Royal Babies, Cricket, Golf and Box Sets

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As the world waits for its first glimpse of the royal baby. I’d wager a pound to a penny that advertisers are finalising their highly topical ad plans around the coverage. This raises the question: does context matter?

I believe it does, as two examples from commercial TV’s coverage of cricket and golf illustrate. As I enjoy both sports whenever a major cricket tournament or Test series, or a golf major or Ryder Cup roll around, I have been known to remain stuck in front of the action for hours at a time.

For the cricket-ignorant amongst you, a match can last a long time, and something approaching continuous viewing is essential for maximum enjoyment. Cricket is rather like a box set amongst televised sports.

We’ve just had a one-day cricket event called The Champions Trophy. Virtually every ad break contained an ad for the insurance company Aviva, starring the actor Paul Whitehouse. Nothing wrong with the ad – indeed this particular execution is part of a long running series starring Whitehouse extolling the virtues of booking direct online with Aviva. As far as I could tell – and believe me, I saw the ad so many times over the course of a game that I was by the end ready to do almost anything to avoid it – there was no particular sales message that appeared to be any different in this execution than in others in the campaign.

In other words, any Aviva ad with Paul Whitehouse could have run in combination with this latest version over the course of the match.

The same was true in a recent Ryder Cup – this time TV golf fans were exposed to the same ad over and over again for a particular model of Ford.

Watching a cricket match or the Ryder Cup, or binge viewing a whole drama series via a box set, is clearly a different experience from average TV viewing. In effect, you’re gripped. Jennie Beck from Kantar presented an excellent paper on this very topic at last year’s asi TV event, in which she demonstrated how the binge viewing experience differs from ‘normal’ viewing.

The point is that the binge viewing audience engages fully with the content, and with the ads within the content, making these opportunities additionally valuable for those advertisers supporting them.

So why not take full advantage? Why not run a series of existing ads in order to build a story? Why not take advantage of the environment in which the ads are to appear?

I suspect that no one booking time for Aviva (or Ford) gave this a second thought. What I fear the buyers did was book airtime with zero consideration for which execution was going to appear, or indeed to how often it was going to appear.

Context is important – the right ad in the right place adds value.

Brian Jacobs spent over 35 years in advertising, media and research agencies including spells atBrian JacobsLeo Burnett (UK, EMEA, International Media Director), Carat International (Managing Director), Universal McCann (EMEA Director) and Millward Brown (EVP, Global Media). He has worked in the UK, EMEA and globally out of the USA. His experience covers shifts from full-service ad agencies to media agencies; from traditional single-commercial-channel TV to multi-faceted digital channels; and from media planning to multi-disciplinary communication planning. Brian can be reached at brian@bjanda.com.

Read all Brian Jacobs' MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Brian Jacobs.

 

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