A remarkable thing happened to me last autumn. I developed a raging crush for a guy off the telly; Dr Mac, from Channel 4’s Green Wing. The programme was also brilliant, so it was no hardship to watch my fantasy each week. I was able to fan the flames at other times too.

There were plenty of other women (and men) like me, so there were Green Wing websites, chat-rooms and blogs to visit. OK, Hello, and Heat got in on the act. Even the quality newspapers were not immune, with interviews in The Times and The Independent. Kathryn Flett in The Observer and Alison Graham of Radio Times were clearly smitten like me, so I got weekly previews and reviews singling him out.

A good mixer
The point of me sharing my hormonal hyperactivity with you is because it illustrates perfectly two of TV’s strongest qualities; a) TV’s ability to provoke strong emotions and b) the dominance of TV inspired content in other media.

To media-planners, all communication channels are valuable and worth exploring, be they sandwich bags, shelf-wobblers or a major sports sponsorship. After all, people lead multi-media lives. But every medium has its own qualities and strengths, and many media work better when paired with another.

Media-planners’ responsibility is to make decisions about how a communications budget can be most effectively deployed to fulfil the client’s brief. It sounds simple, but we all know it most certainly is not. And it’s getting more complex every day. This means we have to understand a great deal more about media than just usage numbers and cost-rankings, important those these are.

It’s not hard to understand why TV is such a powerful choice, when you think about it in the context of real lives. UK adults watch an average of 3-4 hours of TV every day. This figure has remained more or less constant for the last 20 years. While there are no directly comparable data for most other media, the BBC’s Daily Life study suggests people devote far more time to TV than to print or online media. Only out of home media and radio get close.

The feelgood factor
But the quality of the TV experience is what makes it such a powerful choice.

It’s a cliché to say TV has colour, movement, sound, etc but what that boils down to is the ability to dramatise and to demonstrate.

Donning my white coat and adopting a comedy German accent for a moment, if we peek inside a brain while its owner is watching TV, we can see that two areas of the brain are particularly stimulated; the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala governs emotions. It changes how you feel about things. This is the reason TV can change or create perceptions about brands. The hippocampus is the area of the brain where long-term memories are stored.

There has been a lot superficial use of the work of Robert Heath, author of the influential book on ‘low involvement processing’. Critics of TV try to say that, because it is passively consumed most of the time, it can’t work. Whether a medium is actively (print, online) or passively (TV, outdoor, radio) consumed doesn’t make it good or bad of itself. It depends entirely what the task is.

But, put very simply, passively consumed media bypass the conscious processing part of the brain and interact directly with the hippocampus. So it’s no surprise that the combination of TV’s ability to provoke emotion combined with its tendency to create long-term memory makes it the pre-eminent medium for brand communications and brand launches.

Centre of gravity
A recent winner of the prestigious IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix award was the launch of O2, created by its entire roster of agencies. Teaser ads on TV introduced the iconic blue and bubbles design, and TV was the lead medium for the launch campaign. TV also created the exposure for their Arsenal and English Rugby partnerships, and their sponsorship of Big Brother added instant credibility and a demotic brand personality that could have taken years to create.

The Big Brother property also led their PR and web activity and was the inspiration for lots of new products and consumer offers, such as text updates, and ring-tones. O2’s launch used just about every medium in existence, but, without doubt, TV was its centre of gravity, and it accelerated O2’s ability to compete head-on with its rivals.

Give and take
TV can also be consumed actively and communicate a call to action, which will generate an instant response. Retailers use TV to drive people in-store the next day. The success of DRTV has spawned legions of financial services suppliers. Even when other media are being used as the principle response channels, TV can make everything work much harder, a fact that can be lost in superficial response analysis.

Interactive TV is the latest innovation. As viewers become comfortable with ‘pressing red’, TV now offers the ‘lean forward’ experience of the internet. Those consumers actively engaged in a market, say, looking for a new car, can find out more, ask for literature or even book a test drive.

Though it would be wrong to characterise interactive TV as solely a response channel. Brands in high interest categories can invite viewers to come and spend more time with them. Adidas created the most interacted with TV ad to date when it gave interested viewers the chance to spend three minutes watching Jonny and Becks kick balls around.

Adidas also exploit their celebrity assets through advertiser funded programming, yet another way of extending the brand experience. Sky+ viewers can download branded content onto their hard disc to view at their convenience.

Demotic appeal
TV’s ability to speak to everyone can make us forget that it is also able to reach smaller, more tightly defined groups. With the exception of Film Four and Artsworld, channels individually subscribed to, TV is not quite in magazine territory yet.

But for children, TV is unassailable in its importance and we are spoilt for choice for where to advertise our low fat and sugar-free nutritious snacks! Even for the lightest of light viewers, media planners say, there is a wealth of opportunities as long as you think programmes first and abandon those misleading channel averages and TGI indices.

I reckon a plan with just The Sopranos, ITV’s Champions’ League, CSI Miami, Max and Paddy, MTV, Sky Sports, and I’m a Celebrity would reach most of us. OK, plus Countdown, for the intellectuals amongst you.  Don't presume. Don’t get trapped in the conventions of TV planning. Who says unless you can afford 80% coverage at 4+ it’s not worth bothering with?

You should assess your multi-media plan in its totality. Rather than use demographics, you could pursue a vertical media strategy based around a core interest.

Magazines would be the conventional way of reaching serious food lovers, but why not add UKTV Food, Jamie’s School Dinners and Hell’s Kitchen (where Jean Christophe Novelli is giving Dr Mac a run for his money), even if that’s the only TV you use?

So you get the message. TV is powerful and versatile. Just get inside the heads of the people to whom you want to talk and you’ll discover how it can contribute to effective and exciting media planning.

Article by Tess Alps