One MS
25th May 2017
With competition from Netflix and a host of new digital video providers, the television industry has undergone seismic changes over the last five years. But one thing has remained constant: TV is still by far the most effective advertising medium. Traditional TV advertising has been getting a bit of a kicking in the press; with some suggesting it is in its death throes. There is no doubt that digital advertising channels are in impressive growth (ad spend up 13.4% to £10.3bn last year according to Marketing Week 25th April) but let’s stop for a moment and bang the drum for TV advertising.
We have recently been working with Pukka Pies who have kicked off a big relaunch campaign this year. TV advertising has played an important, if not pivotal, role in the brand’s relaunch strategy. This is a mainstream brand with a mainstream audience using a mainstream channel – of course it makes sense. In reality, digital just doesn’t have the same cut through. Pukka is now reaping the rewards having seen a significant uplift in sales. The brand is enjoying the highest sales in market in the last 2 years, with March being a record breaking month.
This view isn’t exclusive to us. “TV is a giant megaphone,” said Isaac Weber, VP of strategy at MarketShare. “When you want to get a message out, that’s still really the most powerful means to do it. The way that people view and consume television has changed … but I think the question is less about what has changed with television and more about what are some of the underlying issues with some of these other vehicles.”
It might be easy to get blindsided by a desire to plough marketing budget into digital but there is still much debate about ROI from social media. Look at the Pukka figures it is hard to argue against TV advertising as an effective tool.
We’re not saying that digital is bad, but digital just can’t make up the reach that TV delivers. When digital is used in a way that’s complementary to TV, we can see that it is a more effective strategy.
