Paul McIntyre: Advertising, editorial blending

There were plenty of droopy faces leaving the French Riviera resort of Cannes last weekend as Australian and New Zealand advertising executives returned with a lighter haul of "Lions" than most had expected at the annual advertising awards bash.

Outside of the outrageous volumes of beer consumed in Cannes, there were some serious messages emanating from the likes of News Corp's Lachlan Murdoch, who spent four days debating his way through the huge implications for media owners and corporates trying to gain the attention of increasingly distracted consumers. Murdoch told some of the 8000 delegates that the traditional two or three-minute TV advertising break was a "stupid idea" which encouraged people to change channels.

Unlike two days earlier when he was heckled by the crowd delivering a speech, Murdoch was left alone to espouse News Corp's strategy for dealing with emerging media threats and the erosion of consumer attention towards traditional media.

He said News Corp's TV operations were experimenting with ways to keep people from channel surfing by continuing aspects of TV programming into both shorter and longer form ad breaks and by extending TV show content into advertisers' commercial messages.

"The traditional pod of two or three minutes is a stupid idea," he said. "It tells people 'let's change the channel or let's fast forward'." And Murdoch said "cross platform" advertising deals across all News Corp's media assets of newspapers, pay and free-to-air TV, book publishing, the internet and film studios was an area of renewed focus for the company. He indicated advertising deals with increased collaboration between editorial and programming was a priority.

This was a key media theme to come through at Cannes this year and one which will hit Australian and New Zealand media companies between the eyes.

The crossover was everywhere in the entries for the Media Lions competition this year. TV programmes and news bulletins are stopped in their tracks for unexpected commercial messages that don't look like ads - Clorox, for example, was behind a tricky execution where a high-rating TV show was paused by a broadcaster as the colour faded to black and white and returned to colour again to push the attributes of Clorox products.

Many newspaper and magazine ad campaigns were headed that way too. Editorial layouts in several newspapers, for example, were reworked to accommodate commercial messages such as a razor using Nivea shaving gel gliding down the guts of a European newspaper story - the editorial content wrapped around the ad.

In a Japanese newspaper, a robotic vacuum cleaner sucked editorial copy off the page and won a Lion for the effort. And a South American men's magazine cover carried a model which could be undressed by the reader to promote a male deodorant.

The blurring trend was everywhere and, as the international media jury made clear, much, much more of this stuff is to come. "There are certainly some countries where the ability to manipulate content is far more available than others," said the Media Lions jury president Mark Stewart. "Whether that's a good thing or not is yet to be known but, ultimately, I think consumers will dictate the amount to which it can be pushed." That means media buyers, advertisers and willing media owners will keep going until audiences and readers jack up.

The Australian Media judge this year at Cannes and chief operating officer of media buyer Starcom, John Sintras, says the developments in this area were "mind-blowing".

"A lot of it is copy interruption or intrusion, albeit in an engaging way," he said. "But it's just not welcome in our marketplace at this point in time. We have a relatively conservative media industry in terms of what it will allow to happen, which I wouldn't have thought was the case, going into Cannes."

Sintras plays down the traditional argument from media companies that commercial encroachment on editorial and programming compromises the viewing or reading experience - and of course he would. He's a media buyer on the hunt for good deals for clients. But Sintras argues the evidence so far shows people are not turning off these new blurred media tactics.

"Does it piss people off? All I can say is, on the entries we saw there are business results.

"There's more and more of this happening around the world and I can't believe that it would be happening if it was turning people off in droves."

If commercial imperatives count for anything then expect even the most conservative media companies to capitulate on this front. The old demarcation between editorial and advertising is fading.

* Paul McIntyre is a Sydney journalist