The expert's guide to avoiding big mistakes on the small screen

Anyone with a television set can't fail to have noticed the proliferation of direct brands now using TV to attract new customers. With more channels than ever available and the entry cost for TV advertising at its lowest level for years, getting a brand on air is now within reach for more companies than ever before.  In this article we explore what advertising on TV involves and consider how to make sure your TV test has the best chance of success.

What's the potential for your business?

In order to assess the scope of TV for your business, the first question to consider is how broad the appeal of your proposition is.  In today’s digital world, the proliferation of TV channels and programming has given us the ability to target any demographic, interest or lifestyle with more accuracy than ever before.  However, the scale of opportunity that TV can offer to you will be much smaller if you are targeting a very specific audience segment than it will be if your proposition appeals to a broad demographic.

Here are two examples that demonstrate how targeting requirements influence the potential for TV:

Example 1 is a web brand selling personalised calendars. Product cost is low and appeal is very broad. We have been able to successfully spend over £1 million in a single month driving sales for this brand on TV in the run up to Christmas, using even the highest audience programmes like the X-Factor.

Example 2 is a specialist web brand selling car parts. The service appeals only to particular audience interested in maintaining and repairing their own vehicles.  While there are some excellent channels and programmes targeting this audience, working within these we find that the maximum potential of TV is to spend £50k - £100k per month. 

Our message is that advertisers should be realistic about how large the potential of TV will be for their brand at the outset.  We started both of the above brands on TV with budgets of less than £50,000 including production of their test ads, but one has the potential to achieve a much higher level of growth than the other.

As well as looking at the scale of your market, think about the programmes themselves too. For example a youth focussed fashion brand we work with has a fantastic choice of programmes to advertise within – including mainstream programmes like Gok’s Fashion Roadshow and Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model.  However, TV advertising opportunities for many brands aren’t quite this easy to plan and so we need to target by demographic (e.g. housewives with children at home) rather than interest.  If you’re fortunate enough to have mass consumer appeal and fall succinctly into a well-represented area of TV content, then provided you get everything else right, TV should be an easy win for you!

Getting the creative right

Good creative needn't cost the earth. Our advice is to be clear about what you want to achieve and consider what you need to spend initially to allow you to test the concept of TV - without necessarily jumping straight into a full ensemble cast production at this stage. For example, a 30 second graphic-based ad with music and voice-over, or an ad with limited live action shooting (which only needs one day to film) can come in at less than £10k. 

As part of developing your creative brief, it’s important to be clear about your objectives.  Great DRTV drives immediate sales and this is the creative approach that many advertisers are most comfortable starting with.  After all, the DRTV approach is very measurable and can give you a clear view on the return you have generated from your investment.  However, our recommendation to advertisers is that they shouldn’t be afraid to include branding ambitions in their creative brief.  Brand Response TV drives immediate sales and also builds awareness which drives future sales.  If handled correctly, good creative ticks two boxes - precisely positioning your brand whilst driving an immediate and powerful response.  To achieve this, we recommend that creative includes specific products or an offer set within a broader brand framework.

Most people (having invested many thousands of hours in front of the box over the years) consider themselves to be something of an armchair expert in what makes a “good” TV ad.  But please don’t make the mistake of ignoring advice from the professionals - there is a lot more to making a great advert than you may think! 

Matt Barraclough, Creative Director of production company ABF Pictures, offers this advice: "Creative for television doesn't have to cost a fortune but it always has to work hard.  If you’re looking for results the creative has to stand out, build a relationship with the viewer and give them a reason to respond now.  Response television has moved on and we are always looking to find new ways to help a brand get the response they need, without being boring or talking down to their customers.  We can respond quickly to briefs and turn around production rapidly to get you on TV for when you need it most.  To do this we need our clients to be decisive and responsive (remember you know your brand better than anyone!), but you also need to let us do what we do best.  This is a team effort, with creative, media and brand working together to achieve the results you require."

There are some particular pitfalls to be aware of when making a TV advert.  Managing the talent and music buy-outs charged by agents can be tricky if you want to minimise costly repeat fees.  Also, it’s important to highlight that all creative has to be approved for broadcast, which is a mandatory requirement.  Both initial scripts and finished ads have to be approved by Clearcast (a division of the ASA) and this approval can add up to 2-4 weeks to production schedules.  If you work with a good agency or production company, they should guide you through the unique challenges that TV presents and help you to avoid any expensive mistakes or unforeseen delays.   

Buying airtime

As a specialist area with its own vocabulary and metrics, buying TV airtime can seem to be quite daunting at the outset. For example, you’ll be discussing Television Ratings (TVRs), coverage and frequency requirements and committing to looming Advanced Booking (AB) deadlines.  However, the right partners should be able to demystify TV for you and you’ll soon pick up the knowledge you need to judge a good media plan from a poor one.

