Buying into American Idol

Chapter One: First Half

Concept/Idea: Marketing

Terms:

Corporate Convergence, Convergence Strategy, Transmedia, Networks, Marketing Strategies, Media Consumpstion, Reality Television, Programming, Affective Economics, Purchasing Decisions, Quantify, Measure, Commodify, Return on Investment(ROI), Exploitation, Aggressive Targeting, Brand Reputation, Media Touch Points, Consumption Patterns, Loyals/Fans, Impression, Expression, Next Generation Audience, Investment, Exposure, Emotion, Brand Extension, Lovemarks, Brand Loyalty, Active Consumers, Inspirational Customers, Brand Advocates

Arguments:

"New models of marketing seek to expand consumer's emotional, social, and intellectual investments with the goal of shaping consumption patters."

"Affective Economics...a new configuration of marketing theory...which seeks to understand the emotional underpinnings of consumer decision-making as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions."

"New marketing discourse seeks to mold those consumer desires to shape purchasing decisions."

"This emerging discourse of affective economics...[allows] advertisers to tap the power of collective intelligence and direct it toward their own ends, but at the same time allowing consumers to form their own kind of collective bargaining structure that they can use to challenge corporate decisions."

"Affective economics sees active audiences as potentially valuable if they can be courted and won over by advertisers."

"Marketers seek to shape brand reputations across media touch points...[in order to] build a long-term relationship with a brand."

"The strength of a connection [with a brand] is measured in terms of its emotional impact. The experience should not be contained within a single media platform, but should extend across as many media as possible."

"Fans are the central players in a courtship dance between consumers and marketers."

Evidence:

"American Idol turned out to be the first killer application of media convergence--the big new thing that demonstrated the power that lies at the intersection between old and new media."

"FOX Broadcasting Company was receiving more than 20 million telephone calls or text messages per episode casting verdicts on the American Idol contestants."

"An AT&T spokesman explained, "Our venture with FOX has done more to educate the public and get people texting than any marketing activity in this country to date."

"FOX devoted 13.5 hours to American Idol during the crucial May sweeps period, representing nearly one quarter of their total primt-time schedule for the month."

"American Idol was sold to FOX through an aggressive campaign by the Creative Artists Agency, which saw the series as an ideal match for their client, Coca-Cola, and its 12-24-year-old target audience."

"Viewers tend to remain with cable once the fall season starts. So, the broadcast networks are countering by offering more original programming in the summer, with the less-expensive reality televisison programs becoming their best weapon."

"American Idol was from the start not simply a television program but a transmedia franchise." (goes on to list first season winner's RCA Records deal, #1 hit single, radio domination, bestseller American Idol book, concert tour, and movie)

"Early evidence suggests that the most valuable consumers are what the industry calls "loyals," or what we call fans."


"Advertisers are increasingly demanding accountability from media outlets for the degress of actual exposure they receive and for the quality of relationship this creates with their consumers."

"There has been a proliferation of media options--a move from three major networks to a cable environment with hundreds of more specialized channels and the intoduction of alternative forms of home entertainment, including the Internet, video, DVD, and computer and video games."

"The average consumer settled into a pattern of watching ten to fifteen different media outlets."

"As advertisers grow anxious about whether network programming can reach audiences, they are diversifying their advertising budgets and looking to extend their brands across multiple distibution outlets that they hope will allow them to target a diverse selection of smaller niche markets."

"'Monolithic blocks of eyeballs are gone. In their place is a perpetually shifting mosaic of audience microsegments that forces marketers to play an endless game of audience hide-ane-seek.'" Forrester Research

"The biggest hurdle we have to go over...is the integration of the networks, the studios the ad agencies, the advertisers, the talent agencies, and anybody else that's involved in this space."
-Lee Gabler, co-chairman and partner of Creative Artists Agency

"This next-generation audience research focuses attention on what consumers do with media content once it has passed across their eyeballs, seeing each subsequent interaciton as valuable because it reinforces their relationship to the series and , potentially, its sponsors."

"Expression charts attentiveness to programming and advertising, time spent with the program, and the degree of viewer loyalty and affinity to the program and its sponsors."

"The logic of brand extension...the idea that successful brands are built by exploiting multiple contacts between the brand and consumer."

"Coca-Cola sees itself less as a soft drink bottler and more as an entertainment company that actively shapes as well as sponsors sporting events, concerts, movies, and television series."

"'Lovemarks' are more powerful than traditional 'brands' because they command the 'love' as well as the 'respect' of consumers."

"We will use a diverse array of entertainment assets to break into people's hearts and minds" -Coca-Cola president Steven J. Heyes


External Links:

<http://www.2.coca-cola.com/heritage/stories/index.html>

Cokemusic.com