NewsLine Column: Student Media Matures
As brands look for more engagements with their customers and agencies seek greater ROI Peter Miles, CEO of student union entertainment network, JVTV, argues that advertisers should go where the audience is. In the case of students that often means the student union bar…
Following a very successful trial run during the summer term in which over 30 companies participated, JVTV Ltd have just completed the full launch of SUBtv within the student union market throughout the UK. We are particularly excited by the fact that the COI is a key inaugural advertiser running an ‘Electoral Commission’ campaign.
This initial launch now means that SUBtv is located in over 50 Unions and reaches 1 million 18-24 year olds each week. Although this might appear like an overnight phenomenon, this could hardly be further from the truth.
It has taken three long years of development and planning to reach this stage. This time has been spent in talks and negotiations with the unions and in developing the right sort of medium to provide a unique communications platform right in the heart of student life.
We took a radically different approach to the development of our medium in that we focused very clearly on our audience and let that experience inform our choices of technology and content. In addition we are fully aware that if the students do not find SUBtv interesting, relevant and fun then we will have little chance in persuading our clients that they simply have to use our medium when planning any dialogue with this audience.
Just this weekend there were thousands of students on the streets of London protesting about this present Government’s policy towards student funding. Alongside them there were several SUBtv personnel filming vox pops and the event in general. Edited footage will now be included within the current SUBtv content and additional feedback encouraged from the student body via text and email.
Not that student life is an overly political experience and is just as much about the social aspects relating to experimentation, fun and entertainment.
Clearly when wishing to engage with any audience it is essential to be able to talk in the same language. SUBtv benefits from its focused market in that it remains outside the strict ITC regulations and allows messages to be couched in the more edgy and irreverent context within which they will be consumed. This has seemed to appeal especially to the creative agencies that have been approached by JVTV.
With agencies such as Zenith Optimedia relating a predicted fall of UK Adspend by 1.4% to the shifting of advertising budgets out of TV it is becoming clear that advertisers are looking for more cost effective solutions to reach their consumers. Agencies have recognised a need to deliver a creative communication approach to targeting the youth audience; there is a need to go to where the audience is rather than wait for the audience to come back home.
We believe we have a unique medium in a unique market and are excited by the challenge of continuing to develop the system, hopefully in partnership with agencies and relevant clients. We hear a lot of talk relating to how brands are looking for more engagement with their customers and we believe that we have now provided such an opportunity through SUBtv. To a certain extent the gauntlet now sits at the industry’s feet. It is encouraging to have the likes of the COI as an early adopter of the SUBtv media.
Fingers still crossed.
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