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TV is a wonderful communications medium and unrivalled in terms of its ability to establish a brand in a consumer’s mind. What it can’t do, however, is take that a step further – allow the consumer touch, feel and taste a brand. This is where DM comes in. Well designed and executed DM can cut through the marketing clutter, engage with consumers on a personal level and steer them towards a desired action, be it testing a product, redeeming a coupon or entering a competition. On their own, DM and TV are proven and successful media channels. Used together as part of an integrated campaign, they are much more than the sum of their parts.
TV is famous for drawing people in.
Not for nothing did my mother used to tell me in exasperation that I was “glued to the box!” And that was long before Podge and Rodge ever became required viewing.
We’re in the internet age now, of course, and a box of a different kind has invaded the family home. In the face of the internet revolution, people talk about a lot about the “death of TV”. But the numbers tell a different story. Adults are watching just as much as they were 10 years ago – 188 minutes per day on average. Not only that, traditional TV now has many offspring – iPlayers, personal video recorders, web-based TV.
That level of loyalty to the medium is good for us as a television network; it’s also good for advertisers. As you can imagine, I’m for anything that increases television’s effectiveness as an advertising medium. Our view is that TV should be central to every advertising campaign.
Media Integration
TV can be effective when used alone but it can be considerably more so if used in conjunction with other media. That’s why direct mail interests me and should interest advertisers too.
In order to understand how and why DM and TV can work together, it’s first important to recognise what makes TV so good and so effective as a communications tool.
Engagement and Entertainment
TV is universally recognised as the most engaging, more effective advertising medium, bar none. This comes down to what is rather grandly called its ‘multi-sensorial’ nature – the fact that it stimulates a number of the senses at the same time.
It might sound a little highfalutin but this perception of TV came through strongly in some focus groups we ran earlier this year in conjunction with Behaviour & Attitudes. This confirmed a lot of what we already knew, including the fact that TV is the only medium with which you can have a social interaction. Kids dancing along to ads. Grandmothers singing along to music. It’s entertainment.
Instant, powerful connection
Not surprising, therefore, that the people we surveyed said their top 10 most memorable ads were are all on TV. But when it comes to communicating with consumers, not even TV can cover all the bases or tick all the boxes. Consumers cannot physically touch a product in a TV commercial. They can’t smell it. They can’t taste it.
But with direct mail they can. DM allows consumers get up close and personal with the brand they saw advertised on TV. And, particularly if the creative is good, they will make an instant and powerful connection between a piece of DM and its corresponding TV ad.
Everyone loves to receive a piece of mail that they can interact with
Compared to email, physical mail is much more interesting to people. It’s exciting. And useful too. Who doesn’t love receiving money-off coupons? And then there’s product samples – very effective for getting consumers to try out new products, as any FMCG company will tell you. Shampoo sachets. Dishwash tablets. Of course you’re going to give them a go!
So DM complements TV perfectly in that it allows advertisers to bridge this gap, to take the relationship between brand and consumer to the next level – the level of physical interaction.
But the reverse is also true:
TV is good for DM. TV establishes the brand in consumers’ minds in the first place but it also makes them more likely to trust it. This is important because trust is the key value advertisers and agencies want people to associate with a brand. Trust is high on consumers’ wish-list, too: if they see something on TV they trust it a lot more.
Truth is, consumers are a lot less likely to try out a brand or trust a brand they haven’t first seen on TV. If I received something in the post and I hadn’t heard of that brand, I’d be unlikely to try it. And I suspect you would be too.
What applies to advertising equally applies to sponsorship. These days, lots of big brands sponsor popular TV programmes; it’s been a key growth area. As budgets get squeezed, leveraging that sponsorship – extracting full value from it – has become a priority.
DM can help sponsors by ensuring as many people as possible are aware of the sponsor’s tie-in with a particular programme.
Cross media campaigns get more value on spend
This was the case recently when dairy company Avonmore, as part of its sponsorship of RTE weather, ran a competition called Weather Star in which half-a-dozen schoolchildren got the chance to announce the weather on the News2Day children’s programme on day-time TV.
In support of this, Avonmore did a weighty cross-media campaign across TV, print and online. There was also extensive below-the-line activity including direct mail to primary schoolteachers, encouraging them to get pupils to engage with the promotion, consume milk and initiate weather-related projects in their classroom. This was an important and successful element of the project.
Cross-media campaigns are becoming more and more popular as advertisers look to get more value from their spend, be it on advertising or sponsorship. This is good news for DM because, chances are, DM will come more onto their radar. And the more advertisers and agencies use DM they more they will understand its value and how it works.
Cut through the clutter
Another thing that’s working in favour of DM, I think, is the sheer amount of advertiser clutter out there today. It is estimated that each of us, on average, is bombarded with 3,000 advertising messages per day from the moment we get up in the morning till last thing at night. I firmly believe that a well thought-out piece of DM can cut through all of this noise and grab someone’s attention for 30 seconds.
And then, of course, there’s the dreaded ‘R’ word. Ok, the loud ‘clank!’ of advertisers battening down the hatches is hardly a welcome sound to any media organisation. But the other dimension of this is that it prompts a return to traditional values, to tried-and-trusted media that advertisers know will work.
Both TV and DM certainly fall into that category. A perfect pairing for these troubled times you could say – and utterly trustworthy.
Just like Podge and Rodge.
Paul Loughrey is research and marketing manager, RTE Television
This article is part of a series commissioned by An Post in partnership with Marketing Magazine.