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>>Male Presenter: Hi, guys, both in the audience--hi--as well as those on your computers and tuning
in. Today we're gonna be talking about "Social TV," a new book that just came out as authored
by Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin, who we're lucky enough to have in our audience. And
just to give you a brief bio on Stacey.
Stacey's a Senior Vice President at Hill Holiday and leads a national broadcast buying Strategic
Media Partnership Practice for the agency's portfolio of clients, including Dunkin' Donuts,
Chili's, T J Maxx, Marshall's, Liberty Mutual, John Hancock, and Home Goods. She won multiple
awards for her work and creativity, including the Advertising Age Media Maven Award and
MediaWeek's Media Plan of the Year.
So, we have Stacey here for about an hour. And she's gonna start off by taking us through
a presentation of her vision of "Social TV." And then, we'll have some time afterwards
for questions. So, please join me in welcoming Stacey Shepatin.
[applause]
>>Stacey Shepatin: Thank you. So, I'm just gonna start off and talk about how the book
came to be. And I usually start this off with the question that everybody asks me most.
The first thing I hear from everyone is, "Did you always wanna write a book?" And the answer
is no. [laughs] I'm not a good writer.
I never thought I would ever write something like this before. But I just wanna talk about
how I got here, right? So, if I never wanted to write a book, how did I get to this point
where we have a book that just came out? So, this all started a little over a year ago.
The agency where Mike and I came together and co-hosted a conference for our clients.
And what we were finding is with all of the changes and all the new technologies that
were impacting television, is we were really challenged with how to educate our clients
on how these are impacting their marketing plans. We would go out to our clients and
present one technology. We'd go out and say, "We wanna test this."
But our clients didn't have these technologies. They didn't have connected TVs in their homes.
They didn't have the apps on their phones. And so, we put this conference together a
year ago to really create an opportunity for our clients to experience what was happening
with television. Erin came and spoke with us last year on our connected TV panel.
And we got a great response from our clients. They were really excited to see what was happening.
And because they were able to experience it, they were starting to understand why they
needed to take these things so seriously. So, my background is television. And for the
past several years, all I keep hearing about is the death of TV and it drives me insane
because our clients, they do spend a lot of money in television, but we do a lot of research,
a lot of multi-mix modeling, to justify the fact that television is a very powerful medium
in driving sales for our clients.
And so, to hear that television is dead and not as powerful as it once was, was very frustrating
for me. But it's definitely not the same as what it was. While people are watching more
TV than ever, it's a different experience today than it was when we were growing up.
So, it's not this passive experience.
And it's not even this great, high-definition, single, big screen experience in your living
room anymore. It's different. It's this converging media, right? So, you have social media converging
with television, which is creating new experiences for viewers with their favorite television
shows. So, it's much more complicated.
As a television buyer, as somebody's who's trying to find the right environment to place
our client's messages so that they get through to consumers and we get them to go in and
buy our products, I can't just look at television on the television screen anymore. I need to
look at this content that's been created to run on television, but now is available on
all these different platforms.
So, all these different things now come into play. We have tablet. We have mobile. We have
connected TV devices--all of these different options for our clients to reach their customers.
As you've seen, live TV is alive as ever. If you look at--. And it's boosted by social
media. So, if you just look at some of the most recent examples, you have the Super Bowl.
Highest tweets per second, the Super Bowl peak came at the end of the game--over 12
thousand tweets per second.
Madonna's performance was second--over ten thousand. So, you can see that people wanna
talk about what they're watching, particularly in a live environment. It was the most watched
TV program ever. Same thing with the Grammys. Adele, coming back from her surgery, singing
for the first time.
Thirteen million mentions. These are pretty significant numbers. This isn't just a small
group of people who are talking about things. This is a pretty massive group of people that
we need to pay attention to. And their influence on other people is pretty important. So, the
way--. One of the things, another word that drives me crazy, aside from the death of TV,
is that TV is a traditional medium.
People say, "Oh, TV is traditional. Media planners can handle that. We'll cover that
in a meeting." And it's just not a traditional medium anymore. It's not that simple. So,
Mike and I look at it differently. We look at it as a new medium. And as a new medium,
we need to plan it differently than we've planned it in the past.
So, they way we talk about it with our clients is there's three major shifts that we've seen
happening. The first is that we have this instant feedback loop, right? So, you put
something out there and people have the ability to respond instantaneously. They, we certainly
do from a creative standpoint, we do tons of pre-testing before we put creative on the
air.
We do tons of post-testing to see what's happening and whether it's resonating with consumers.
But you can also get this instant feedback as soon as you put the creative on the air,
which is very different from what we had a few years ago. So, what I wanna play right
now is a commercial that Hill Holiday produced for Liberty Mutual. It first aired back in
2006. I'm gonna play it for you and talk about the response.
[plays video clip]
[happy music with female vocals]
[thump]
[car engines]
>>Female Narrator: When it's people who do the right thing, they call it being responsible.
When it's an insurance company, they call it Liberty Mutual. Responsibility. What's
your policy? Liberty Mutual.
[end video clip]
>>Stacey Shepatin: So here's a response we got, a letter to Ted Kelly. He's the CEO of
Liberty Mutual. It says, "Kudos on your recent television advertisement, which depicts one
act of kindness leading to another. I really loved it. In this age of TV comedy put-downs,
gratuitous sex and violence, and political campaign negative advertising, it's refreshing
to see something as uplifting to the spirit.
It makes your company stand above the rest. While I cannot utilize any Liberty Mutual
products," obviously not the response we wanted, "at this time, please accept the enclosed
check for use in your marketing budget or community service programs as a sign of my
gratitude." He sent a 20 dollar check for Liberty Mutual to use towards their marketing.
