By David L. Rawle
Contributing Writer

They are ubiquitous—iPods. And they may catalyze a seminal change in how marketers reach their customers.

What began as merely a MP3 music player has morphed into a compact, elegantly designed, easy-to-use, reasonably priced, eminently portable connection to videos, books, information and even its own media term, “podcasts.”

The revolution has begun.

Expanding options

So what does that mean for us marketers?

For openers, it makes us publishers.

Suppose you’ve produced a TV or radio spot, a print ad or a billboard. You’ve placed the media to run in the right time to the right target audience, in accordance with your research.

Why not inexpensively take the assets you’ve already created and publish them on your Web site and let your Web users know that they are there?

Give your Web users the opportunity to experience your brand or message on their time and in the format that they wish.

And why not go further?

For example, instead of limiting the length of your broadcast spot to 30 seconds, as restricted by the media buy, take the extra footage you shot and edit it to produce a two-minute spot.

That’s what Honda has done with a beautiful Honda Civic spot/movie, and it was downloaded more than 800,000 times in one week.

There’s an explosion of online entertainment, information and marketing messages.

Since we can now download them onto our iPods, they are readily available to listen and watch when and where we want.

And we won’t just be enjoying them on the mini-sized iPod screen. We’ll be hooking up our iPods to computers or televisions. Suddenly there is complete portability and flexibility.

Consumers will truly rule.

Measuring digital impact

In this burgeoning world of online media, one of the issues that marketers will need to grapple with is the issue of the relevance of audience size. With broadcast, print and most out-of-home (billboard) media, researchers estimate audience size based upon a variety of methods.

But these are only estimates, and we never know for absolute certain how many people have seen or heard our commercial message.

Since online media is more measurable, marketers will inevitably place a higher value on one individual who has chosen to download a specific message versus an individual who may (or may not) have seen the message on television or in a magazine.

But how much more value?

That’s the unresolvable debate.

Meanwhile, iPod sales continue to be strong. A recent survey found that 11% of adults, an estimated 22 million Americans, own an iPod or other MP3 player. The numbers are much greater if you include teens.

Advertisers large and small are already doing podcasts. Some of the big advertisers podcasting include Heineken (www.heinekenmusic.com), Volvo (www.autoblog.com), and Gatorade (www.enduranceradio.com).

Marketing map

So what’s the bottom line for most marketers?

Follow the trend. It’s not a fad.

Consider how you can repurpose your marketing messages in longer and shorter forms online.

Identify segments of your target audience that might respond positively to a podcast and give it a try.

Check out what others are doing, both in your own industry and beyond.

Get some advice from professionals who have studied this landscape.

And, most importantly, recognize the consumer benefits of marketing through iPods: time-shifting, portability, user control and global coverage.

Consumers value these benefits, so you may want to consider how you can integrate them into your company’s value proposition.

David L. Rawle is chairman of Charleston-based Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., a marketing, advertising and public relations firm. E-mail him at drawle@rawlemurdy.com or visit his blog at http://davidrawle.blogspot.com i>

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