Mark Cridge usually has something useful to say – but buried at the bottom of his latest piece in NMA was a gem;
“Right across this full spectrum of bought, owned and earned media, the opportunity is for agencies to work with clients to understand how they can find their true and consistent voice across each of these media.”
While I agree with the sentiment – its the simple taxonomy for a brand’s relationship with media (and thus audiences) into these three categories of bought, owned and earned, that really appealed – it makes a complex world of swirling media opportunities just that much simpler to see. Perhaps too simple?Bought
Owned
Earned Shared Participatory
Having read Matt’s piece I feel there is a need for a coda to this piece. If I have an issue with Cridge’s definition it is this use of ‘earned’ – it still implies some level of control or choice on behalf of the brand – and as Matt’s post on sexting points out – that is an illusion at best. We assume (safely) that consumers have their own interests at heart, rarely if ever, those of the brand. A such brands will earn the media they deserve, and they don’t always deserve good media; think of spoofs, bad customer reviews and the like.
A term I’ve used in the past is ‘shared’ and it’s perhaps a more accurate description of the media that the brand’s marketing department is aiming for; media that the audience take and distribute amongst themselves. It’s not perfect however it goes some way to redress the balance of the audience’s role.
But it doesn’t allow for all of the different permutations of ‘media’ that audiences create / distribute / contribute to. I think this is the thing I’d want to emphasize as being different to ‘bought’ and ‘owned’ media in which the audience’s role is largely passive – both can exist (for a while at least) without any audience involvement – but this audience media requires the active participation of the audience for its very existence – hence ‘participatory’ media. As Matt points out, even the so-called ‘viral’ is owned media until the audience take it and distribute it. Participatory is not as clean and neat a descriptor as ‘bought’ and ‘owned’ – but I feel that’s appropriate – it’s just not as clean and neat.
[...] ← Cridge in NMA: Useful categories for media [...]
I’m not sure you need to drop ‘earned’ in favour of ‘participatory’ media.
In fact if anything the more I think about this the more it is ‘bought’ and ‘owned’ that irk me. The reason for this is that i’m struggling to think of many examples of a brand owning media that they haven’t bought. In fact the bought, owned earned model seems less of a taxonomy and more of a hierarchy. That is to say one first buys their media, which in turn means they own it but this means nothing unless it earns success (however we might judge that).
Earned media then is the essence of social media as it is talked about, shared, distributed by the audience with minimal work on the part of the brand. In short the media earns its success by virtue of the quality of the content.
Hmmm I need to think more about this but i’m reticent to jettison ‘earned’ media from the equation just yet.
[...] been wrestling with Leo’s recent thoughts on bought, owned and earned media. In so doing i’ve come to a new epiphany that has [...]
Hi there!
The Owned, Bought and Earned “media trinity” is something we at Nokia have been using for over a year now in our digital media planning.
Last year Isobar/Glue took part in our RFP, and so saw the model we use. Glad to see that Mark thinks so highly of it
http://danielgoodall.com/2009/03/02/owned-bought-and-earned-media/
As I say in the post above, the model (or taxonomy) is a simplification, but it has helped get our message across to people in the company who previously were concerned with only buying media space.
Where I think it can be improved – and where I think I am agreeing with Matt – is that Earned Media is not really a discreet set of tactics (perhaps some influencer outreach?), but is primarily about the intelligent use of Bought and Own(ed) media.
[...] See Mark Cridge’s NMA piece here and the good follow-on discussion here. [...]