Now, this was his way of responding to the content that we put out there for Liberty
Mutual. It's a handwritten letter sent to the CEO of the company. This is pre-Twitter,
before you're able to instantly talk about what you're feeling, what you want people
to know about what you just saw. We re-ran the spot in 2009.
And now, we're able to see instant reaction to the commercial. Here's a couple of examples.
"I'm in love with the Liberty Mutual commercial that I just saw. It's beautiful." "Anyone
seen the new Liberty Mutual commercial? I'm not a fan of insurance companies." No one
is, which is one of our problems.
But they're commercial is fantastic. So, this kind of instant feedback, whether it be from
a content creation standpoint, on an entertainment side, or from an advertising or marketing
side, is really critical for us in terms of monitoring how our marketing is doing. So,
we look at a tweet as a social impression, right?
So, television is measured on impressions. And we value impressions with CPMs and we
buy on that model. But tweets are social impressions as well. And the value of those social impressions
is pretty significant to us. And it's important that we are understanding the impact that
these social impressions can have on our brand.
We can't control it. We can't control what people are saying, but we need to be monitoring
what they're saying and recognize that these are also marketing impressions that are impacting
people and our brands. So, I wanna show a video here. This is how Twitter has become
so incorporated into television programming today. And then, talk about how you're gonna
see advertising following in those footsteps.
[plays video clip]
[upbeat music with drums]
>>Beverly McClellan: Thank you.
[applause]
>>Christina Aguilara: So, what's your name?
>>Beverly McClellan: My name is Beverly McClellan.
>>Simon Fuller: But now the idea, we're gonna get rid of five people. I've gotta get rid
of two.
>>Male #1: Everyone's wondering what Gaga's gonna wear.
[cheering]
Having a meat dress last year. We started a hashtag. Hashtag, what will Gaga wear? Send
us your favorite tweets.
>>Male #2: So we got a trendy talk for everybody following us on Twitter. It's are you for
real. Hit us up. Twitter dot com slash one oh six and park and put "are you for real"
in your tweet.
[upbeat music]
>>CNN Newscaster: Change, says ARP, means that the homeowner has to pay much more than
they thought they signed up for.
>>Male #3: Be sure you follow me on Twitter so we can live chat during the shows.
>>Alison Haislip: Alison Haislip here. Your official V correspondent and guide to all
that is digitally awesome at The Voice.
[upbeat music]
>>Male Narrator: Join Jeff Probst at Jeff Probst tweeting live right now and throughout
tonight's Survivor episode.
>>Female #1: Hot ten trending topics on Twitter in the United States. Five of them are about
this show right now. Unbelievable. And with me right now, is Team Christina. They're getting
in on the action, so if you want to tweet any of Christina's team directly--and I know
you do--tweet them at their handles. Just go to at NBC The Voice slash artists.
>>Male #4: In his book "The Comedians," set in the Papa Doc era Haiti of the '60s, Graham
Greene's ambivalent hero describes the Trianon Hotel he's returning to.
>>VMA Male Host: There have been just about one point three million VMA-related tweets
since the pre-show began. Lady Gaga is the top artist on the Twitter track with 12 hundred
tweets per minute, but Justin Beiber's not far behind with over 900.
>>Male #5: If you wanna vote for Annie, the X tonight, using Twitter, go to Twitter dot
the X factor USA dot com.
[cheering]
>>Male Host: Hey, guys. It's time for late night hashtags. Here we go.
[cheering]
I'm just gonna stay home and watch "The Bachelor" and find all the chicks that get kicked off
on Facebook.
[laughter]
>>Male #6: I thought we'd be keeping track of your talk about the judges. An absolute
stop. Look at this. Oh. It seems that L.A. Reid is the most popular judge at the moment.
>>Simon Cowell: Can I first ask for a recount please, because that doesn't sound right to
me? Irritating. OK. Stop tweeting me, please.
[electronic music]
[end video clip]
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, you can see the impact that social media's having on television,
right? It's part of the storyline. It gives you an opportunity to talk about what you're
seeing. You can vote via Twitter. You can get content from Twitter as they do on the
NBC late night talk shows. It's become a huge piece of the content of a show.
And so, what I think you're gonna see is advertisers following in those footsteps. And so, what
I wanna show you next is an example that I think is a pretty good way of how an advertiser
has incorporated Twitter, social media, into their campaigns successfully. And I think,
this doesn't work for every brand. It's really--.
We're not saying that every brand should have a hashtag on their creative and brand should
be doing something like this. But here's an example of Wheat Thins--probably not a high-interest
brand that people are talking about a lot. But they were pretty successful with this
campaign. And we'll talk a little bit about what the results were.
[plays video clip]
>>Male #7: This is Chris Macho. He tweeted, "Had a hunch today would be good, but didn't
think it would be this good. Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter."
[knock, knock, knock]
Chris.
>>Chris Macho: Yeah?
>>Male #7: You remember when you tweeted, "Had a hunch today would be good, but didn't
think it would be this good. Wheat Thins is now following me on Twitter."
[Chris laughs]
>>Chris Macho: Yeah.
>>Male #7: We made your day once. And I have a hunch we're gonna make your day again today.
We have this for you. It's gonna be driving around town all day today.
>>Chris Macho: Look at that.
>>Male #7: Hey, America. Do the right thing. Follow Chris Macho.
[car engine]
Follow Chris Macho on Twitter. He's awesome.
[end video clip]
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, it's great. Chris tweeted something about Wheat Thins. Wheat Thins started
following him. And Chris Macho, who here is mentions in red, is Chris. Chris and Wheat
Thins mentions is prior to this creative running. Nobody knew who Chris was before, right? Well,
look at those spikes once they started airing this commercial.
