Monday selection: Sky, BT, Lidl and another stupid survey
In spite of the summer lull, Dominic Mills still has a lot to say.
The silly season is upon us, when people of substance in adland are away and nothing big happens.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to write about – just no single item meriting a whole column to itself. Instead, therefore, Mills on Monday offers up a selection of tapas-sized stories for your delectation.
1. I’ve just spotted my first Sky AdSmart ad
There it was, in an ad break during a re-run of Mickey Flanagan’s Detour De France (don’t ask: it was a dull evening in), my first Sky AdSmart ad.
I’ve probably seen others, but this was the first I noticed, and it stood out because a) all the others in the break were for national brands and b) I’ve seen school nativity plays with bigger production budgets.
This was a local tourism ad for the New Forest District Council and featured a series of slow-moving stills of trees, water, ponies and middle-aged ramblers (a bit like me). You can read about it here.
I particularly liked the precision of the endline – “just 89 minutes from Waterloo”; someone had obviously concluded that 90 minutes was a time threshold no potential visitor would cross.
It was served up to me, Sky AdSmart says, because I am in one of the right demo/psychographic filters (‘liberal opinions’, apparently) that can be applied, and the right postcode – i.e. south-west London with access to Waterloo. The targeting is not based on my previous viewing habits.
There’s no value in sniggering at the production values. They are beside the point, and in any case will improve as small advertisers wise-up and technology brings the costs of making an ad down. For advertisers like the New Forest District Council who use Sky AdSmart, the key is minimising the production costs and maximising the media budget.
But the point is that it sort of works. I like the New Forest, the idea of roaming around it appeals, and access is easy for me from south west London by train or car. If I’m looking for a day out, it’s on the list.
Sky tells me they are currently running 200 local advertisers a month on AdSmart, and you can read about some of them here; that’s higher than I expected, but shows just how much untapped demand for TV exposure there is (and is perhaps another nail in the coffin for local press).
Oh, and once again it gives the lie to those who say TV is dying as an advertising medium.
2. Lidl is another poster child for TV
News that Lidl has increased its spend on TV by 400 per cent in the last six months, while also increasing sales by 9 per cent and market share by 0.3 percentage points, is also another booster for TV.
Based on H1 figures, Lidl (£26.4m) spent more on TV than Asda (£18m), Tesco (£12.8m) and Sainsbury’s (£11.8m). Tellingly, its TV share of voice is around 20 per cent – almost six times its market share. No wonder it’s rocking.
[advertising position=”left”]
That may change when Tesco works out what it is about and spends millions telling us, and it will be fascinating to see if Lidl responds by upping its spend even more.
I have two points to make: first, broadcasters and Thinkbox (and the other media it uses too) should be all over Lidl, anointing it as their poster child; and two, if Lidl agency TBWA\London doesn’t win an IPA Effectiveness award this year (assuming the famously tight-lipped Lidl allows them to enter), I’ll eat, er…some of their smoked reindeer carpaccio.
3. BT Sport…loadsamoney but no football
Sky launched its bid for footie glory – i.e. its ad promoting its coverage of the upcoming season – a couple of weeks ago.
Now, like EPL rivals jostling in the pre-season transfer market to spend the most, BT Sport has unlaunched its spectacular, entitled BT Sport House Party, in a bid to celebrate its UEFA Champions League coverage.
It gets off to a slightly rocky start, with a close-up of former Man U striker Robin van Persie, recently transferred to Turkish club Fenerbahce – the problem being that they’re only in the play-offs and may not make the competition proper. Ah, the vicissitudes of the transfer market.
You can watch it yourself, but the ad features a load of European stars poncing around at a house party, up to the usual ‘laugh-a-minute’ things that off-duty footballers get up to – i.e. joshing around and playing computer games. Why do fans want to be reminded that football stars are actually pretty tedious in person?
But, here’s the thing – it’s got no actual footie in it. Either that’s an oversight…or they don’t own any footage and have had to make the best of a bad job.
4. The bell tolls for Chime
Last week saw Chime, of the few remaining indie, mini-conglomerates, surrender itself to a combined takeover bid from WPP and private equity house Providence for the princely sum of £374m.
I must confess to mixed feelings: on the one hand, I am better off personally – I bought some shares in Chime two years ago on the basis that I expected it to get taken out at some stage at a premium price; on the other, I am sad to see another independent fall into the hands of a mega-conglomerate where, you fear, some of its independent-mindedness will get swallowed up in the service of the greater corporate good.
On balance, I am more sad than happy. We need more challengers: they provide a much-needed counter-balance to the giants which increasingly hoover up anything that moves.
The exact dynamic of the WPP/Providence link-up is not clear. But I expect that Providence will take, or co-own with WPP, Chime’s much-lauded sports management and marketing division. It is headed by Lord Coe, the ultimate door-opener in this confusing world. Increasingly, sports marketing looks to be going the way of media agencies: unless you’re enormous and global, it’s hard to prosper.
That leaves Chime’s other star asset, VCCP, with WPP. It’s tempting to think that that marks the end of VCCP as a vital, distinctive, force. Maybe it will become just another trophy agency in Sir Martin’s bulging cabinet.
Maybe not: WPP actually has a good track record with small, independent agencies. Just look at the way it has given Johnny Hornby’s CHI room to develop, and its own mini-network, m/Six, to play with.
5. Another pointless survey…
I’ve set myself a tough task, scouring the world for pointless, self-serving surveys reported by digital news providers with all the rigour of a drooling lap-dog.
Luckily, there’s no shortage to name and shame. The latest to grab my attention is from Ad Rants. This is a curiously mis-named publisher, since it doesn’t seem to rant about anything, merely act as a cheerleader for any tosh that comes its way.
To the headline – ‘98% of real-time marketers report positive, measurable ROI‘ – there is only one response: they would say that, wouldn’t they?
The clue is in the sample: ‘200 director level and higher marketing professionals who are currently practicing real-time marketing’ (their words).
I mean, if their job depends on it, real-time marketers are hardly likely to say it doesn’t work.
The survey, by the way, was conducted by a company called Wayin, which describes itself as a social media intelligence and visualisation specialist. But you’d probably guessed that.
Now, I happen to believe that there is a case to be made for real-time marketing. But biased, uncritical surveys like this won’t advance its cause.