At February's iMedia Brand Summit, OMD's Joe Uva described what may unfold in the future of measured media.

Joe Uva is President and CEO of OMD, one of the largest and most innovative media communications specialists in the world. OMD had the distinction of winning more honors at the 51st International Advertising Festival than any of its competitors, taking home the Grand Prix and three Media Lions.

OMD U.S. was formed in 2002 through the media consolidation of three of the most creatively awarded advertising agencies: BBDO, DDB and TBWA. OMD’s powerhouse domestic network delivers unmatched creativity and media innovation to Cingular, Bank of New York, Visa, FedEx, Georgia Natural Gas, PepsiCo, Wrigley, Chicago Tribune, Dell, Hormel, LensCrafters, JCPenney, Sterling Jewelers, Hershey and Hertz.

Uva presented the keynote address at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point on February 8th. Here's the first third of that speech:

Joe Uva: Good morning. And thanks for having me here today. For those of you in the back of the room, please no heckling. Don’t say “please stand up.” I am standing. This is as tall as I get. And believe it or not, this is casual for me; ask Sean Finnegan, he can tell you.

Actually I’m delighted to be here today and have an opportunity to talk to you all. There are just a couple of things I want to share with you before I start the speech. First and foremost, you’re going to be looking at the top of my head quite a bit because I need to read my notes. Unfortunately I couldn’t memorize everything that goes along with the slides. So I’m not being rude. I’m trying to be informative and hopefully I’ll talk loud enough so you’ll hear me in the back of the room. And what I’d like to do is really have you focus on … there are a number of slides in this presentation. There are probably three that I really hope you pay attention to because they kind of capture the essence of this topic and really crystallize this whole concept of how we, as marketers and consumers, are going to deal in this ever changing environment. 

And I’ve got to ask over there, which of these buttons changes the slides? The top one. Let’s see if it works. Oh, how ‘bout that? Okay.

How many people in this room have heard of a guy named Isaac Richards? Anybody? How many people in this room have heard of something called “Myth TV”? Okay, well Isaac Richards is a guy who got really frustrated with his cable operator and he started to develop a software program that turned his PC into the ultimate digital set top box, complete with TiVo capabilities and web search capabilities. And he has made this software available for free to people. So you have a lot of people out there right now who are using their PCs as a digital set top box. I bring that up just to set a little bit of context because everything we talk about here does not contemplate that world. When you add that layer of complexity and innovation on top of this, things start to get really interesting. 

As you saw on that first slide, and as you all know, we live in an increasingly complex media world. As a consumer, and as a media executive, I am absolutely enthralled with this world. And I’m constantly challenged on how we’re going to manage it, not only what I do with it in my house, but how do I help my clients to understand it and capitalize on it?

One thing I know is that I need help; you need help; all the consumers need help when it comes to this world. Well, in thinking about this I came up with a notion of what I’ll call the media concierge. And the media concierge is the way to manage this ever-changing media environment. It’s what I’d like to spend the next few minutes talking to you about. But before we look into the future, let’s take a look at where we are right now.

The theme of this conference, today the consumer is control -- no surprise. And they’re going to be in more control as time goes on.

They’re empowered to decide where and when they can be marketed to. And they use their remote controls, their TiVos, their Blackberries, their cell phones, customized webpages, Video on Demand and satellite services to help them manage their day, manage their time and consume electronic and digital media today. Now these devices really help the consumer get back their most valuable commodity, which is time. They’re already adept editors. I mean think about it. Every one of us, we get up in the morning, whether it’s through a clock radio, an alarm on our cell phone, whatever, and we are bombarded with messages from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed. And we have become incredible censors. We know what to filter out. We know when to filter it out. We know when we’re receptive for a certain message in a certain environment. All of these skills that we’ve acquired and developed in the cognitive processes that we go through are now being amplified and giving the consumer more control through these devices.

So, coming soon to a living room near you -- the media concierge. And with it will be another major shift in consumer control.