Chris became famous. But at the same time, people started talking about Wheat Thins.
And they weren't talking about them before. And most of it was all really positive, so
this is a way for them to incorporate social media into getting some good, positive exposure
for the brand.
[pause]
So, we look at the backchannel. And it's not just Twitter. I'm focusing on Twitter just
because a lot of what the television shows are doing are using Twitter, but all of the
backchannels are really a heartbeat of what's going on with TV. It gives you an opportunity
to see what people are talking about, what's resonating with them, both positively and
negatively.
And the Grammy is a really good example. So, while we do see a lot of correlation with
high ratings and a lot of Twitter mentions, that doesn't mean that that correlation exists
for everything. And when you see a heartfelt, emotional moment in television, or a show
that requires you to really pay attention and not be distracted during it, you tend
to see those Twitter mentions go down, even though ratings are high.
So, what we did here is, the blue line is Twitter mentions. As you can see, some of
those peaks here. That first peak is when Chris Brown performed. That last peak at the
end was Adele's win for Album of the Year. And you can see in most of those cases, and
also the one in the middle where Adele took the stage for the first time after her surgery
and sang, that was the highest rated point in the show and one of the highest points
in Twitter mentions.
But what's also interesting here is when Jennifer Hudson sang her tribute to Whitney Houston.
It's one of the highest rated points in the show, but we saw a dip in Twitter mentions
because it obviously was a moment where people were really engaged with what was going on
and they wanted to pay attention to Jennifer Hudson on stage.
So, we don't want to be too broad and say that "OK, if it's a show and everybody's talking
about it, then that's a successful show," because that's not the case. There's certainly
programs out there where people are not talking about it during those shows. It also is an
opportunity to tell you when something's not going right in a show.
So, this is an example from the Emmy's last year. I don't know how many of you saw this,
but the Emmytones were these little interstitial songs that were being sung throughout. And
the Twitter mentions were universally negative, right? So, here's an opportunity for a producer
to say, "Oh, my God. This is not working."
This is a live show. They could have pulled these guys right off the air. So, that instant
feedback can really guide you and give you some important feedback and impact the content
of your programming. The second piece is interactivity. So, the idea of interacting, both on television
and on secondary screens, is not new.
It's been around since--. This is an example from 1996 with WebTV. But there are just so
many more options to interact with programming. So, this is an example of the Super Bowl in
Mike's living room. This is--. He's got his TV open, his iPad with IntoNow up there. He's
got his mobile device. And his computer is following the Brand Bowl to see which commercials
are winning and which aren't.
There's lots of different ways to connect with programming today. And it's very distracting.
There's no doubt about it. And it's also so fragmented, right? It would be really easy
if we knew that everybody that wasn't paying attention in a commercial break on TV was
going to the same place on their phone.
And then, we'll just reach them there, right? But there's just so many distractions. But
it's a really good example of how we experience TV today. So, we look at TV and think of TV
as more of a cross-channel experience. It's not just the experience of watching TV on
the big screen. But there's more ways to experience the programming.
So, 40 percent of web owners use their phone daily while watching TV. So, you assume these
40 percent of people are just distracted from our television messages 'cause most likely,
they're turning away during those commercial breaks, rather than during the programming.
So, from a marketer's standpoint, if we know 40 percent of our audience is distracted,
we need to figure out a way to market it to those people so that our message is getting
through to them.
So is it hurting advertising? Of course it's hurting advertising without a doubt. So what
we did at Hill Holiday is we commissioned a study. And we wanted to see if there was
a way for us to build back, recall, and preference for a commercial by doing something in the
digital environment. So, we went in with the questions: "Would you recommend it to your
friends?"
We showed them clips of the movie trailer, "Friends with Kids." "Would you watch it yourself
and can you recall key facts from the trailer?" And so, our methodologies, we had three test
groups. We had did a simulation of a two-screen experience. So, one group had only saw the
commercial on the primary screen.
They did not have a secondary device in their hand. The second group saw the commercial
on the TV screen and had a secondary device, but saw a different creative when they went
on to their secondary device during the commercial break. And the third group saw the commercial
on the TV and then saw a synced ad, so the same creative or creative messaging on their
secondary device when they were distracted from the main screen.
And what we found is, obviously, the group that didn't have any distraction, that only
saw the commercial on the primary screen and was not distracted with a secondary device,
had the highest recall and the highest preference. In the second group that was distracted and
saw a different creative, the recall and preference dropped eight percent and seventeen percent,
respectively.
And then, in that third group, where they saw a synced ad--so, a "Friends with Kids"
ad on their secondary device while it was playing on the main screen--that recall and
preference went back up almost to the levels of that primary screen group. So, what that
tell us is we need to find a way to market to this group that's distracted from the TV
screen.
And the challenge with that is, like I said before, they're not all in the same place.
Some of them are on their email. Some of them are doing companion content to what they're
watching on TV. But they're in a lot of different places. And so, we're working out to figure
out what are those places and where do we need to be and how can we create that messaging
so that our message is getting through.
[pause]
So, we're fighting for attention. And we'll continue to figure out how to get through
with all these distractions. The third piece is portability. So, the idea of TV everywhere.
There's so many different devices you can get your content--on your main screen, on
your computer, on your phone, on your tablet through apps, and all different kinds of sites.
So, your TV everywhere is something that we have to contend with as well. This is an example
of the XFINITY iPad app. It basically acts as your remote control. You can switch channels
from it. You can get recommendations from friends. You can try out new programming.
It really is a control over your whole television experience. And it's starting to bring some
of these capabilities together.
