Digital tastes of umami

Sorry for the suspense, but I’m going to ask you to wait a moment before explaining why I think online and social media have an umami taste. Umami? It’s a taste sensation that has been around since Roman times, but not understood outside Japan until quite recently. It’s best described as a savoury taste that’s pleasant within a narrow range – more ogen than durian, more shiitake than shiit sandwich. My favourite umami taste? Fried tomatoes, fried egg and Worcestershire sauce. Mush it up. Use a teaspoon to make sure you don’t waste a drop.

But let’s start with something more mainstream – marketing communications. Advertising, or whatever we call it these days, hasn’t changed that much, despite the irresistible march of technology. It is still about persuasion, subtle or otherwise. It is still about using a mixture of reason and emotion to make you like a brand enough to consider it and hopefully buy. It is still about entertainment as well as information. It is still about humour and music as much as facts and figures. It is still about personalities, and celebrity endorsement. It is still about tugging at the heart strings. It still uses shock and awe alongside glitz and glamour. It still balances news and innovation on one side and long-running properties, purpose and positioning on the other.

What has changed is how it is delivered. It used to come ‘live’ – well, not exactly live, but you know what I mean. There was a programme, a break and a few commercials, then back to the programme. The interruption model worked in roughly the same way in all media except for cinema, where the ads were packaged like mini second features as a kind of filmic amuse-bouche.

See an agency credentials presentation these days and the difference is immediately obvious. No one uses anything as crude as a showreel. It is even rare to see ads on the wall. No. Virtually all creative output is now editorialised. Big ideas are explained. TV campaigns are presented as video case histories, complete with strategy and results. Output is one big effectiveness award in the making. Why look out for the new John Lewis spot when you can see it any time on YouTube?

I guess adland is mirroring life. When did you last watch or listen to a news bulletin? Reportage and editorial are indistinguishable. We’re regaled with reactions and comment even before we fully comprehend what has actually happened. In sport, action replays and talking heads take up three quarters of the time. Celebrity is always glimpsed, but has little enough chance to perform. Celebrity’s fate is to be relentlessly analysed.

Which brings us to digital, to online communications, to the connected consumer and what is prepared for them and shared by them. Are these digital delights sweet? Sour? Bitter? Salty? Not really. Our taste buds (taste receptors please) don’t want anything as obvious as a primary flavour sensation. Sophisticated consumers on tablet and mobile are like their counterparts interested in news, entertainment, sport or politics. They demand new sensations, new tastes, new angles, new insights.

But are these tastes really new? Or is it that they are classified differently? A lot of digital content is just advertising presented in a different way. Much of the rest is what we used to call PR. Social media is quite new only in the way it is delivered. Technology has enabled us to communicate, chat and gossip far more often, far more instantly, and with far more people. We take in and push out far more via computer, tablet and mobile that we possibly can with real people face to face. It’s a special kind of taste sensation.

I believe digital and social media have created a sort of umami world. Like editorial and analysis. Not exactly new. More a different way of experiencing and describing things.

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