behavioral categories: socializing, activism and consuming. The bars represent the total index points that each role received in the analysis (to a maximum was 45), and the colored sections the proportion of the points that came from each of the three behavioral categories (with a maximum of 15 points each).

Based on input from my colleagues at C3, I changed the order of engaged behaviors in the "consuming" section. The updated chart appears above and the table on the final page of this document.

The objective of this exercise was to enable us to visualize and scale the proportion of activity within each role, or type of fan behavior, that is related to consuming, activism and socializing. It is important to note that this is about fan engagement with a media property, not with the advertising, which will be addressed in a future piece.

Observations

From this exercise, we see that although loyals, grassroots intermediaries, long tail fans, and content creators all have similar levels of consumption under the index, the loyals, the group of fans identified in C3's research as the traditionally most valuable given the current economics of the television industry are actually not the most engaged. For the time being, I will focus on that finding and come back to the other points later.

The Big Ideas

What are the implications of this? If indeed the "grassroots intermediary" and "lead user" behaviors represent the highest levels of engagement, it suggests that true engagement with the program is not about that first broadcast airing, or success of a product when it is launched, but what happens to that property and its fan base over a longer period of time.

Consequently, the value of these engaged audience members is not just difficult to quantify, but is complicated by realization over a long period of time. So, is measuring engagement the best way of establishing ad rates or reaching of the appropriate demographic targets? I would argue that it is not.

Ideally, if you are in agreement with this chart, a fan who is a grassroots intermediary and a long tail user, perhaps someone who watches a show after (and also perhaps during) the initial network run and promotes it to others. And therein lies the key -- the value of an engaged audience may not lie so much in what they do to interact with the property in any way, but how they create conditions for others to do so.

So, the question then becomes, what is the value of this long-term audience, and is it more or less than the eyeballs on the screen at the time of airing or, as the industry seems to accept, three days later?

Assessing Long-Term Value

This installment and part five focus on answering this very question. As always, my first step was to look at literature in various disciplines to see if there were any tested models that could be applied. The difficulty here is always knowing exactly the extent to which how these models are transferable.

Marketing research and models are helpful, but present interesting problems.

There is a fair amount of literature dedicated to consumer lifetime value (CLV), how to calculate it, and how much it should factor into the company's marketing decisions. There has also been a fair bit of work done on and customer relationship management (CRM) the value and motivation of word-of-mouth.

CLV is a particularly interesting concept to examine here, because no matter how you calculate it, the basic premise is that it is seeking to find the present value of all future monetary transactions that a company has with a particular type of customer, less the promotional and usually acquisition cost of those revenue streams. Like the model I am attempting to create here for audiences, CLV models generally seek to understand groups of customers, not individuals. The models can get very complex, but the key variables seem to fall into four categories:

Scale: Number and type of distinct customer groups.

Behavior: Probability of repeat purchase, propensity for cross-buying/picking up similar products, variation in customer activity in each cycle (season), word of mouth activity

Retention & Acquisition: Overall retention and acquisition rates, trial rate relative to regular consumption, switching costs to the consumer, customer communication and involvement (with the corporation).

Cost & Revenue: Advertising expenses, discount rate, consumption rate, transaction size and contribution margin Some of these variables do apply to fans, but as the next section will explain, some are not closely related to the fan behaviors that we have been looking at.

My first step was to create a table of the fan behaviors we have been working with and compare it against the preceedng variables from CLV models to determine what characteristics the ideal model would focus on to value engaged fans.

Currency Conundrum

To use any of the models, we would need to work out is what the currency in valuing fans could be. In the absence of advertising revenue as a currency, there are three potential units of measurement, which I see as playing, generally speaking, into the forms of fan engagement that the "Fanning the Flames" study outlined as shown in the table below.

Not surprisingly, the consumption category generally requires money, while the other two require relatively large amounts of time and what I have called "affinity," meaning a strong emotional investment in the property and a desire to publicize it in order to see it continue.

To visualize how these currencies might relate to existing metrics, in the columns next to those, I have put in the CLV metric(s) that seemed to be the best fit.

Organizing my thoughts this way, a couple of things, not altogether surprising, stood out:

I also began to think about how the ad-supported model figures into this – in other words, could we value these different types of fans based on viewing ads, in the traditional publishing-style model. I have more or less come to the conclusion that that may be possible, but it would require data that’s really beyond the scope of this piece, but that is probably also not practical to obtain and segment as an activity separate from assessing overall viewership.

So, it appears that a lot of the CLV metrics that many of the models use are, not surprisingly, a bit difficult to use, primarily because conversion to a single currency is problematic. Before my next installment, I will try to find a metric or model in the literature that only uses the stronger elements, but my sense is that there is not a single one at the moment that will fit appropriately. A metric for fan engagement will probably need to be made up of a number of elements, combined in a way that makes sense in the context of the environment in which they operate. Public relations metrics may actually prove to be a better fit than CLV.

Next time: Measuring fan impact on the rest of the audience

Coming back to my earlier argument that a large part of the monetary value of fans comes from recruiting and retaining others, in my next piece, I will look at CLV for an average viewer and how time spent and affinity among fans may have an impact on the value of those customers. At this point, I will also bring in a discussion on advertising and how engagement in ads, rather than content, might be integrated into this discussion.

See below for a revised chart from Part III.

Until next time…

Part of the intent of this series is to encourage discussion of what I am attempting to do here, why, and how it might be a useful tool for industry. If any reader has questions or comments about the methods or data used here, please email me at ecbaird@mit.edu.

Beck, Jonathan. "The sales effect of word of mouth: a model for creative goods and estimates for novels." Journal of Cultural Economics. January 2007, Vol 35, p5-23.

Berger, Paul D. ; Nasr, Nada I. "Customer lifetime value: Marketing models and applications." Journal of Interactive Marketing. March 1999, Vol. 12, Issue 1, p17 - 30.

Berger, Paul D.; Weinberg, Bruce; Hanna, Richard C. "Customer lifetime value determination and strategic implications for a cruise-ship company." Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management; September 2003, Vol. 11 Issue 1, p40-52.

Dodson, Jr., Joe A; Muller, Eitan. "Models of New Product Diffusion Through Advertising and Word-of-Mouth". Management Science. November 1978, Vol. 24, No. 15, p. 1568-1578.