Reading David Hepworth’s blog recently this passage stuck out for me in his post They’re investing in “digital magazines” and ignoring the elephant in the room
When you were selling a page of advertising in a glossy magazine you were selling two things: access to the readers and access to the environment of that particular title. Once you take the content out from between the covers you are no longer getting the benefit of that environment. There’s a legendary piece of research done years ago which showed people the same outfit in Vogue and the Daily Express. Respondents thought that the first dress was worth far more because it was in Vogue. They used to call this The Presenter Effect.
David Hepworth, 2009
Reading more about The Presenter Effect on the PPA website it is clear that the stronger a reader’s affiliation with a publication as a brand is, the higher the level of endorsement the publication gives the advertisement. However “the size of the effect will vary according to the circumstances – such as the strength of the advertised product’s personality, the strength of the magazine’s own branding, and the characteristics and experience of the reader.”
With the transient audiences that consumer websites suffer the affiliation between brand and advertisement surely suffers and will continue to suffer without the bounds of a controlled environment, which might consist of a front and back cover.
Digital content isn’t packaged or accessed in a way that lends itself to being traditionally authoritive, this may need to change if the same sort of commercial opportunities like homepage takeovers and advertorials are to contiue providing value to advertisers. The alternative is that all audience aligned advertising will migrate to targetable platforms like Facebook.
As The Presenter Effect demonstates though, even if an advert is targeted on Facebook becuase Facebook’s brand is so devoid of value and authority it does not carry the additional value that is gained from advertising on a content based branded website. This is why we will have to make our brands in some way portable and able to provide our audience multiple touch points, which they control.
There is still a massive amount of value to aligning advertising with a branded content provider. As we move forward to find new converged digital platforms on which we can create new brand aligned commercial partnerships we should keep in mind that our brands are incredibly important. We are not and should not become faceless content agregators, which don’t have the unique voice and personality advertisers can borrow.
