Owned, Bought and Earned Media
March 2, 2009
[NB UPDATED POST on this topic: http://danielgoodall.com/2009/05/20/owned-bought-and-earned-redux/]
At Nokia we have been using the following simple model for our Digital Media Planning for about a year now.
Like all good models, it is designed to be very, very simple.
Owned Media
Obviously one of the things available to you is your own web site. With Nokia it gets a bit more complex, since we have so many media that we “own”: www.nokia.mobi (perhaps the most visited mobile site in the world?), MyNokia (Nokia’s CRM program), all of our service sites (ovi.com, ngage.com, nokia music), as well as more niche sites like beta labs etc. Quite a few options, before any media has even been bought: my team is currently planning to pull together a kind of internal media bank to keep track of all the options in terms of Nokia’s own media.
Bought Digital Media
This clearly has a role, although often it is overemphasized by agencies who make money out of percentages of media spend. Banners have a role in terms of awareness, but I’m not a fan of buying media in general, except when the creative proposition is great. Mostly, I see it as a necessary evil, except with search marketing, which is more interesting to me as it is less interuptive.
Earned Media
IMO, this is where the action is. This is where you have done something so cool or interesting that people want to use their own media to tell others about it, and hence you earn media. I am currently reading this brilliant analysis of why things spread from the guys at MIT. They claim that content is shared (and therefore Media is Earned) because of three main factors relating to the dynamics of groups.
- To bolster camaraderie and articulate the (presumably shared) experiences and values that identify oneself as belong to a particular community (“bolstering their identity”)
- To gather information and explain difficult to understand events or circumstances.
- To establish the boundaries of an “in-group”.
Good stuff.
Some people think that Earning Media is about getting free space when budgets are tight. In my experience, Earning Media is a not necessarily a cheap option, and is certainly more time-consuming than buying media with big networks. More importantly, Earning Media is about engaging with consumers on their terms and gaining trust based on genuine understanding. Consumers don’t trust advertising, but they do trust peer recommendation. As long as brands don’t abuse this situation, then this leads to better quality, more authentic and more relevant marketing.
You can of course go into much more detail with each of these. And there are interesting overlaps. But in general, it is a simple model that has been useful in our digital planning.
March 3, 2009 at 5:30 am
Your point about earned media not being cheap is an important one that not enough people seem to get – the number of marketers that think they can ‘buy’ a few bloggers before sitting back and letting the revenue roll in still scares me. As you say, it’s about engagement and becoming part of a community.
Top stuff, sir.
March 3, 2009 at 10:33 pm
the other thing, of course, is that there’s no guarantee you’ll earn yourself that media space. that goes back to your point about investing time as much as cash. so there’s calculated risk that you take on…which when done right, pays off.
i guess it helps to have a certain brand history (and experience you get from learning along the way), and (maybe) to keep having the guts to keep going out and earning it.
March 5, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I think the age old add-value-marketing-thinking is extremely spot on when it comes to earned media. Offering something that adds value in certain communities is nicely explained in MIT’s split.
Btw. I thought it was JP’s team
March 5, 2009 at 9:45 pm
[...] If you are interested how we are planning our digital media activities at Nokia, I recommend you to read Dan’s post about owned, bought and earned media. [...]
March 9, 2009 at 2:56 pm
[...] of my colleagues posted online the model we’ve been using for planning our digital marketing. If you are involved in this kind of [...]
April 17, 2009 at 9:56 am
[...] on the web. The way to get people’s attention in this most Darwinian of environments is to earn it be creating genuine value. This can be usefulness (think Google Maps and the value it brings to so [...]
April 27, 2009 at 1:51 pm
[...] The Owned Bought and Earned Media mix model has been useful for explaining why we need to move away from just buying media space, but it sometimes causes people to focus on the quantity of buzz, rather than the quality. The dreaded plague of viral marketing is a symptom of this way of thinking, where size of audience is everything. Consumer engagement is outdated if the aim is just reach: in that case it is really no different to the old PR models. [...]
May 20, 2009 at 7:22 am
[...] we have had a go at re-drawing our Media Trinityto reflect some discussions we were having about this. We were discussing how the original Venn [...]
October 21, 2009 at 8:47 am
[...] Holmgren jakoi median kolmeen osaan: maksettu, omistettu ja ansaittu media. Maksettua mediaa ovat esimerkiksi televisio, radio ja printtimedia. Omistettua mediaa ovat yrityksen omat syötteet, blogit, yhteisöt, verkkokauppa, suora posti, jotka maksavat nekin. Ansaittua mediaa ovat esimerkiksi vertailut, asiakaspalaute ja PR. Teemu Arina visersi Twitterissä myös alkuperäisen lähteen. [...]
October 29, 2009 at 11:59 pm
[...] statt, sondern (dezentral) an verschiedenen “Plätzen” im Web. Siehe hierzu auch den Beitrag von Daniel Goodall. FÜr die Web-Erfolgsmessung stellt sich hierbei die Frage, was sind die KPIs und Methoden zur [...]
November 27, 2009 at 10:08 am
[...] If you’re not familiar with the Bought / Owned / Earned model, I’d strongly recommend this excellent post by Daniel Goodall for a clear and succinct overview. Earned ‘media’ (I think media is a [...]
January 1, 2010 at 2:27 pm
[...] the media options they have today. Nokia was an early pioneer in this space (see Dan Goodall's posts on the subject). They now categorize all of their global interactive media as earned, owned or [...]
January 3, 2010 at 2:57 pm
[...] media options they have today. Nokia was an early pioneer in this space (see Dan Goodall’s posts on the subject). They now categorize all of their global interactive media as earned, owned or [...]
January 30, 2010 at 12:15 am
Your blog is excellent. I m gonna read more, ty for info. Continue working on blog.
February 7, 2010 at 9:09 am
[...] U tom kontekstu, u nekoliko prethodnih meseci iskristalisala se jednostavna podela svih medija na sopstvene medije, “zaslužene” medije i plaćene medije, koju je za potrebe definisanja svoje strategije korišćenja savremenih medija među prvima iskoristila komp…. [...]
February 7, 2010 at 11:12 pm
[...] varagic - Sopstveni, zasluženi i plaćeni mediji CITAT: ……U tom kontekstu, u nekoliko prethodnih meseci iskristalisala se jednostavna podela svih medija na sopstvene medije, “zaslužene” medije i plaćene medije, koju je za potrebe definisanja svoje strategije korišćenja savremenih medija među prvima iskoristila komp…………. [...]