13 Jun Bulldogs Licking Lemons
Since starting Sonder a year ago, a business that focuses solely on the Owned Media space, we’ve seen the bulldog-licking-a-lemon expression a few times. It is usually in response to us suggesting that a marketer could put another brand’s advertising on their brand’s owned media assets (such as their website or an in-store screen). Some marketers are appalled at the suggestion that their sacrosanct brand should be sullied by another brand’s advertisement.
The reality, however, is that the most progressive brands in the world are embracing carefully selected advertising on their owned assets.
Owned media is challenging the way businesses define themselves beyond the product or service they provide. Businesses must now think of themselves in terms of being audience creators and media owners as well as delivering on their core purpose.
The list of global brands embracing this new world includes Virgin, Red Bull, GoPro, John Lewis, Kelloggs, Pepsi and Telstra. All powerful, progressive brands that cherish their audiences and place their customers at the heart of what they do.
“Sure,” you say, “but these brands have obvious media assets they can monetise, I don’t have anything like that”. Well consider Mondelez. It recently announced that it is monetising its digital content. Here is a brand that doesn’t have an extensive owned media infrastructure, so is unlocking its valuable owned audiences through the creation of new digital assets. Mondelez is creating content partnerships across a variety of channels, mobile games and bespoke owned platforms. All of which are monetisable and all of which create a positive value exchange with customers.
And then there’s Apple. The world’s most valuable brand last week announced it was allowing advertising on one of its owned assets. Apple will be integrating an ad placement into its App Store. Similar to Google AdWords, the placement will appear at the top of search results based on a price auction and relevance metric. The ad placement (for now) is only available to app developers whose apps are in the store, which keeps it super relevant to the customer.
The biggest brands in the world are optimising and monetising their owned assets. How do they do it so seamlessly? The trick is to integrate monetisation in a way that delivers a triple win, because:
1) it creates an enhanced customer experience
2) provides an effective communication medium for the paying brand and
3) generates a highly profitable new revenue stream to the asset owner.
All 3 are achievable, indeed necessary, for the creation of a sustainable owned media asset.
And what’s exciting about this evolution of brand marketing is that Marketers can now create budgets, not just achieve them.