The Evolution of The Living Room: Connected TV #2

The Birth of the Demographic

Watching TV used to be a communal activity. Less than a handful of channels meant that there was comparatively no variety in what you could watch. It encompassed one out of three main ways a person could stay in touch with the happenings of the world, the other two being radio and newspapers. We can’t begin to imagine just how influential the BBC was during the mid 20^th Century; after all, they were the dominant TV channel and ruled the airwaves too. But I digress.

Due to the lack of variety on TV, user-experience would be pretty regular. At a certain time of day your family would sit down for half an hour and watch the BBC news. Then the television would be switched off. Even the idea of reclining on a sofa didn’t really exist because the remote control as we know it today wasn’t invented until the 70s. Was this user-experience good or bad? Actually, the question is irrelevant because it was the only user-experience. The TV market didn’t have that type of fluidity. Some horrendous remote controls came on the market which ruined user-experience; for example light-powered ones that, during the day, sent your TV into channel-scattering chaos. All of these unfortunate side effects to the consumer’s user-experience were side lined because the industry was preoccupied with innovating the TV model itself.

A turning point in user-experience came in conjunction with a new product: the VCR: the videocassette recorder. Programme power now lay with the consumer rather than corporations like the BBC. Providing that you had a pile of video tapes at your disposal, you could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. This changed the entertainment and TV market permanently in two ways that we recognise now.

Firstly, the act of watching television became much less communal. It became less social. Two channels showed the news and comedy simultaneously at 6pm. Instead of grouping around the news, the wife could record her comedy and watch it at 7pm instead, or even the day after. This meant that the user-experience became a more private affair.

Secondly, the consumer was given the power of making decisions. A person had the freedom to choose the programmes he or she wanted to watch.

Hence, the birth of the demographic. The market is no longer segmented between TV watchers vs. non-TV watchers but rather news watchers, comedy watchers and film watchers who aren’t directly opposed to one another. So how did this impact the world of advertising? Read my next  blog post…

Kony 2012

The Kony 2012 campaign is something very close to my heart – my friends at Digitaria gave it breath. Thanks to them, we all know who Joseph Kony is and we all know what he’s been doing for 26 years. Watch the video here if you haven’t already. Sign the petition if you haven’t already. Network it if you haven’t already.

http://www.kony2012.com/

This is probably the first time where a company’s marketing skills and sheer clout have been put to the task of drawing disgust from an audience and flinging it onto an individual. Let’s hope it works.

iPad – the power of a name

Apple made a mistake in calling their latest upgrade just the iPad. Before yesterday’s launch rumours were adrift about what the iPad 2’s predecessor would be named and two contenders presented itself: the iPad HD and the iPad 3. The online ruckus caused by Tim Cook’s ambiguity created a hyped discussion on Mashable which from a promotion perspective can only be positive, but highlighted some disgruntled undertones. One commenter aptly surmised his feelings about the whole thing by suggesting that people would be stupid to “spend $500 on something that only has a bit more computing power over the first iPad”.  As a consumer i’m inclined to agree, but as a marketer, I know that technology needs to be pushed like this so the market can continue innovating.

The question is: which name lessens the blow? Which name cools the smoking hole in your wallet? It’s certainly not the number 3, acting as a constant reminder of Apple’s transience. After all, this is 3 iPads in 3 years we’re talking about. Upgrading each time would cost someone a sweet £1.5k, or more, just to step in the footprints of Apple’s giant strides across the industry. There is a lack of reassurance in buying a product that’s third in a seemingly infinite line.

But HD – well, even the most technologically illiterate cave dweller knows what that stands for. It lends credence to new Apple buyers who can associate the experience of watching the Super Bowl – or Desperate Housewives – on their televisions with the sharp usability of an iPad.

However just ‘iPad’ is simply misleading. This is not the first iPad and this will not be the last iPad. It’s also boring – where’s the erudite, new age mist that’s surrounded products like the iPhone 4G? It seems like Tim Cook is attempting to distance this latest gadget from the first iPad and iPad 2 legacies, perhaps because there are more exciting things to come, or perhaps the improvements to the iPad can only get more superficial. After all, the newest version is a few millimetres thicker and a few grams heavier in exchange for a ‘retina’ screen that’s so sharp it probably hurts. It’ll be interesting to see where Apple goes since Steve Jobs passed away.