Fashion – Something you can’t bottle, particularly in a TV Tube

Jim Marshall on TV’s renewed fashionista status – something which TV’s Thinkbox, more user friendly sales teams, and the new management team at ITV should get credit for.

I’m afraid I’m substituting for Greg Grimmer this week – Greg of course is digital and cutting edge, while I’m still mainly analogue and not quite as sharp, well a bit blunt really. So, with that in mind, I thought I would talk about being fashionable and, in terms of my expertise, being unfashionable.

In the world of marketing and advertising, fashion tends to be increasingly transitory. For example, in the premium bottled larger sector there is often a short window for success, largely based on ‘fashionability’, i.e.: “Last year you were a xxxx if you didn’t drink X, this year you’re a xxx if you do.”

Every marketer dreams of achieving what Coco Chanel once described: “Fashion fades, only style remains the same”.

For many years, in the world of media, TV seemed to have achieved that rare quality of quality of transcending fashion. I’m not sure whether it could be described as ‘style’, but it was certainly a heady combination public popularity and commercial reliance by advertisers, which seemed to make TV for ever ‘bomb proof’ from the machinations of the economy and the best endeavours of competing media.

And then the 21st century brought along with it the internet and the global recession (and at a time when commercial TV was expanding at a rapid pace) and suddenly it all started to go wrong for TV.

Worst of all, like your dad who was OK when you were growing up but is a bit of an embarrassment now as a 55 year old hippy (particularly when he suggests going to Killers gigs with you – ah!), TV became unfashionable.

Even P&G – for over 50 years the ultimate stalwarts of commercial TV – started to make public noises about needing to spend money in the new digital media. Suddenly TV was not what clients and media planners wanted to talk about on schedules, even though for the last 10 years commercial audiences were growing and prices declining.

It was all about search, rich media, behavioural targeting, networks, social media, etc. The media world had un-wrapped a whole bunch of new presents and they wanted to spend all their time playing with those, while their old toys lay discarded and forlorn in the cupboard.

Actually it is now all changing again.

Last week ITV announced its half year results and, even though economic prospects are not great, the results received a very positive reception from most commentators. In fact one was moved to say: “Today’s story is one of booming ad revenues and profits, with ITV leading the British public’s renewed love affair with television”.

Funnily enough all the evidence shows that the public has never fallen out of love with TV and revenues have been relatively buoyant since mid 2009. This can be interpreted as TV becoming fashionable again or, in media parlance: “Last year you were a xxxx if you recommended TV, this year you’re a xxxx if you don’t.”

I’ve just been through a raft of IPA effectiveness papers – it what you do at weekends when your son refuses to allow you to go to the Killers gig with him. Apart from feeling that the industry should give far greater status to these awards, I particularly noticed that TV sits proudly as a key medium in most of the papers and, in a couple of cases, the only medium. Yes, there’s lots of other stuff going on, including all sorts of digital executions but there’s no apology for the role and importance of TV.

So what does TV owe its renewed fashionista status to? New management regimes, particularly at ITV but also at Channel 4 and Channel 5, will claim much of the credit.

However I would argue that the combination of TV’s Thinkbox and more user friendly sales teams have been smart in promoting TV as part of a multi-media approach when, in contrast, much of TV’s historical success was built on a platform of exclusivity, arrogance and inflexibility, which was always going to eventually rebound on it.

In truth these were largely ITV characteristics, so the change at ITV has been a major driving force, in my view at least.

Finally, I would recommend a viewing of the Skittles ‘Newly Weds Rainbow’ commercial on YouTube, which it claims is not affiliated to Skittles (more the pity!). It’s a TV ad, but will never appear on broadcast TV. I won’t even begin to describe or explain it – I think Greg should do that next week – but, love or hate it, the 1.5 million viewings or so in the last week would suggest that it is definitely fashionable.