Music and paid, owned, earned media

Musicians (and fans of Simian Mobile Disco) will be familiar with the concepts of Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release.

Attack is how hard you hit the note. A fast attack will produce a quick lound note while a slow attck will create a note that slowly increases in volume (guitar and piano). Decay is how slowly the note loses its volume after it has been played, until it reaches a Sustained level, before dropping to silence (the Release).

Musicians can control these variables using sound synthesis technique such as an envelope generator that controls a sound's parameters at any point in its duration. Most often this is an "ADSR" (Attack Decay Sustain Release) envelope:

Via http://abletonempire.com/2011/08/adsr-pushing-the-envelope/

The ADSR diagram looks a bit like this great infographic from Halogen which shows the impact of the various media types in a digital marketing ecosystem over time. Often the focus in the marketing team is on the quick fix of paid media, launch the campaign and then onto the next one. But as this graph shows, over time the impact of both owned and earned media is much greater because it is more sustained.

http://halogenmediagroup.com/products-solutions/the-infographic-series#paid_earned_owned_media

I realised that digital marketing via paid, owned and earned media works in a similar way to attack, decay, sustain and release in music. With paid media you hit hard and create a loud impact, but it has a very short decay. Owned media has a slow attack and a long decay and sustain like a soft note that you can hear for a long time. And earned media just keeps building, getting louder and louder over time, it does not decay at all and there is no release.  Like musicians, we need to manage activities in our digital marketing ecosystem to produce the appropriate Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release.

What do you think?