Thinkbox: TV Together – a very social medium
Thinkbox has unveiled two new pieces of research surrounding television viewing.
Justin Gibbons from Work Research and Nicole Greenfield from Thinkbox presented the first piece of research, which was looking at the power of the shared TV viewing experience.
Shared viewing has remained stable since 2002, despite single households growing by 16% since 2002. Likewise, the number of TV sets per household has remained constant.
Half of TV watched is with other people, with vast majority of audiences being two people – anything over two starts to be come distracting, producing less engagement.
Surprisingly, results showed that children and 16-24 year-olds have above average shared viewing, despite assumptions that these are the audiences that are more likely to be distracted by other technologies.
Reasons for shared viewing included bonding time for parents with their children or programmes that families or couples always watch together. The shared experience of having someone else there to laugh and enjoy the programming with was deemed very important.
In addition, technology is enhancing the TV viewing experience. The research showed that time shifted viewing is much more likely to be shared, with couples waiting for their partners before beginning to watch it. For those who aren’t able to physically share a viewing experience, a virtual sharing experience is now becoming mainstream, with viewers interacting with Facebook and Twitter, or texting or phoning friends during shows, enabling then to share without being together.
David Wilding, head of planning at PHD, then presented a couple of case studies that demonstrated how the agency has used shared viewing to its advantage in recent advertising campaigns.
One example was the British Heart Foundation’s powerful two minute advert, which was used to highlight the symptoms surrounding a heart attack. A shared audience was important as the campaign was to heighten knowledge not just in the person having the heart attack, but in those around. An awareness campaign for the spot was launched, taking in outdoor, press and 10 second introductory idents – which featured celebs saying “I’m going to be watching” – with the advert billed as “the most important two minutes of TV you’ll ever see”.
Research showed that 38% of the viewing audience at 9.17pm that day tuned in just to watch the advert, and subsequent contact with the British Heart Foundation showed that several lives were saved from people viewing the advert and being able to spot the signs.
David Brennan presented the second piece of Thinkbox research, which demonstrated how television was fuelling social media, as well as social media fuelling television watching.
The research centred around interviews with heavy Facebook users, who were members of Facebook groups associated with advertising or television programmes. It showed that in joining a group you get a deeper personal engagement with the television programme or advert, that it allows you to chat and catch-up on episodes that you’ve missed, as well as serving as a credibility “badge” on your profile page.
The majority of usage on these groups is straight after a programme finishes, where you want to share your views with other fans and get their perspectives. The X Factor for example now has 1.65 million fans on Facebook, with up to 50,000 comments added each weekend.
Social media experts are now working alongside the broadcasters to exploit the possibilities of social media connections, as it extends programme loyalty beyond the running time.
The morning event finished with a panel debate, chaired by Tess Alps and featuring David Parfect from Facebook, Amelia Torode from VCCP and David Wilding from PHD.
David Wilding explained that advertising and social media need to be considered as different yet complementary, using the analogy that the original advert is the firework, while the social media add-ons are the bonfire. Both can occur without the other, yet together they complement each other. However he warned that social media shouldn’t be “tokenistic” and there is a huge amount of learning that still needs to be done.
David Parfect mentioned how some advertisers are missing opportunities, as these “fan” pages allow excellent ways of communicating with consumers who are interested in their brand. Norwich Union, for example, didn’t want to set up any Facebook pages and yet a Green Army Facebook fan page was created anyway by fans and now has 50,000 members.
However, David Wilding pointed out that one of PHD brand’s Facebook group has over 800,000 fans, but recent analysis showed that only 290 fans had been active on the page in the past week, as there hadn’t been any recent advertising around the brand. He explained that if you don’t give them something to talk about, there’s nothing for them to contribute.
Amelia Torode said that what’s needed for these pages is a conversation catalyst, or “chatterlyst”, to keep the pages fresh and relevant, and maintain interest from its members. The key is to keep the conversation going.