Open Channels
Open Channels (as here defined) is a new marcoms concept. Something follows from the freedom of disciplines and media. You can put a discipline, any discipline, into a medium, any medium: a discipline or indeed a mix of disciplines in a medium creates a channel. Open Channels creatively and rigorously optimises the channel mix.
This is not only liberating for creative talent and an advantage when trying to achieve cost efficiencies, it is also key to enabling consent-based communication: biased thinking precludes self-segmenting customers. Open Planning means you can truly find out what works best or is most acceptable to the recipient and use those techniques.
Planning in the age of consent needs these liberating and more rigorous concepts because it is clearly proven that maximising effectiveness and efficiency of communication requires optimising the mix of media and disciplines in ways that work for the recipients. Like a single malt, the optimum mix might just be a single discipline in a single medium, for example to achieve a scale effect; an example is the Buenos Aires property firm that built a pedestrian bridge to promote its new office and shopping centre. But for most practitioners, most of the time, synergy effects come from great blends. For example, even the property firm used PR to highlight the bridge.
Examples
- Ford invented and subsidised the StreetKa as a brand advertisement
- IBM sponsored a special interest European conference in order to ensure access to a key decision maker
- Levi Strauss created 'pop-up' stores: portable structures open for just two hours, location disseminated by viral SMS.
- Tesco invented "One in Front" and spent 10 times more on staff than advertising
- VNU is adopting value selling to improve sales channel effectiveness
- Yves Saint Laurent used Integration over several years to refine its contact strategy. Integration's research enabled YSL to select amongst media and disciplines on a more effective basis.