[pause]
You can just click on, they'll show you top picks. So, you're getting it sorted by what
people are watching, what people think is great that's out there. So, it gives you a
chance to sample new programming. So, with all these things out there, we think it's
important that TV not be considered a traditional medium--that it's considered a new medium--and
that you really need to plan it and market it differently than we have in the past.
And so, that's why we wrote the book. [laughs] We wrote the book as a guide for marketers
because there were so many questions on how to navigate this space. And when you look
at the literal definition of social TV, it's the convergence of social media with television.
But social TV has sort of become a catch-all for all technologies and all things that are
impacting television.
And we get into a lot of that in the book. There's chapters in there on the backchannel,
on bridge content, on social TV guides, on addressable TV, all the things that are providing
new marketing opportunities for our clients. And so the process of going through writing
the book, we interviewed 75 people for the book from over 50 companies.
And the process here--. So, the challenge that we were faced with is this space was
changing so rapidly, is how could we capture it without it being dated. So, we had to write
it pretty quickly and get it out quickly. We wanted to launch it at our TVnext event,
which we knew was gonna be in February of 2012.
But I also do all the up-front negotiations for the agency and couldn't handle taking
this on while I was in the middle of those up-front negotiations. So, we were limited
in that we really couldn’t start until the end of July. So, from July to the end of August,
we interviewed all of these people for the book.
We did all the research. At the end of August, we started writing. And we had to have the
manuscript done at the end of October. So, we had, basically, one chapter a week for
ten weeks. And what that is, is a 14-page paper every week. So, now back to "did I ever
wanna write a book?" Writing a 14-page paper every week for ten weeks in a row is a huge
challenge, but a great learning experience.
And for me, it was really the ability to do something I never thought I could do. It has
been a great experience for me. So, the end of the book. So, there's ten chapters in the
book. And we held the chapter 11 to write closer to the book release because we knew
there would be more to say. And we wanted to make it as relevant as we could.
So, Chapter 11 was written in January. It's only available online. Every chapter ends
with a QR code. You can scan each chapter and you can get more information on the case
studies that we talk about in the book, updates. So, for example, on chapter seven, which is
about addressable TV and interactive TV, there's an update if you scan it about Canoe no longer
being in the interactive TV business.
So, we're doing our best to keep it as up-to-date as possible. But like I said, things are changing
so rapidly. But in chapter eleven, we talk about a new planning model. So, one of the
next questions we get is, "OK. All this stuff is going on and how is that changing your
job? What are you doing differently?"
So, Mike and I worked on this new planning model. And we call it our "watch model." And
basically, there's five key things that we look at. And the first is widening our inputs.
So, from a TV perspective, we use Neilsen and MRI/Simmons and have used them for years
as the source to figure out where is our target watching and where should we be advertising.
But now there's so many more data points out there that we need to take into consideration
as we're looking at what programs we should buying for our clients. But this isn't easy,
right? So, it costs a lot of money to buy into all of these research companies. So,
it's challenging, but we're doing our best to evaluate all of the different research
companies that are out there to make sure that we are understanding where our targets
are and where these influential people are.
Because as I talked about before, we've been buying in impressions in television for years,
but social impressions and the impact that social impressions can have on your brand
are probably more valuable. They're smaller in number, but they're very valuable. And
we need to know who those people are and what they're saying about us and how we can market
appropriately to them.
The second one is being able to adjust in real-time. So, my examples from a content
standpoint from television programming is we're getting this instant feedback. We need
to make sure that we're flexible enough on the agency side to be able to react to it.
So, whether that's changing things creatively or moving units from certain shows to others,
we need to make sure that we're structured in a way that we can react that way. And we're
working on it. I think that we're set up more and more and clients understand that they're
going to get this feedback instantly.
And they're gonna need to make decisions more quickly. So, we're working on being able to
do that as well. The third is teaming up. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but
it's pretty important. And that is that all of the departments need to work more closely
together. Not just within media. Not just digital and TV and planning.
But creative and production need to be part of the mix as well. And so, we're structured--.
Hill Holiday is a fully-integrated agency, so we're structured in a way that this is
easier 'cause we're all in the same building. But we also have clients who are media only
and we need to work with other agencies and we need to make sure that this happens.
Because when we find that all of the teams are working together and the creative is part
of the media decision from the beginning and media is involved in creatives being developed,
that ultimately we have a much stronger program in the end. Converging media is really about
thinking about television as this cross-channel experience that in planning television and
planning television GRPs, we're not just planning for the TV screen.
So, as we're looking at it, we're really looking at all of these other environments as part
of the TV experience because people are experiencing TV across platforms, not just on one platform.
And finally, is content and making sure that everybody focuses on content first. Because
no matter what great, cool technology is developed, if the initial content is not good, then people
aren't gonna wanna do all these other things around it.
They're not gonna wanna play games around it. They're not gonna wanna talk about it.
They're not gonna wanna sync up and get cool information about it. And all that stuff just
doesn't matter, so we wanna make sure that the content comes first, both from the programming
side and even from the agency side, when we're creating campaigns for our clients. We're
always thinking about what are the new things that we could be doing. But ultimately, the
creative messaging in that has to be right first.
[pause]
So, what have I learned from the book? This is the second most popular question, so I
put it at the end to lead into the questions you might ask. Relationships do matter. I'm
sure you hear this a lot, but I've been doing this for over 20 years and the access that
Mike and I got to people to understand their vision of the media business was really important.
And you get very different visions from different people you talk to, from big media companies
to small start-ups, and where they see their place in this business. So, building those
relationships over the years was really important. Also, curiosity is important. So, one of the
things--. I'm a, have been a television specialist and Mike is a social media guy.
