Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover

So declared Homer Simpson in praise of his favourite medium.  Beyond Homer, few amongst us – as viewers, marketers or both – hold such a precisely considered position.  Indeed, some of Britain’s living rooms and boardrooms betray an awkward relationship with the box.  ”It’s not as good as it was” cry the chattering classes; “Television is dead, find me new media” shouts the fashionable Marketing Director.  Both perspectives run aground on the shores of Lake Evidence.

Today’s busy consumers watch more television more actively than ever, even before we broaden our definition beyond linear broadcast.  The average British consumer expects their next technology purchase to be a high-definition TV.  A big one.  TV is alive and well according to its audience.

Today’s Marketing Director, meanwhile, is quite rightly looking beyond the old stalwarts of TV, press, posters, radio and cinema.  Both to add new options to the media quiver and to contemplate a new mix of component parts.  Online is set to become the third biggest media channel this year, while less easily-sized ambient opportunities proliferate.  Should he or she plump for old, new or both?  Or are even these distinctions unhelpful?

Despite the recency of the digital explosion, the IPA Effectiveness Awards – the ideas industry’s annual call to stand up and be counted commercially – already underscore the opportunities that exist for effective communication in new media.  Less fashionably, but no less truthfully, they are also an emphatic reminder not just of television’s enduring power as a commercial medium but of TV’s lasting hold on us culturally.

If you are in any doubt, read any or all of the papers submitted on behalf of Tropicana, Actimel or Virgin Trains.  Or those on behalf of M&S, 02 or Vehicle Crime Prevention.  Or Volkswagen Golf, Felix catfood or KwikFit.  One of our winners is actually for a TV programme itself: for Jamie’s School Dinners and its promotion.

Each of these campaigns and papers are irresistible advertisements for television’s ability to create fame, to challenge or confirm perceptions, to engage emotionally, to halo and catalyse response from other media. 

So TV is not dead, just as ‘new media’ and digital are not passing fashions.  Indeed, some of this year’s most interesting papers begin to sketch out a campaign future where old and new media, offline and online are deployed side by side to maximum effect.

The Sony Ericsson campaign and paper arguably a modern benchmark in this regard.

Television is still at the core of many of our industry’s most effective campaigns.  It has no monopoly on this and must obviously evolve to remain competitive.  But commentators and budget-holders write television off at their peril.

Laurence Green
Founding Partner, Fallon
Convenor of Judges, IPA Effectiveness Awards 2006