This is a post by Campaign’s Associate Editor Jeremy Lee
At the risk of sounding as obsequious as Tom Brady at an event featuring the young Royals, I was fortunate enough to be a judge at the Thinkbox TV planning awards recently. Read more »
This is worth catching – David Walliams: Awfully Good ads series on Channel 4. As the show blurb says “sometimes ads are beautiful, witty, sexy, cool, but some ads are just plain crap” and this show celebrates the very best of the very worst before revealing Walliams’ most Awfully Good ad. Read more »
Channel 4′s head of strategic sales set up The Plannertarium to
convince clients and agencies to try something new, Jane Bainbridge
writes. Four years on, the event has delivered in spades. Read more »
Mike Parker, is head of strategic sales & commercial marketing at Channel 4, on what the changing fortunes of Nick Clegg tell us about the strength of television as a medium for getting brands talked about.
Apparently it was Harold Wilson back in the sixties who said ” A week is a long time in politics”. The turnaround in Nick Clegg’s fortunes after one ninety minute TV debate, suggests that even ninety minutes might be a long time in politics, never mind a week.
So Nick Clegg’s changed fortune tells us something about politics, but it probably tells even more about television as a medium and its strength to get brands talked about. And Nick Clegg is a brand.
Giving TV campaigns the talkability X factor is all about creating ‘moments’ that interest the consumer, says Harriet Dennys, editor of Mediaweek.co.uk
At 8pm this Thursday (22 April), almost 10 million people will tune in to Sky News HD to watch Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg go head-to-head in the second of the live, televised Leaders’ Debates.
That three-and-a-half minute Waitrose ad featuring Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal could have been better writes Campaign’s media editor Ian Darby.
But the fact that it was created by Waitrose’s ad agency MCBD is interesting. This shows that branded content that goes beyond the 30-second ad spot has become the area on which agencies of all types – media, digital, traditional advertising and experiential – are all converging. Not to mention broadcasters and independent production companies who are all pretty well established in offering branded content services.
The Waitrose campaign, which aspires to be judged as branded content even though Waitrose has had to fork out for traditional ad space, created a buzz and plenty of PR when the stars of the ad were announced but I found the resultant ad disappointing and, at times, painful to watch. Parts of it just seemed too clumsily scripted to work in a longer format.
It will be interesting to see how the Waitrose campaign develops but for now it seems to highlight that there is a problem inherent in asking an ad agency to produce anything that isn’t a bog standard commercial.
The dream scenario with such content is to work with TV script editors and writers to commission something that seems more natural and dynamic and less like a tightly scripted commercial. Unless ad agencies learn this they’re likely to lose out to those with a greater understanding of branded content.
Carl Nawagamuwa, an account director at Mediaedge:cia, who attended Channel 4′s 2009 Plannertarium, on how media owners and agencies need to work together to make good Event advertising happen more often.
Jenny Davidson, campaign manager at Rocket, who attended Channel 4’s 2009 Plannertarium, describes how TV planners can use social media to get their messages talked about beyond the 30-second spot.
Neil Walker, branded content director at ZenithOptimedia’s Newcast division, who attended Channel 4′s 2009 Plannertarium, describes how creating a ‘soap within a soap’ got Hollyoaks fans talking about O2′s Load & Go card.
Haymarket © 1957 – 2012
