TV advertising to seed an online experience
I was at an IAB Auto’s conference and heard a great talk by a copy man writing for Mercedes – He went on to talk about the traditional marketing split especially around new car launches – which is to spend most of the budget on TV which is designed to blanket bomb as wider audience as possible, with the idea of hitting a few targets. And spend any remaining budget on PR to prolong the ad campaign. You can get a reasonable estimate of the number TV miss by looking at the adoption of TiVo’s ad disabler.
Add to this the diminishing numbers of eyeballs for television compared to that of online, and you may be thinking I’m about to point out the bleeding obvious.
But, I’m not really interested in the move from TV to online. Well I am, but, this conversation is already maturing and the data is all there for everyone to see.
I’m more interested in how TV could be used to seed an online experience- a push pull approach that’s more effective and makes much more economic sense.
Returning back to my short pseudo scientific study of the Kevin Bacon YouTube phenomenon [YouTube has since removed that video], where Graham Norton’s TV program increased the number of views for that particular Kevin Bacon video by 600+ overnight - and then WOM increased it by another 30,00 views over the following week – it was clear that the diffusion of the information through online and offline WOM plaid the bigger role in spreading the video. But, TV definitely plaid its part in getting the ball rolling.
More importantly this was not an expensive TV ad, but a mention on a TV program which was targeted at an audience that was more likely to find it funny and have friends who also shared their sense of humour.
If we translate this to TV advertising – let’s not spend all the marketing budget on the TV ad experience, which most people are not going to see it and out of those that do, few will act on it. Instead use TV as a cheap trigger to a more satisfying online experience. Kind of make TV not the main course which is a very expensive main course, but a targeted entrée – that’s cheaper to produce and aired on a cheaper slot which is more focussed to an audience that’s more likely to watch it and spread the message.
Spend the lion’s share of the budget on hte product and creating a useful engaging online experience which is more likely to spread and gain attention for a longer period.
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