Spot costs vary based on a number of factors, including time of year and associated demand levels, the viewing figures for each spot, and even how far in advance you book.  (Perhaps counter-intuitively, spots cost less the further in advance you book – although there are ways and means for experts to mitigate this if you need to book late).  Individual spots can cost anything from £2.50 to around £120,000 for the now famous Yeo Valley centre break in X Factor, so there’s clearly plenty of scope to turn up the volume of your activity once you’ve established that TV works for you.

Worth pointing out is that, if you know how, the “normal” rules do not necessarily apply when buying airtime.  For example, at TRT Direct we haven’t booked a TV spot before the AB deadline for the past 12 months.  This has given our clients a huge advantage when it comes to booking airtime tactically in response to anything from changing weather forecasts (our client was selling sandals!) to changes in expected customer demand.

Of course, to find out if TV delivers the ROI you require, you have to test it.  While you can test for a surprisingly low budget commitment (we’ve run a £7,500 airtime test for an advertiser before), there’s a danger that you can commit too little and then struggle to measure your results.  If this leads to you either dismissing TV as being a lot of fuss about nothing or even having to re-run the test to get more robust results, you’ll know it was a false economy!  Usually we recommend clients assign between £20k and £30k to the airtime alone and run the test over only one or two weeks in order to concentrate the response effect and generate response spikes that can be felt across the business and measured. Spend enough the first time and, if the test performs well, you can bring forward heavier investment and start enjoying larger returns earlier. 

Understanding response behaviours

Increasingly, direct brands are using TV to drive response online rather than via telephone or SMS. This is due in no small part to the rapid rise in dual-screen viewing (watching TV with an internet-enabled second screen such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop).  Recent research by the IPA found that 48% of TV viewers are now watching at least once a week while accompanied by a second screen of some description, and that this statistic is on the rise.

Online response to TV spots can come through very quickly. So much so that Next.com has been promoting an ‘Order by 9pm for next day delivery’ message on TV between 8pm and 9pm recently.  Another example is the gambling brand Betfair issuing live odds at half time during televised football matches safe in the knowledge that viewers will transact on their site immediately after seeing the advert.  TV has become a point of sale medium for online brands!

While we used to worry about the capacity of a call centre to handle the response coming in from a TV spot, we now have to check that a client’s website is robust enough to handle a spike in visits.  We recently ran a test on a reasonable scale for a brand, and the unprecedented spike in online activity they experienced after one spot crashed their site!  A great result from the perspective of proving how much traffic can be driven by TV (a 700% increase in usual site traffic in this instance), but not a good result when you consider that sales were lost.

While TV will undoubtedly generate response, if you don’t know exactly where to look you may not be able to accurately measure your return.  When you have a range of marketing channels in play, how can you accurately isolate and attribute the results driven by TV?  A unique URL extension is a tempting solution, but this is woefully inadequate since typically less than 20 percent of respondents use them.  In our experience, the TV response can be identified in several places and some of these are quite unexpected so it’s best to consult your agency who should be giving you advice on this as a matter of course. To help the measurement process, there are even specialist attribution solutions that you or your agency should consider investing in, which can prove invaluable in linking website statistics to TV schedules to bringing analytical clarity to how TV is driving site traffic.

Choosing an agency

Most advertisers work with an agency when planning TV activity, but how do you choose the right agency?  One of the best bits of advice that anyone can give on this subject is to look at track record.  All agencies have particular strengths but, for example, would it make sense to use an agency that specialises in inserts when you’re planning a TV test?  Probably not. 

Research is key when you’re considering your agency selection so look for case studies and find out how many clients each agency has that are active on TV – and consider whether they are working with any advertisers similar in size and scale to your business.  When you are in discussion with prospective agencies, drawing up a checklist of questions that will help you to judge experience and fit can be a great help.

Suggestions could include:

• How many online or mail order brands have you launched on TV in the last 12 months?
• What's the best case study you can show me for building an advertiser's use of TV?
• What effect can I expect TV to have on my sales, and how would you go about tracking this?
• How much do you think I would need to budget for a) creative and b) production to run a TV test?
• What terms do you typically negotiate for talent and music buyouts?

Clearly there is a lot to think about when deciding whether to embark on a TV campaign for your brand, but the potential benefits of TV for your business can be huge. An effective TV campaign can boost sales like nothing else - but there are also other more subtle benefits that should not be ignored. Advertising on TV creates a real buzz in your company. TV improves awareness of your brand and builds trust. Being on TV has also been shown to boost customer satisfaction levels - and this often translates into a continuing increase in sales after your TV campaign has ended.

Getting the right people to help you on your journey is essential. Shop around and do your research because, if you get TV right, it could change your business forever.

(An abridged version of this article appeared in the February 2012 issue of Direct Commerce magazine.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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