Photo by Freddie Collins on Unsplash

While it’s true that the CEO of an organization can easily write his own blog at no cost (other than his own time), or the marketing manager can start a Facebook page without raiding the war chest, it’s our experience that such endeavors peter out very quickly, and ultimately do very little good, even in the short term.

Perhaps the problem lies in the perception that because Facebook, Youtube, blogs and the like are free services, and therefore any communication that lives within them should, by default, carry no cost. There’s also the issue of ROI; advertisers may argue that they don’t see any real measurable effect on their bottom line. 

Our argument is that TV, cable or otherwise, is also ostensibly free. Sure, you pay a monthly subscription for your decoder, but the same can be said for your Internet subs and the associated hardware like routers and modems. 

So when an advertiser spends $500 000 and 2 months on producing a TV commercial, but confidently assures us that a viral video should cost no more than $2000 and two days to produce, we can only shudder. 

The ROI debate

Advertisers justify the amounts they spend on TV commercials by means of “scientific” demographic information. Both the channel owners and indeed the media buying houses have become especially adept at producing reams and reams of statistical evidence in support of their expenditure. Terms like affinity, reach, eyeballs, residual audiences, age and income-segregation resound throughout the hallowed spaces of boardrooms everywhere. 

And why shouldn’t they? The science of planning is a sophisticated and mature one, developed by some of the best and brightest brains in the business. There’s an enormous body of information, collected over many years, to draw from. 

Consider this

Digital is the new broadcast craft. 

In the digital channel(s), production values have gotten better and better (inevitable really – bandwidth has increased immensely and even graphics cards are now as powerful as supercomputers were in the 50s). We are able to inject vastly higher quality into our online contributions than ever before. And consumers and users simply expect more than what passed for interactivity a few years ago. 

And finally

Social Media is the number 1 online activity – beating out even porn and email – according to Nielsen Wire. Two thirds of the global population engages in Social Media every day. Social Media accounts for 10% of all time spent on the Internet. Social Media and other online sources have become the MOST influential factors in helping consumers make purchasing decisions.

Last, and most important of all, to quote Businessweek – “Your competitors are there. Your customers have been there a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it should be.

A version of this article appeared in the Malaysian Dutch Business Council magazine.