How the new channels of communication affect everyday work of agencies and marketers?

How the new channels of communication affect everyday work of agencies and marketers?

Consciously but frequently not-so-willingly, just going with the flow, we become participants of the processes which permanently shape the future of the media and where our potential consumers, clients, invest their free time and emotions.

Marketers try to engage in the dialogue with consumers, to which we give more and more power and opportunities of communications with us and with each other. It is just a part of the changes which happen and are happening just at the moment when these words are being written and when they’ll be read. How new channels of communication affect everyday work of the agencies and marketers?

The most spectacular manifestation of these phenomena is what happens around the second richest man in Poland and his business plans for the future. Obviously, I am talking about the purchase of Polkomtel. It’s all about huge amounts of money, unimaginable for the average person. Huge, as it seems, also form the point of view of the interested himself. Bu the purchase of one of the mobile operators for Zygmunt Solorz is something more than to benefit from the developed brand and the clients who pay their bills regularly to use the services of Plus. It’s, above all, the continuation of the strategy which is to permanently assign roles on the media market for the next decade or two. Television, press and the traditional media slowly but systematically become outdated and lose significance. Mobile technologies, tables and content distribution via these channels is the real future. It is clearly visible in the number of participants of the conferences discussion panels and meetings devoted to mobile and new technologies. The rooms are more than full. We can see how changes the structure of mobile phones users – smartphones are becoming the most important “screens” for Poles. The purchase of Polkomtel is, thus, a completely justified measure for the owner of Polsat. Besides, is the continuation not the beginning of the strategy. For some time we can see a dynamic growth of the Ipla platform, which makes Polsat available on different “screens” – smartphones, tablets or gaming consoles. It is an instance of consistency and going the previously designated direction that should be appreciated.

In the direction that can quicken in a relatively short period of time and this all would happen rather not because of this or that investor. In 2013 the analog TV signal will be turned off completely. Today, which is sharply illustrated by the investors’ decisions on the market, nobody knows what will happen on that (a kind of) “judgment day”. Some predict more money invested in programming to fight on a more and more competitive market. Others think the opposite way, the departure from “big” stations, reducing their influence and lowering their quality, enforced by the division of funds between the larger amount of broadcasters. After all the latest information regarding the potential selling of TVN the second option seems more probable. Whatever will happen, the change – a huge one – will definitely happen. Poles will have access to the greater amount of TV channels for free, in high quality. Today it is difficult to judge but, 2013 will definitely be an interesting and busy year for the media houses, the media and the advertisers.

The international concerns and small companies, which maybe are not present today but they will become more influential in the near future, are constantly behind the back of the Polish tycoons. The latter are more difficult to be identified, the former perform quite well on our market today. Their main representative, the most forceful one, is obviously Facebook. Based n the evidence from my observations, I can see that the majority of media providers during presentations of their offer proudly show their activity on Facebook, to demonstrate how it is possible to run a successful campaign on TV and their social media profile. The National Broadcasting Council prohibits “advertising” Facebook in the public TV and radio programmes but it appears that it is not effective, which just makes things even more difficult to the public media, already struggling in the world of the “new” media and the “new” consumers. The founder of Facebook has been announcing that what will change is not only the way people use the Interne and communicate but also the way the advertisements will look (and he is successful in his predictions, at least partly). It’s only one of the nowadays’ tycoons who influences also what happens in Poland. One cannot forget about Google+ or Microsoft introducing the new operating system for mobile devices and uniting with Nokia, which is used by 40% of the Polish mobile phone users. There is, of course, Apple which, using only iPad, revolutionized the press market completely and forced a multitude of imitators to act.

There is no place today for a talk about the approaching revolution in the media. It happens right before our eyes. There is a question about how we respond to it and whether we, as agencies and advertisers, are ready, similarly to the producers of electronic devices and investors, take risk and give a chance to the new media in the context od advertising. And whether we will be only copying what is traditional and well tested? Independently from how rapidly will our consumers adapt to all the changes happening, one thing is certain – nothing will look like it did before. The pace of the changes in the media starts to match that of the changes in the consumers’ tastes and behavior. Not so long ago, nobody heard about Facebook. Will Google+ replace it in the next few months?