That's his background. But the curiosity to understand this business in a broader way,
you need to have broader business knowledge. You can't just know one thing anymore. But
then, on the same token, one person can't know everything, right? But you need to understand
this business more broadly. And it's important that the people you hire and the people that
we hire at the agency, have the curiosity and the desire to wanna know more.
And you can't be territorial. This one is--. Every time I talk to people about, "How are
you and Mike working together?" Like, we have so many struggles with TV and digital people
working together. And you just can't be territorial. The one thing I will say is Mike is one of
the few digital people who've I met, who is really passionate about TV.
There's no chip on his shoulder that digital is better than TV. And vice versa, that TV
is better than digital. And we really need to make sure we're forging these relationships,
both at the agency side and on the media company's side, that the groups are all working together.
And we say it a lot and it's easy to say and it makes total sense, but it actually happening
is not easy.
And I think the reason why Mike and I have been successful in doing this over the last
year or so, is because we just work really well together and recognize that I couldn't
have done this on my own and he couldn't have done this on his own. But together, we were
able to really create something that we think adds value to our clients.
[pause]
Still a few challenges ahead. There's been a lot of experimentation in this space over
the last year. And there will continue to be experimentation. Most of the experimentation
is on the content creator side and what kind of things should they be creating in this
space. Some advertisers have come in and done some interesting sponsorships of this content.
And you'll think you'll see a little bit more of that. But the experimentation isn't gonna
last forever. If we can't prove that this stuff is working for our clients, there's
only so much money they're gonna put behind it. So, we need to make sure that we build
the right measurement plans into all of these deals that we're creating.
And the other thing is messaging and making sure that we have the right messaging for
the different platforms. So, we can't just take our TV creative and run it online and
take pieces of it and shorten it. So, making sure, which is why the creatives need to be
involved from the very beginning, is if we're recommending all these platforms for our clients
and they creatively need to be making sure that they're building what they should be
for those platforms.
So, those, I think, are the shifts you're gonna see over the next year. Thank you for
coming and listening. I'm happy to sit down and answer some questions if you have any.
>>Male Presenter: Just so that you guys know, for here in the audience, there are mics in
the back. But for those of you that are either out of this room, or don't want to stand up
at a mic, you can go to TricksPage social space TV space questions and input your questions
there. And we can answer them.
But coming out of that--I'm just gonna kick-start some stuff off--with the fact that there are
so many different opportunities now and so many media companies have so many opportunities
for you, as an agency, to take a look at. How do you like media companies to approach
you? As a total bundle, or one-off?
>>Stacey Shepatin: A total bundle. It's a lot easier for us to evaluate it if it's all
together. It's much more challenging and much more time-consuming for us to try and negotiate
every single deal separately.
So, if we're doing a deal with NBC and we wanna look at check-ins and all other kinds
of things, it would be great if NBC came to us with a platform that was television plus
"GetGlue" plus "Viggle" plus what they're doing on whichever website, whichever show
that it is, so that we can evaluate it as a total platform.
>>Male Presenter: Good. And part and parcel to that, when you, as an agency, don't have
everything and you're working with other agencies--
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male Presenter: how do you manage that? How does it work? Who takes the lead?
>>Stacey Shepatin: I mean, I think we have to work together. So, if we're putting a plan
together with another agency--a media plan--for our clients, we, the idea could come through
either through a digital group or through a TV group. But we have to figure out how
to work together to negotiate it.
So, that's where that territorial piece I talked about comes into play, is you really
can't be territorial in a situation like that. Our clients don't want us to be, and get frustrated
when we are. They just want us to figure it out. So, the lead tends to come from either
where the idea came from or where the bulk of the money is. And that tends to drive the
negotiation.
>>Male Presenter: OK. Do I have some questions from the audience there?
>>Stacey Shepatin: [ whispers indistinctly ].
>>Male Presenter: Anybody? Anyone out there? Here we go.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Female #1: I saw that you mentioned the study that you did--
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, I think it's just starting. So, we're working with some companies in the
synced ads space. So, SecondScreen Networks is one of the companies that's out there that
Hill Holiday has a partnership with. They're part of our Beacon Program, which is a program
for start-ups, where we help guide them and test out their technologies and hopefully
find ways to sell them through to our clients.
So, SecondScreen is a company that's building an ad network to try and create this synced
ad experience. They've done some stuff. I think it was with Lincoln Mercury with one
of the NBC cable networks that was pretty successful. So, I think as we're doing some
testing to see if this environment works, you'll see more stuff happening in this space.
>>Female #1: And how is, the people sign up for the agency site as well--
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm?
>>Female #1: so how are you allocating budgets between--and I know it has to be territorial--
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Female #1: is that a joint budget, or is it a TV budget or a digital budget?
>>Stacey Shepatin: You know, I get asked that question a lot. It's sort of--. We have a
budget. And we may have a TV budget and a digital budget. And as we're working through
these plans, we figure it out as we go along, whether it's gonna come out of the TV budget
or the digital budget. It depends what's part of the deal.
So, if it's full episode play or digital video, it tends to come out of the TV budget. If
it's some of these other things, it may come out of the digital budget. But we try not
to keep the budgets so siloed, so that we have the opportunity to evaluate plans like
this and we have the money to be able to do it.
[pause]
It also helps to try and build these plans before the budgets are allocated, so that
we can go to the client and say, "This is what we wanna do," and it gets taken out of
the overall budget.
>>Female #1: Great.
>>Male Presenter: Umm.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Someone at the mic.
>>Male Presenter: Yeah.
>>Male #1: Hi, Stacey. I'm Mark.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Hi.