So what does a media concierge do exactly? Well, we put out a want ad and I included a job description in it. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read it in the brochure for the Summit, let me just take a minute and tell you what my view of what a media concierge does. First, it’s an on-the-premises concierge that oversees media entering and leaving my home. It must be able to multi-task. Its primary responsibilities include: recommending and selecting media for consumption; scheduling appointments and devices for consumption; must be able to handle specific requests I make; it must locate and record information of value to me while allowing me to avoid information or content which I have no interest in; it must assist me in making transactions with third parties; and it must act as a janitor or custodian for my files. It also must allow my behavior and habits to be measured by others while protecting my privacy. We put the call out in December and by January 5th at the Consumer Electronics Show the marketplace responded in force.

First DIRECTV stepped up and applied for the job with what they call “The Home Media Center,” which enables you to move content from your DVR to other devices, and [provides] services that will get deployed, again, to help consumers manage their time more effectively. But there are other candidates who weighed in quickly with their own credentials. There’s a team of Microsoft and HP [editor's note: for more on this partnership visit here] that provides software to allow media to be networked across multiple devices like the TV, the PC, the PDA and your cell phone. Samsung is building television sets that are able to use advanced services from Time Warner Cable and Charter, that don’t require the use of a separate set top box. Currently those sets don’t work on other cable systems, such as Comcast. Digio is offering a set top box with video recording capability and other features that they would distribute through the cable operator, very similar to TiVo’s relationship with DIRECTV. And SBC is trying to bypass the cable companies altogether by offering video service through their high-speed DSL connections. And of course, Microsoft has to be in the game twice, so they applied for the job by themselves this time. They’re creating software for use in cable boxes that’s under test in Comcast systems as we speak. They’re supporting internet television offerings by SBC and Bell South. And they’re announcing a deal to make MTV music videos available to users of Windows PC, Media Center PCs. 

But who’ll win the prize and who’ll get the job as our concierge? Frankly I don’t know. Size, price, ease of use will surely play key roles in that determination. The PC and TV manufacturers will fight over the new territory. And no doubt the gaming consoles are also going to try to get in on the act. News Corporation and Sony, and other consumer electronic companies, will fight tooth and nail to put their solutions into the mix as well.

At OMD we hypothesize that a new model will emerge, one that features subsidized or free hardware to help drive growth and penetration. Rupert Murdock did this very successfully in the UK with Sky Interactive. And today there is an extremely high penetration and adoption rate of interactive television in the UK. We don’t see why that model can’t and won’t be deployed here over the near-term future.

But more important than who gets the nod and gets the approval and wins the game is what will the impact be on our lives? How is this media concierge going to fit into our lives? Well, as more and more devices and functionality converge, the more the end user will control the intake of content, and once and for all, we will all truly be what we call “Masters of the Universe.”

And this will change the media landscape once again. If you look at the landscape we have today, you can see there’s an awful lot of stuff being produced, packaged, distributed on a variety of devices that we have in our home, that are available to us in a mobile situation. And when you get to the PDA and cell phone they can go anywhere; and there's media consumed at the office as well.

But this new environment and the emergence of these home media networks and centers will put the media concierge right in the middle of it all.

It’ll truly change the dynamics of how media is accessed, creating new forces for media consumptions. Massive increases in choice and flexibility will mean that consumers aren’t going to passively interact with our messaging anymore. They’ll need to seek it out and pull it. No longer will the interruptive model of communications be relevant, and finally we’ll see the rise of the engagement model we’ve all talked about for so long. Blurred boundaries -- it’s an idea that in a digital world the media are less distinct. In some markets around the world, more people are getting their digital radio via their TV and PC than they are through radio.

And finally, consumers will get more involved in making their own media -- blogging, texting, webcams, picture editing are all examples of empowering consumers to make their own content, and that’ll remain a major theme for the next few years. Add this all together and it becomes clear why one of our concierge’s duties will be that of a custodian, because it’s going to be necessary to clean these files up and archive the material because we will all have vast multimedia libraries.

Monday: What awaits us as marketers and how are we all going to work and sell in this new environment?