Do Consumers Really Want Cross Platform Technology?

By Chris Averill, CEO of CADinteractive

Having recently been involved in interviewing home users of a new Internet connection device, I have been constantly challenged on what cross platform and technology convergence actually means - or indeed if people want it.

Traditionally the term “Cross Platform” meant “write once, use anywhere”,  and was typically related to computer programmes. However, with the emergence of WAP and interactive TV, a lot of new products, services and content have become known as cross platform compatible. These range from simple reading the BBC news on your mobile to setting your SKY+ on your PC through SlingBox or updates on tube delays alerts via SMS.

Publishing has seen a massive uptake of cross platform content but few have made it pay. Most are worried about how free online content will erode paid for content of traditional channels.

Newspapers are keen to see their traditional customers consuming content from them all day; SMS news headlines in the morning, read the paper on the train and the website at work. The idea being that the initial SMS headlines will create a compulsion to buy the paper and the website will reinforce the brand all day.

EMAP are aligning themselves as cross platform content leaders through most of their publications and brands.

FHM content is available to download to your PSP or browsable through your mobile, whilst music channels and video can be downloaded to your iPod and consumed on the go. No doubt it will not be long before the other EMAP brands follow Magic FM in bringing music videos to dedicated web channels and in the future, interactive VOD services.

Consumers Want A Consistent Experience
Our research shows that no matter what the platform, the consumer wants a consistent experience. Once upon a time, Internet on your TV was the big thing – It never worked. Why? Because no one really wanted it. It was pushed on the consumer because it was technically possible. No one cared that TV screen resolution was so poor a web page was unreadable.

However with a fresh new approach - TV on your PC - It becomes a great idea! Most computers are more than capable of displaying broadcast and streamed video to as high a quality as your home TV, provided you have the extras to receive it.

So, do people want clever TVs?  Let’s face it no one really complained about the ease of use or quality of analogue TV.  5 channels, a colour screen and the up and down channel button seemed to work fine for most.

Again our research into interactive TV shows that it’s still TV. Most consumers will spend a lot of their time watching linear TV, not interacting, buying or reading synopsis.

If you ignore the customer’s key needs, “I want to watch TV”, then you’ll do irreparable damage to your brand. Don’t add some technical wizardry just to be different, or because you can - it doesn’t work!

Basic Research Can Save Millions
What’s the best way of understanding what your customers want? Ask them. Find out what they do and how you can improve their experience.

SKY asked their customers what they did other than watch TV and found, surprisingly, that a large proportion recorded digital radio on their SKY+ so they could listen to their favourite shows when they got back from work or when the kids were at school or in bed.

SKY created the Gnome, a portable radio that lets you listen to all your SKY TV and radio channels as well as anything you recorded on SKY+, so now you can listen to Wogan or Ross in the bath whenever you want.

Which brings me back to the 64 million dollar question “Do consumers really want cross platform technology?”

Find A Simple proposition
Devices like BT’s HomeHub may well turn out to be the answer. Customers may well see it primarily as a wireless box that connects their PCs to the Internet and, through the supplied phone, also allows them to make free calls over the Internet. 

The addition of BT’s interactive TV service, BT Vision, extends the HomeHub to become a multimedia device, thus the users perception is that the HomeHub is also delivering the video content.

Add TV Anywhere ability to the HomeHub and you are able watch your TV and VOD on your PC anywhere in the world, suddenly you have cross platform content on any device you want.

The key to success in selling cross platform content is the simplicity of both the proposition and the solution. SKY has been very successful at this because they have the content people want to watch, and provide the ability to record it simply, to be watched at their leisure.

Interactive TV is sold as a very different proposition, “Complete control of your TV viewing”, but the reality, shown through our research, is usually hard to navigate screen menus, confusion between VOD, live and recorded programmes, too much choice and, once you find it, the same content that is available on the satellite.

A new raft of content and devices will emerge on the market over the next 12 month, purporting to be cross-platform. The ones that will succeed are those that have put the customer’s needs first, have been tested and provide the same quality of service and ease of use that the customer was used to before, but now with things that make his life easier.

I think this quote from a recent research participant pretty much hits the nail on the head.

“I’ll pay extra for SKY+, mobile voice mail or caller line identity as it does not change what I used to do, but enhances my experience.”

A simple lesson for us all.

www.cadinteractive.com