Worth the wait

I had the now rare pleasure the other day of costing up a print based project for one of our clients. Now whilst our agency is still prevalent in its design of brochures, packaging and display media, all of course being squarely offline and as we used to say 'below the line', it strikes me that I am spending more time in the video editing suite of late than the print shop. Whilst once the creation of 'broadcast media' campaigns were limited to a few large agencies in SW1, accessible and affordable video technology and the ability to upload movies to You Tube and social media sites free of charge is enabling design agencies like us to use moving image well beyond paid for airtime. Even if our clients don't have the budget of a Guinness Advertisement we can still create engaging viral movies, dynamic online ads, informative web casts and web embedded media with a measurable ROI that press, radio and direct mail could never achieve. Brochures now living up to their often common description as 'leave behinds', left behind on coffee tables or in the office recycling bin invariably with the direct mail flyers. Commercial radio also losing revenue at a faster frequency then ever before.

As the Guinness people said on one of their campaigns 'Somethings are worth waiting for" and now the waiting's over and it's been definitely worth it waiting to be pulled this heady brew. Unless you're running a newspaper or commercial radio station, where last orders is probably not far away. Perhaps paid for airtime will become a thing of the past? Although the phenomenon of an increase of over 20% in TV advertising over the last year contradicts the trend. My belief is that web based media has invigorated consumer interest in television advertising as the difference between TV and computer technology becomes finite. After all TV being the definitive moving image advertising media, it was certain to benefit.

Before the last round though, the advertising world has seen moving image and online media overtake press, radio and direct mail on a global scale. With over $458 billion dollars spent on online media and $25 billion on offline advertising in 2009 this year can only see the disparity continuing, as consumers demand their ads move and speak to them through their smartphone, I-pad, laptop and web TV and they have the opportunity to talk back through forums, groups and comments.

You didn't have to be a genius though to predict this shift would happen. As an agency we are currently using moving image in many forms. The past couple of months a number of videos for a major brand communication campaign and ongoing, the integration of a viral movie into a brand launch, all being commonplace as we regard moving image media as part of our proposition to our clients. Like the media we have to keep moving.