>>Male #1: I have a variation of the same question.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Male #1: I've noticed a lot of programs are now inviting their viewers to go to their
website and download a synchronized application. I was watching "The Walking Dead" on Sunday.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male #1: And for a couple of episodes now, they've invited you to do a Story Sync.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yep.
>>Male #1: Which of the, either programs or networks, are doing that most effectively
from an advertiser perspective? Like, the ones that are most advertiser friendly.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yup. I would say the NBCU cable networks and AMC are probably doing
the most in that space right now and have had the most success from an advertiser standpoint.
And again, I talked before about there's some programs that lend themselves to this better
than others. So, just because a network isn't doing it well, may mean that they just don't
have the right programming to do this with.
So, "Walking Dead" has a very cult following. There's a lot of interesting stuff you can
do with zombies and that kind of stuff. And Bravo has all kinds of reality programming
that lends itself to companion content. They have digital story-telling now. Their whole
transmedia play that is bringing people back onto the shows.
So, I think their programming lends itself well and they've been experimenting a lot
in this area. And they've probably been the most successful to date.
>>Male #1: Thanks.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male Presenter: There's a question back there with Aaron. And if you have questions,
please go to the mics just so that they can be recorded.
>>Male #2: Hi, Stacey. There's a lot of data, a lot of publicity around the number of tweets
around certain ads, certain programs, etcetera. And then sometimes, you hear some mention
about sentiment, whether it's positive or negative. Have you seen much evidence that
the data that goes beyond that is of high quality?
So, for example, can you tell from the tweets, demographics or interests, things like that?
Have you seen that sort of data? What is the quality of that data? I guess my second question
would be, do you feel like there's any sort of bias among the people that are tweeting
that you have to discount when you're analyzing this information?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. So, Bluefin's done a lot with sentiment. And sentiment's hard
to measure. We did some testing with them and found that things weren't allocated correctly
to positive or negative sentiments. So, I think we--. You really have to look at that
stuff closely. But there are a lot of these algorithms that are being built that are getting
at stuff that's pretty valuable to us, that the male/female of who's tweeting, age--general.
So, I think we are getting more specifics about who those people are. I mean, I think
we know that the people who are tweeting are not the minority , right? They're not as large
of an audience as what we're getting on TV, but they're pretty influential. We don't really
know how many people they're really reaching with what they're saying.
But we have to pay close attention to it because they have a pretty powerful impact on our
brands. If they're talking about our brands and they are saying great things and saying,
"Oh, you should try it," that's somebody who's sought out these social impressions. And that's
a pretty valuable thing. So, we want to create environments where people can have that kind
of conversation about our brands.
But I think there's still more to learn. We don't know everything about who those people
are who are tweeting. And it is hard to filter out some of the stuff you're talking about.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: Question over here.
>>Female #2: Yeah. Hi.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Hi.
>>Female #2: I read a quote this morning, Marc Pritchard of P and G, talking about the
importance of building one-on-one relationships with customers around the globe and essentially
pointing towards a trend of spending less on broadcast and more on mobile and social.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Female #2: And I'm just curious to what extant--. Obviously, they are a global brand
or have a number of global brands, but are you seeing that pressure from people really
shifting heavily on the budgets towards mobile and social?
>>Stacey Shepatin: I wouldn't say "shifting heavily." I mean, P and G is huge brand with
huge budgets that has the opportunity to shift a little and not have a major impact. I definitely
see the--. I mean, as more people are using these different devices, then we need to find
ways to market to them appropriately in those devices.
So, the more people who have mobile phones and are using mobile phones to transact and
go to stores and do all these things, and we need to find ways to market to them there.
So, you will be seeing more dollars shifting in that area, and social as well. I mean,
all the things we're talking about, there's just more ways to reach your audience in social
and there are powerful people that we need to reach.
So, you will some shift. I don't know that when you say "major," I don't know that you're
gonna see 20 percent shifts, 25 percent shifts in dollars, but you are gonna see some dollars
moving in that area.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: Back over here.
>>Female #3: Hi. Beyond Twitter and Facebook, have you seen other social platforms being
utilized effectively by programmers and advertising, advertisers, the Foursquares, the Pinterest,
the Instagrams of the world?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. I haven't seen--. Pinterest is probably something we should
watch because I think you're gonna see more with it now. Definitely like the GetGlues
and Misos and IntoNows and all the check-ins, I think are being used in a good way. GetGlue
has done a lot of, has a lot of relationships with the networks and they're doing some really
interesting things with retailers and offers.
So, I think we've seen some success in that area. And I think we talk about Twitter just
because it's easy for us to measure and follow Twitter, right? So, we probably talk about
them more even though there's more people on Facebook, fans of all of these shows, but
we just don't have as much information about them. Those are the two dominant ones, but
there's definitely others that are having impact.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: Back here.
>>Male #3: Yeah. Kind of going off that, we were talking about bringing television into
the social experience. But is there a reverse of the television experience coming into social--?
Like, partnering with Time Warner Cable. Almost doing like a user match, like "we know this
person is watching such and such right now. Why are not we not syncing up ads with that?"
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male #3: So, is there experimentation going on with that or what have you seen?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing that we're seeing, or the big need
that we're seeing across, is the need for single-source measurement. So, the ability
to be able to measure all media in a way that it's comparable.
So, television measurement and impressions have been around for a really long time--the
CPNs and GRPEs--and moving towards that in these other spaces is probably the place where
you see we're trying to sync up as most. There's definitely testing going on in that space.
I'm not familiar with any particular example, but I definitely think you'll see some testing
in that area.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: Back here.
