The days of family TV viewing may be over, but marketers can still bring us together
Collective content consumption used to be about the whole family gathering around the only TV in the house to watch Only Fools and Horses or The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special. Nowadays, the closest we get to this is the annual X-Factor finale, and even then, interest in the show has waned over the years and families are most likely to do this from separate rooms, on different devices, and probably at different times.
Today’s consumers, whatever their age, have access to virtually limitless personal entertainment, all of which can be hyper-personalised so all tastes and ages can be catered for separately. This has had a dramatic effect on the way families live and are entertained; so much so, that architects are now designing homes differently. An article in the Architects Journal, looking at the planning for future residents, notes that “the assumption that a house is only a home for family life is changing. Not only is the home now a digital centre in its own right, both for entertainment and services, but also increasingly a workplace”.
Often to blame are the advances in technology. With people constantly glued to their mobile phones – even at the dinner table – we are all engrossed in our own private worlds. It’s been reported recently in the Daily Telegraph that children are more isolated than ever, play less board and outdoor games and have fewer friends than previous generations, blamed in part on the increase in digital consumption and individual activities.
One could argue that festivals and shared physical experiences such as sporting and theatrical events are the last bastions of real shared connectedness and as the festival season gets well underway, it’s interesting to see how this form of entertainment has evolved from a youth orientated fringe culture, into the mainstream multi-billion pound industry it is today.
Experiencing a live event together is often the only way to bring several generations together simultaneously and now there are plenty to choose from. LolliBop and Hay Fever (the children’s version of the Hay Literary Festival) are specifically aimed at families and increasingly even the ‘grown-up festivals’ such as Camp Bestival, Shambala and Latitude, are now considered family friendly and open to all.
So how can content creators, marketers and advertisers ever compete with this form of real-life consumption? And will we ever get a Morecambe and Wise moment back?
We need to think less about forcing everyone to go back to sitting around one screen and think more broadly about how we allow people to get connected in the modern world. There are apps out there that are reversing the trend of pure individual behaviour and allowing people to share what they are experiencing with others.
CrowdFlik is an app that allows users to share their video footage with others in the same location, not just with friends and family, but with total strangers. Whether at a wedding, sporting event or gig, the footage can be aggregated by users to create one streamlined film, incorporating everyone’s collective point of view; so someone at the back of the festival can get to see the perspective of someone on the front row, and use this footage as a shareable compilation of their favourite moments.
Technology such as this allows total strangers to connect in a way that actually heightens their physical experience. It is our human desire for togetherness and wanting to share our experiences with others that compels us to connect in this way; and we are doing it more and more.
With this kind of interactiveness becoming ever popular, smart marketers need to work in a way that allows consumers to connect, interact and ultimately engage again. Family entertainment in no longer about television, and its unlikely we’ll get another Morecambe and Wise moment again, but we all still want to be entertained, and we might well be able to do that in a way that connects us better than ever.
Sam Williams-Thomas is CEO of OgilvyOne UK