Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

Web can’t make emotional connection for marketers

I had a chat with someone over the weekend who works for a major non-profit organization — one that spends a lot of money on marketing each year.

They use a number of marketing channels, including TV, print, web, celebrity endorsements and door-to-door sales. The best return on investment comes from door-to-door sales. They’re salary based, not commission, although the pavement pounders do have sales targets to keep them motivated. Celebrity endorsements come in a close second to door-to-door.

My friend said that the marketing department decided to cut a big chunk of their TV spend recently. That’s because the web numbers were so strong and they felt online could pick up the slack. Of course, it’s much easier to judge the returns from the web and much harder to pinpoint how much is generated by TV.

But when the TV spend fell, so did the web numbers. He felt that the web is excellent at converting people from “shoppers” into “buyers” but that it’s much harder to make an emotional connection with someone on the web. It looks like TV and the web were working hand in hand, with TV being the conduit to the web. Without TV driving people to the web site, revenue dried up.

But really, how viable is TV anyway? First off, the TV audience is so fragmented. Secondly, at least in my household, we never watch live TV anymore. We even wait 45 minutes before joining Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights. By the end of the third period we’ve usually caught up to live TV by skipping all the commercial breaks using our digital video recorder.

Life is getting complicated for marketers who wish to make an emotional connection between consumers and their brand. TV might not cut it anymore but the web and its small-screen platform that encourages people’s short attention span ain’t workin’ either. Where do you find a mass audience these days?

These are fascinating times.