>>Male #4: An example of combining old technology and new technology--. I'm asking for a friend
who just can't seem, my friend, Ellis, , who can't seem to find the document to ask. So,
forgive me if I'm losing the question in translation. But Ellie was curious to know that as you
talk about shifting budgets, is this interesting to clients because it's social or because
this is a digital of measurement. In essence, a digital layer applied to a television, which
traditionally, it doesn't offer the degree of granular measurement that digital sometimes
does?
Is the future demanding social elements as added value for TV buys, or are people warming
to the idea of buying digital content to cover off devices?
>>Stacey Shepatin: OK. There were a lot of questions there. So, the one that connected
with me the most was, "Do clients want it as added value?"
>>Male #4: Sure.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Of course they do.
[laughter]
Without a doubt. I mean, they still want digital as added value for our television buys. So,
it's hard to get clients to pay for something that they don't know what they're getting
for it, right? So, the measurement piece of it is important. Go back to the first part
of your question.
>>Male #4: Is this interesting to clients because it's social or because it's digital
with measurement?
>>Stacey Shepatin: It's interesting to clients because it's, you can see the power that these
people are having in this space. So, it's people are choosing to interact with your
brand. So, whether it's Facebook fans or people talking about it or voting or whatever it
is, we look at these as choice-based impressions, right?
People who are seeking out to comment, talk, and engage with your brand. So, that's why
it's important to them because these people have a lot of influence on other people. So
that's why they're paying attention because it's getting to a scale that they need to
pay attention to it.
>>Male #4: So, let me ask a follow-up question to that.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Male #4: How do assign a value then, to a tweet or a like, or any of these interactions?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. I don't know that I have the answer to that. That's what we're
trying to figure out. What is the value of that when you don't know how many people it's
really reaching? I don't know the answer, but we're working on it.
[pause]
>>Male Presenter: Back here?
>>Male #5: Hi.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Hi.
>>Male #5: From the examples you gave in the interactions that you see and that you're
trying to measure socially, it seems like this is all dependent upon the programming
being synchronously live, like happening at the same time. A lot of people are seeing
it at the same time. Is that a fair assessment?
>>Stacey Shepatin: I mean, a lot of it happens live--people watching it. So, you're asking
what happens in a DVR environment or when people aren't watching it at the same time?
Is it as relevant to them?
>>Male #5: Yeah. That's where I was going.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Male #5: Yeah.
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, yes and no. I think that the content creators are trying to figure
out how to make sure that all of this works in a DVR environment so it doesn't have to
happen live. I mean, with the voting stuff, it has to happen within two hours.
So, it somewhat has to happen live. But there are other things that are being created that
don't have to happen right within that hour time period. And that will allow you the couple
of days to watch the show and be a part of it. So, I think they understand that they
need to create it in a way that it would work in a time-shifted environment as well.
>>Male #5: OK. Thanks.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yup.
>>Male Presenter: Back here.
>>Male #6: Hi. How are you?
>>Stacey Shepatin: I'm good.
>>Male #6: My name's Matt. I think there's a number of folks here work in a sales capacity
at Google. And I'd just be curious, maybe you could give us a little advice. I think
social TV is probably a challenging sell because it feels somewhat unpredictable to a client.
I guess, both in the fact that you present them the idea of social and maybe they'd be
like, "Well, what are they gonna say about my brand?"
That's unpredictable. But also, I'm used to putting in money and getting out impressions
in a very linear, planned way throughout the course of the year. And that creates the things
I expect to be created at the time I expect it. And so, social TV has both those--or social
in general--has both those risks to them.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male #6: So, when you're talking to risk adverse clients--
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Male #6: we'd love to hear some of the tricks that you use and some of the ways you sell.
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, one of the things I've been--. There's probably two really important
things as we're selling these social TV programs through to our clients. The first is, we know
that it costs a lot of money to produce this additional content, right? It's not free to
create all of this companion content to the programming, to build the relationships with
GetGlue, and all of these other things.
But if the networks or content creators are gonna try and pass all of those costs onto
us, on the advertiser, it's not gonna happen because we don't really know what we're getting
out of it. So, there has to be a relationship there where we're in this together and we're
trying to figure it out together. So that's one.
And then, the second thing is building in measurement where we can figure out whether
this is really working or not because clients are only gonna test for so long. And if we
can't figure out if this is really working and having an impact on the brand, then they're
not gonna keep doing it. So, I would say those are the two keys when we're, what we need
from media partner as we're presenting these to our clients.
>>Male #6: Cool. And just a quick follow-up. Do you find that to be predictable, do you
find the outcomes that you expect generally happen for clients, or do you find that it's
all over the board what winds up happening in a social TV campaign?
>>Stacey Shepatin: I think some of it is predictable and some things work and some things don't.
I'm trying to think of a specific example of--. I think, intuitively, when we did the
synced ad test, and we haven't done it in reality yet. We're getting there with one
of our clients. And they do it in very near future.
I think, intuitively, we knew that a synced ad would bring it back up at least from that
second group that've seen a completely different ad, but we didn't know it was gonna come back
up as high as it did. So, if we're learning things like that, those are gonna be big wins
to be able to measure things like that. So, I would say, intuitively, a lot is reaffirmed,
but we're definitely learning and finding things that aren't what we expected.
>>Male #6: Thank you very much.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Mm-hmm.
>>Male Presenter: This one.
>>Male #7: Hi. First, I have a couple thoughts on TV versus social media that I wanna get
your feedback on. I think one of the reason why TV will stay powerful for a long time,
because I think it delivered the content in a very scheduled way and a centralized way,
whereas social media is very real-time.
But the information is also very scattered and very chaotic. And so, when people are
consuming the product, the information, in a very segmented way, people are still looking
for a real live event, almost in a way that, say, I know that on Sunday night at 9 PM that
I can watch "The Walking Dead." And then, I can have some event I can talk about.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Right.
