NEW YORK and LAS VEGAS, Jan. 15, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- NATPE 2007 -- When companies adopt "Lifestyle Advertising" they will be best positioned to influence conversations around their brands, drive consumer purchasing behavior and monetize the ongoing customer relationships they seek, reveals a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP report released today. The report, "How to Capitalize on Lifestyle Advertising in a Customer-centric World," is being issued at the NATPE 2007 Conference & Exhibition at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.
"The most fundamental shift in the history of media usage is upon us," said Michael D. Kelley, partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Today, consumer dialogue is happening in real time, with unprecedented speed and volume, with or without the willing participation of content providers, distributors, advertisers or their agencies. We are experiencing a technology-driven social renaissance that is creating unprecedented opportunities for the advertising industry to execute its core principles in powerful new ways."
PwC describes Lifestyle Advertising as advertising and messaging that allows advertisers to respond to consumer feedback in an ongoing and interactive way through a continuous dialogue. It embraces online discussion boards, chat rooms, blogs, user-review forums and social networks to gain greater insight into consumer preferences, interests and points of view. It is advertising that is personalized, participatory, and socially interactive and is built around dynamic, real-time conversations between companies and consumers. To fully capitalize on Lifestyle Advertising, advertisers must engage consumers in real-time conversations that are relevant and trustworthy, and as a result, gain insights into product positioning, customer service effectiveness and future company strategy.
According to PwC, the three principles of Lifestyle Advertising are:
1. Relevance -- Advertisers have to understand the issues that are
important to customers' lives and build strategies around them.
2. Engagement -- Converged media redefines engagement as it combines
both brand-level and product-level interactions in the same
consumer experience.
3. Trust -- To successfully engender trust with the consumer, efforts
must be genuine and transparent and companies must act on what
they hear when listening to consumers.
"As advertisers begin to focus on building relevant, engaging, and trustworthy conversations, they necessarily will shift substantial investment from traditional advertising toward Lifestyle Advertising. This does not mean the demise of traditional television advertising or traditional newspaper publishers, but rather the emergence or evolution of traditional mediums toward Lifestyle Advertising," said Deborah Bothun, U.S. Entertainment & Media Advisory Practice Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "To truly monetize today's evolving customer relationships, advertisers, content providers and distributors must mobilize, measure and unleash the power of consumer communities. Companies must be as dynamic as the market itself."
The Lifestyle Advertising approach will require new media strategies and significant organizational changes, driving companies to look at the demands of today's converged media environment. Specifically, companies must:
* Listen to the Market -- Companies along the advertising value chain must view their audiences not as a collection of consumers, or even as a portfolio of demographic profiles, but rather as individual customers. * Change and Respond -- To maximize and monetize their Lifestyle Advertising potential, businesses must be open, have real-time flexibility and enable informed risk-taking. They must organize around the ongoing conversations in which they are participating. * Evaluate Efforts and Influence -- Forward-thinking companies, along with their measurement provider and agency partners, now have a unique opportunity to pioneer new measurement standards, increase advertising spending accountability and lead the industry in investing in the technologies and processes that will better gauge the effectiveness of advertising in this era of converged media.
The paper explores the significant shift occurring in media usage within the consumer marketplace and the dramatic impact that changing consumer behavior and social networks have on brands and traditional approaches to advertising. Consumer audiences now have the ability to talk directly to companies as well as about them. Having gained the power of a worldwide forum, consumers can very publicly impact brands, products and services. They can skip, ignore or avoid whatever they do not wish to view or engage. This new consumer empowerment can dramatically affect the programming and media distribution channels that rely on advertising support.
For an electronic copy of the complete PricewaterhouseCoopers report, "How to capitalize on Lifestyle Advertising in a customer-centric world," visit the "publications" section at http://www.pwc.com/convergence. Other convergence-related reports produced by the PricewaterhouseCoopers including, "The Rise of Lifestyle Media: Achieving Success in the Digital Convergence Era," are also available.
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