Reaching Men With . . . History?

Women have long been the favorite targets of television networks, in part because traditional roles kept wives and mothers at home during more hours of the day when small screens first found their way into homes. While more women now work outside of their homes than ever before, they still remain far more likely than men to stay home with infants and young children.

But even more importantly—at least to advertisers—financial studies consistently find that women control the finances in the majority of family households in the US. It makes sense to talk to the person who holds the purse strings.

Obviously, male-targeted channels are fairly rare on basic cable and beyond, save for the testosterone-soaked ESPN and Speed Networks, and the somewhat more erratically-programmed Spike Network.

The History Channel has been quietly focusing on men for years, however, with programming grounded in military and war history (the genesis of the awkward nickname “The Hitler Channel,” for a while). More recently, the network shifted its focus to target an even younger male audience with a flood of reality programming –and even an updated, more straightforward name: “History.”

Unfortunately, this shift also caused some of History’s older—and more affluent—viewers to wander elsewhere. Until H2, that is.

H2 is a new offshoot channel where the kind of programs the History Channel used to show will be broadcast, along with the next generation of original programming designed to re-engage the network’s old (pun intended) audience—a group that remains a prime target for financial services and automotive advertisers. Interestingly enough, the approach seem to be working!

So what can we learn from H2?

How Do Consumers Use And Value Online And Social Media During Purchases?

For anyone who’s still struggling with whether and how to incorporate social media into marketing campaigns, here’s a somewhat obvious, yet brilliant, way to determine how consumers use online channels on their path to purchase —just ask them!

That’s what Radius Global Market Research did, and the results contain some compelling lessons for marketers developing online media strategies.

The survey questions centered on what kinds of products consumers researched prior to making a decision to buy and which platforms they used.  As in earlier studies, respondents indicated that online research played a major role in helping them make informed decisions.  This was particularly true for big ticket items, or products for which people have strong emotional investments.

Here are a few salient findings that caught my eye:

What The Harlem Shake Teaches Us About Authenticity

Remember playing “telephone” when you were a kid –you know, the game that starts when one person whispers a message (the more complicated the better) to another, and then that person whispers the message to the next person, and so on through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group?

As I’m sure you recall, the telephone game usually ends with something hilarious because errors almost always accumulate in the retellings, and when the message is finally announced by the last player, it’s typically quite different than it was at the start.

Apparently, the Harlem Shake, a dance which is the genesis of the internet’s newest meme, has suffered its own version of the “telephone” treatment.

According to Mashable, the dances spreading like wildfire online bear little resemblance to the real Harlem Shake, which originated in uptown Manhattan in the early ‘80s.

All of which brings up important questions for today’s digital marketers: How can brands maintain authenticity when ads or ideas go viral? What can you do to ensure your campaign doesn’t take on a life of its own as it gets shared, re-shared and then shared, again online?

Here are a few fundamental tips to keep in mind:

Most Companies Still Not Measuring Social Media ROI

I find the continued unwillingness of some business executives to embrace social media to be, in the words of young Alice in Wonderland, “curiouser and curiouser.” Could it be a reluctance to go down what they perceive to be a “rabbit hole?”

Although a new study conducted seems to indicate that more and more corporate leaders do believe in the importance of social media platforms  from a business perspective, with more than half stating they expect to increase their social media budget in the future, the percentages take a nosedive once survey questions focused on strategy and implementation.  That’s surprising, especially considering rising customer expectations of corporate social media responsiveness and other research demonstrating how businesses can use social media platforms to improve their bottom lines.

With more than 400 responses from management personnel at the director or above level, each of whom stated they were social media decision-makers or influencers in their companies, the findings from this study were indeed a mixed bag.  On the plus side: 

Facebook And Twitter Are No Longer Leading The Innovation Pack—So What’s Taking Their Place?

Each year, the business and technology-focused publication Fast Company releases a Most Innovative Companies list. The ratings approach the notion of innovation from a variety of different perspectives and angles, but all the companies on the list have one thing in common: They’re making tangible, visionary moves to step into the future, maybe even changing their industries –or the world –while they’re at it.

Some organizations are transforming their internal structures to create efficiencies and better serve their markets. Others are expanding on their offerings to respond to fresh demands no one else is addressing. Some are solving a clear problem in a unique and unanticipated way or solving a problem their users didn’t know they had until they were told … only to become addicted to the solution.

In the midst of all this inspiring innovation, however, there were two glaring omissions this year.