>>Male #7: So, basis of the social needs of people want to get it together,--
>>Stacey Shepatin: Right.
>>Male #7: but social media wouldn't be able to provide that. Do you think that's--?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. I agree with you. I think the way Mike and I talk about it is
TV has always been social. It's just now, you can talk about it instantly, right? So
before, you used to go into work the next day and you have that water cooler, right?
It was a water cooler shows, those NBC comedies, "Seinfeld" or whatever.
You talk about it with your friends the next day. We talk about social media, and now it's
your virtual water cooler. You have the ability to talk to people about it right then in that
moment, or within a period of time, about the experience that you're having or have
just had. So, I don't think it's a huge shift in behavior, which is why I don't think television
is dying because people have always behaved this way.
Now, they just have a different outlet to do it--a more instant outlet to do it.
>>Male #7: Right. So, that leads to my second question, which is when it comes to implementing
the social media content, do you think the agencies are shifting of updating real-time
to say, do a bit of content almost the same way as how TV people do the content? Like,
every Tuesday I'm gonna post this kind of content. Every Wednesday--. Do you think that
will be some of the best practice that we'll do, or--?
>>Stacey Shepatin: You know, I don't know because we hear so much about content needing
to be on-demand and moving away from a schedule. So, I don't get the sense that the content
is being created and delivered on a schedule in the digital space. So, I'm not sure that
it's gonna be created that way because I think that they want people to be able to access
it whenever they wanna access it.
But I think you're right. I mean, I think there's this reassurance in knowing that there
is a television schedule and people know when things are gonna be on. And they set their
DVRs or they watch it on VOD, or they watch it on Hulu or Full Episode Play or within
a certain amount of time because they wanna be able to talk about it and experience it
with someone else.
So, I'm not sure that digital is gonna be on that same schedule.
>>Male #7: OK.
>>Stacey Shepatin: What do you think?
>>Male #7: I think it will eventually. And I think that's what YouTube is trying to do.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yes.
>>Male #7: They're trying to mock what TV is doing and have a set schedule, set channel.
And I think that's how media is always evolving after discovering--.
>>Stacey Shepatin: It makes it easier to find.
>>Male #7: Yeah. Like, how TV channels used to start with one channel with every program.
Then, they have different content for different industry.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah.
>>Male #7: Yeah. And my last question. I promise it's the last one.
[Stacey Shepatin laughs]
So, I think for branding, it's a lot related to how emotionally the consumer would be bonded
to the brands.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yep.
>>Male #7: And when you, when it comes to social media, do you think--? I think it's
still in the very early stage that it can, you really affect how people are emotionally
perceive the brand. What do you think of that?
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. I would agree with you. I think that's what I'm, why when I was
talking about before, you can have a big impact on how people perceive your brand. So, we
need to pay attention to what people are saying and make sure we're marketing appropriately
to them, to at least create an environment for them to talk positively about your brand.
>>Male #7: Do you have any specific measurement that you can use to measure against how emotionally
that impact on the brands on the consumers?
>>Stacey Shepatin: How measurement--?
>>Male #7: What kind of measurement that you are using to measure against how emotionally
that the information can have influence on the brands when it comes to social media?
>>Stacey Shepatin: So, we're working on putting those kinds of research tools in place to
be able to figure out what kind of impact that social conversation is having on our
brands. So, we're working through that now. I'm not sure what all the companies are that
we're using to get there.
But there's a lot of companies in this space that are measuring what people are saying.
And we just need to put it together in a way that it's usable for our clients.
>>Male #7: Thank you.
>>Male Presenter: OK. And I think we have a final question before we have to wrap up.
>>Female #4: I'll just wrap it up. Actually, he got a lot of my questions, too, but so
I have a new one. [laughs] I'm sure it's probably referenced in your book, but since we're here
in the home of Google, I'm just curious your perspective on YouTube as a social tool, how
that ties into the whole TV dynamic and how valuable it is or isn't.
>>Stacey Shepatin: YouTube in terms of how they're creating programming now, their distribution?
>>Female #4: Their brand. Really more for brand-building and brand association with
the content.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Yeah. That's a good question for Mike. And he's not here to answer it.
So, I mean, I think YouTube is valuable as a distribution for content--the YouTube channels
and branded channels as a distribution for the content we're creating. So, I mean, I
think it's very valuable. Its obviously has a tremendous reach.
So, we need to make sure that we're using it in the right way. I do think--not sure
this quite answers your question--but I do think, from a content standpoint, what they
are doing now with creating content and trying to compete with television programming is
going to be interesting to watch to see if people want to view programming and are willing
to experiment and test out that programming to gain some traction and some scale.
So, YouTube's a valuable platform. I'm not sure that quite answers your question, but
next time we'll bring Mike.
>>Female #4: Thanks.
>>Male Presenter: It's a good book, right?
[laughter]
>>Stacey Shepatin: And he'll answer that one for you.
>>Male Presenter: Well, Stacey, thank you so much. The book is "Social TV." We have
the lovely author here. And it's really a terrific book. I've read it from cover to
cover. It's a good resource, not only for folks in the media business like ourselves,
but even for anybody to have them basically understand how TV is really growing and what
once, TV was this fantastic medium and then it got beat down into this traditional standpoint.
It truly is a new medium and there's so many more outputs for it. But it's a terrific book.
Get yourself a copy. If you need to find it, just email me at my LDAP. R-C-B-E-R-T-O at
Google dot com. And thanks so much for your time.
>>Stacey Shepatin: Thank you.
[applause]
>>Male Presenter: And thank you.