Richard-Marks-2
I need a haircut!

 

Last week – Wednesday 29 January to be precise, I took part in a breakfast event called ‘How to get the best from your TV Advertising’.

The event was sponsored by Sky IQ, who are launching their 500,000 viewer panel that can be overlaid with customer datasets to aid TV targeting.  I was on a panel alongside Stuart Carnegie of Sky IQ, Agostino Di Falco of Channel 5 and Chris Allen of Havas Media and we discussed TV advertising effectiveness and social media for around an hour as people ate croissants.

The debate, moderated by Torin Douglas seemed to go well, even if the layout of the room – a posh breakfast room in a West End hotel, made it feel like we were giving wedding speeches.

I made an off the cuff remark that, whilst Twitter is perceived to dominate social TV at the moment, it would be dangerous to write Facebook off, like those dismissing Man Utd. For example whilst South Park has around 1 million followers on Twitter, it has 50m ‘likes’ on Facebook – that’s 50m news feeds they are potentially appearing in. This was picked up on Twitter as:

 

Mediatel summarised this part of the debate here. Two days later Social Media company SecondSync announced that they will be processing Facebook social TV data alongside their existing Twitter service. Clearly a deal like this must have been in the works for quite a while, but nice to know that my comments weren’t that far off the mark. Meanwhile three days later Man Utd lost away to Stoke City, so what do I know?

Sky-IQ-panel
A wedding breakfast?

I also said that I thought that the growth of second screen use – tablets and smartphones have made SmartTV’s largely redundant.

I should never use as loaded a word as ‘redundant’, but thankfully was able to clear up what I meant in a subsequent Mediatel article ‘Is Second Screening Damaging the Smart TV Market’.  I was talking about Smart TV functionality -that people would largely now do on a companion screen on their lap or in their hand – as opposed to dismissing the concept of a connected TV which is clearly where the future lies.

The Sky IQ product does looks great but various panelists pointed out that TV advertising is also about brand building and aspiration. Whilst better targeting is to be welcomed there will always be room for mass market advertising that maintains awareness, even amongst those who aren’t currently in the market for a brand. As an example of this, I recalled a speech that Don Draper gives to Hershey’s Executives at the end of the most recent series of Mad Men. In the 21st century I know people watch TV series at different speeds, so will understand if you don’t want to watch this clip in case you are spoiled, but here’s the speech I could not do justice to at the event. Meanwhile thanks to Mediatel and Sky IQ for asking me to be on an enjoyable panel.