Now is the time to capitalize on television advertising.
Back in the day when I first started working in television advertising, there was the now quaint notion that brand building was something that advertisers should actively be engaged in, that they should be looking to increase the long term value of their brand rather than just win some short term victories.
The campaigns that people most wanted to work on were those brand campaigns, the ones (Nike’s “Just Do It” being the most famous) that were designed to create a strong emotional response rather than a logical one.
The ones that people still remember fondly twenty, even forty years later.
I’m afraid though that decades of digital advertising, where the emphasis is on click through and making an immediate sale, coupled with the rise of DTC brands (whose goal is also to sell product immediately) have blinded brands to the value of long-term brand building.
How else to explain the pullback from spending money on advertising at a time when more people than ever are in front of a TV. (Inscape, which tracks data from over 14 million opted-in VIZIO smart TVs, reported that OTT viewing was up 10% as of a week ago, while linear viewers also watched 10% more TV overall—and that’s last week. This week the numbers are likely to be even higher.)
So what better time to get a brand message out to consumers?
Not a “Buy this product right now!” type of message, but something more low key and charming, something that might put a smile on people’s faces during difficult times and maybe even get them to think nice thoughts about the product.
Now of course you’d need to already have that kind of commercial in the can and ready to go, which unfortunately too many brands do not. They’ve gotten caught up in the world of data and metrics, forgetting that you can target brand building ads and collect data about where they sit in the attribution funnel, using that same data to understand how brand ads work in conjunction with more tactical ads.
Unfortunately many brands do not, producing something more closely resembling a direct response ad that they can then try and place in front of the “right person at the right time” in order to make an immediate sale.
It’s an effective technique for sure, and one that both moves product and allows brand managers to effectively account for their ad spend.
It’s very good at capturing the head, the logical part of the consumer’s purchase decision. But what it doesn’t do is capture the heart, the emotional connection the consumer has to the brand which makes them extremely loyal customers and, frequently, brand ambassadors to their friends and family.
You know, the type of people who won’t be swayed because the competitor’s product is priced a few dollars less.
Turbulent Times
I understand why brands may not want to advertise right now given the amount of uncertainty about, well, about pretty much everything. It’s not all that dissimilar to why people hesitate to buy stocks when the market is low: maybe we haven’t hit bottom yet, maybe things will get worse, maybe it will take longer to get things back on track, maybe things will never be the same again.
Maybe.
But probably not.
Whenever we do come out on the other side of this, people are going to want your product or something a lot like it. And they are likely to remember that you were there with them, providing some welcome distraction in the form of an entertaining ad and spending money to support their favorite shows.
And then there’s this: if you’re in the television industry, things are changing and things will probably never be the same again.
Not because of a pandemic, but because the TV industry has been changing for a while now, and roll out of all of the major new “Flixes” (the multibillion dollar steaming services) this year was on track to radically alter viewing patterns no matter what.
Victory Goes To The Bold
So better to get out ahead of that, to start experimenting with tactics like addressable advertising, to allocate more than just a few dollars of “experimental budget” to things like CTV (connected TV) and the FASTS (free, ad-supported streaming TV services.)
It’s also time to rediscover the power of local. Not just local broadcasters, but the ability to target local viewers by geography and by demographic as a way to reach viewers your main ad campaign may have missed. (AKA “incremental lift.”)
But mostly, it’s time to rediscover the power of brand building, of running commercials—at targeted audiences—that just make people feel good about your brand, thankful that you provided them with thirty seconds of entertainment.
You can then use data to follow that up with far more targeted product and direct response style advertising—on TV and on digital and social—that can help to make the sale.
Once you’ve already charmed them.
