The Message or The Medium: Debate Now!

Posted by Scott Shamberg / November 21, 2008 3:51 pm 

Originally published at iMedia Connection

Here at our agency, we have a program called Beer Camp.  Contrary to how it sounds, this is not some type of half-assed training program for the exceedingly popular sport of Beer Pong.

Beer Camp is a once a month opportunity for anyone in the company to lead a discussion about any topic they are passionate about.  This can range from obviously relevant topics, like web development or social media, to the not-so-obvious, like American Idol and self-defense.

Inspired by a scene from the last episode of Mad Men, I partnered with Heidi Skinner, our Director of Emerging Media, to lead a debate about what is more important, the message or the medium.  We had a room full of people from multiple disciplines – media, technology, creative, content, project and account management.

“It will take two seconds to find some kid that can write a prose poem to a potato chip.”

“Wow, Duck, you really value creative, huh?”

So here are the points and counterpoints for each side that we started with:

The Message:

1.  Emotion: More than ever before, consumers need to feel connected to brands.  Emotional messaging achieves that.

2.  Influence: A channel cannot influence a buying decision.

3.  Authentic: The message is how brands communicate authenticity because that message is based on an insight into the consumer’s preference.

4.  Relevance: If done right, content can be created to take advantage of the environment a channel provides.

The Medium:

1.  Acceptability: Youth marketing is always redefining the parameters of what is acceptable.  It’s less about articulation; it’s about making it easy.

2.  Fragmentation: Increase in clutter requires shorter messages.

3.  Credibility: The brand creative is not as credible as it used to be.  People trust lackluster messaging, as long as it comes from trusted and relevant environments.

4.  Social shopping: Ratings and reviews are driven not by the message but by the environment and experience of the channel.

5.  Influencers: Do people listen to influencers based on what they say or because they work hard to build up their own channel?

6.  Time: We have to be conscious of the time a consumer has to spend, and the channels in which they choose to spend that time.

Let the debate begin…

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  • http://natearcher.ca/ Nate Archer

    I was originally going to reply with a response stating that the message always trumps the medium. However, after thinking about it I came to the conclusion that both are trumped by something else. While people in advertising hold advertising in high regard (a little too obvious, I know), it is merely serves as a substitute for the true product or service. No matter how good the message is, or how well used the medium is, both will always be overshadowed by the product or service in question.

  • http://www.socialhallucinations.com Daria

    That’s kind of strange debate, it is like debating about superiority of X-mass over Eastern. One can’t exist without another. You need medium to communicate the message. The medium needs the message to exist. Both are equally important – media as tools and messages as content (stories, information, etc.)…

  • http://courtneykuehn.wordpress.com Courtney Kuehn

    Nate – I agree. The product/service/thing needs to make sense for the consumer’s lifestyle. Obviously if there’s no relevancy or the product basically sucks, the game is over before it even started.

  • Jason

    The experience is the message and the experience is the platform — product, messaging, customer service, product instructions, packages, platforms they are experienced on and in…You can’t have a platform without a message (silence would be a message in itself)and you can’t have a message without a platform. McLuhan resolved this in the 70′s.

  • Anna Mer

    I agree that to have a successful media campaign all of the following must work together to create a unified front for the brand: product/service, messaging, and distribution channels. While product/service drives channel and messaging, we usually end up with channel driving messaging or vise versa when it comes to planning. So which one is right? It’s definitely based on situation (ideally we’d have these two elements work hand in hand … although we know that’s easier said than done), yet in our current push towards emerging media and exploring beyond just display, I believe channel should drive messaging. When looking at the social space, you can’t just have a conversation about your brand and hope your consumer will find it and agree with you; a brand must first crawl the social space, find its audience, listen to what they’re already saying and then join the conversations with an in-sync message. I believe the further we get into the emerging media space, the more channel will drive messaging.

  • Lisa Weinstein

    Ultimately, in a perfect world, I agree with Nate -the product must be of quality. How about taking a step back and figuring out what makes sense regarding the campaign’s objective. I say, the medium or channel is more important for branding. The way a message is conveyed and the environment it lives in will affect how consumers think of the brand. Are they doing something new, cool, hip, etc? The message is more important for direct response. This works well with sales events, promotions, deals and driving traffic. If I had to make a choice, I personally would choose the medium as the winner, because I strongly believe the context in which the message lives in is more important to the message itself in today’s fast-paced world.

  • Heidi Skinner

    I think they both need to be in harmony. It’s like Ying and Yang.

    Re: The product – Sometimes the product is good, but it’s not sexy enough to talk about. That creates a real challenge in developing the message. In many cases the creative use of a new medium or the value we provide within the channel helps us a)associate the brand with the technology/or medium, and b)gives consumers something to talk about.

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