BLOG: According to Campaign’s viral video chart, the new British Heart Foundation ‘Staying Alive’ ad, demonstrating how to do 'hard and fast' CPR, was the most shared ad last week, seen 53,000 times across Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the web. Hurray for that; the more people who see it the better. I am a prime candidate for having a heart attack, particularly if I keep getting annoyed at the way ‘viral’ is being used. It’s also a wonderful ad from Grey London, who has used scary actors to deliver life-saving advice before (Vinnie Jones this time, Steven Berkoff in the past). We urge TV advertisers ourselves to upload a quality version of their TV ad onto YouTube etc. before their TV campaign starts so they are prepared for the creative dividend they might earn; we were delighted that our own Harvey ad was watched nearly 2 million times on YouTube and Facebook. It is significant when people choose to find and share your ad and it’s a meaningful measure of likeability, a quality that the IPA and others tell us is the best predictor of success.

BLOG: Every year, here at Thinkbox HQ, we like to do at least one blog that features a single graph telling a clear, compelling story about TV. Yes, I know we really shouldn’t spoil you like this but we still have the generous, giving spirit of Christmas flowing through our veins along with the last dregs of the mulled wine and the final green triangle. This year we thought we’d do it early, partly in light of this story about online TV viewing via laptops, PCs and tablets appearing to ‘plateau’...

BLOG: Are you bored of reviews of the year? Sick to death of endless forecasts for next? If you see another finger-in-the-air prediction or personal highlight will you run screaming from the building and leap under the nearest bus? Well, worry not; this is not a review of the year just gone, nor is it some soothsaying for the year to come. (However, if you want a thorough, fact-packed review of the year just gone - in TV at least – then start counting down the days until the Thinkbox annual review is published...

BLOG:There were so many movers and shakers in the room at Oliver and Ohlbaum’s ‘Through the looking glass’ event yesterday that it was practically a blur. I felt dizzy. However, any potential nausea from standing on this giant media power plate was swiftly quelled by the steadying influence of the consultants unveiling their latest research. Amidst all the hype and heavy breathing around social media in much reporting it was very refreshing to see respected analysts present a more measured, thought-through approach – along with a hugely positive forecast for the future of TV. I won’t drone on about social now, we seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time talking and blogging about social just because other people are. It is great, but as an industry we’re in danger...

BLOG: Last week found us down at the Soho Hotel exploring all things TV and mobile, from the different ways people can watch TV on mobile devices – including laptops - to how viewers are using broadcast TV with mobile, to chat, play, control and even respond directly to TV ads. From a morning packed to the gunwales with new TVoD commercial formats, iPads, smart phones, 2-screening synchronicity, image recognition and social TV apps, here are 5 things we learned...

BLOG: As a household committed to recycling – at least in spirit – most of the Alps’ waste ends up on our compost heap or in collectable crates. So not actually wastage at all. With connected sets and online TVOD, TV advertising is approaching a future where, technically at least, different commercials can be addressed to neighbouring households, allowing the most relevant ads to be delivered to the most relevant people. I fancy a bit of that. I can see all sorts of fun and useful things TV advertising could do with it: putting tailored language supers on ads, personalising QR codes and apps for the household’s preferred grocer, managing a narrative sequence or frequency. I believe that if we can make advertising more enjoyable then it will be more effective. Creativity, emotion, entertainment matter most here but relevance can make an ad more acceptable, so bring it on. But, yet again, our excitement about the new seems to require a rubbishing of what we already have...

BLOG: So I join Thinkbox to oversee its research and, at almost exactly the same time, Tess Alps posts a scathing blog sending up bad media research. Was this some sort of timely hint? I’ve barely discovered where the kettle is and it has been made publicly very clear to me that any research I do is subject to the highest standards. A hint of hypocrisy and I’m toast. No pressure then.

BLOG: Well, Yeo Valley nailed it, they gave it 120%, they took that ad break and they made it their own. They even, to use a couple of Kelly Rowland-isms, both “brought it” and “put it dowwwn!” BBH’s new TV ad for Yeo Valley is an impeccable and affectionate parody of boy band videos that was hugely entertaining and extremely well branded, but it was also a masterclass on how and why great creative TV advertising works as well as it does. This week we’re launching...

BLOG: Time to look at time again. As we await the IAB’s half-yearly update on internet ad revenue, Sir Martin Sorrell’s recent comments about the proportion of people’s time spent online compared to the proportion of online advertising money have come to mind. His belief is that online media are being under-invested in compared to the time spent online. Is the amount of time spent with a medium the most important reason for advertising money to follow? It is certainly a sign of a medium’s vitality and popularity if we are choosing to spend time with it – and if no one is using your medium they can’t be exposed to any advertising on it...

BLOG: Not long ago you couldn’t read an analysis of the future of TV viewing without someone (including us) predicting a world where we would all live by our own personalised TV diet. The story went like this: we now have the ability to create our own TV schedules on-demand, so… er…we will. If we weren’t reading about that, then it was a story about people somehow swapping watching linear TV for spending time on...

BLOG:Autumn is here, sort of, and with it comes our annual windfall of wonderfully telly. Downton has returned with new costumes, new skulduggery, new staff, new ghosts from Mr Bates’s past, new will-they-won’t-they-can-they-should-they, the same dusters and decorum, and a hatful of Emmys. It attracted 10 million viewers on its return, at least 9 of whom work here at Thinkbox. Of course, despite its massive success and popularity, Downton isn’t everyone’s cup of afternoon tea...

BLOG: Like the best of TV, RTS Cambridge had everything: comedy, drama, breaking news, current affairs, media celebrities, factual, entertainment, glamour and excitement. There was something for everyone. Here are five things that have stuck in my mind...

BLOG: You may well have seen the news out today that commercial TV viewing in the UK had a strong first six months to the year – up 48 minutes a week. Here’s the press release if you want all the detail but one thing that struck us here was the way in which it has been reported and what this says about different perspectives on the world. The MediaGuardian – fresh off the back of its editor’s ‘digital first’ strategy...

BLOG: Men hate apples but love pears, according to new research from the International Pear Bureau (IPB). The wide-ranging study – the fifth in an infinite series trying to prove that pears are somehow ‘better’ – asked one man (Alan Perry) who was found eating a pear in a pear...

BLOG: Yesterday MediaGuardian published its annual Media 100 list, otherwise known as the ‘How many media people can we irritate in one go’ list. The criteria for inclusion/exclusion and ranking are obscure and idiosyncratic, but the justification is that at least it ‘starts a debate’. Most of all, the list reflects MediaGuardian’s own obsessions, with global technology companies, social media and print editors featuring heavily. This year Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook ousted Steve Jobs of Apple from the top slot and the Google guys slipped another place. No-one is safe. The list isn’t ‘wrong’; how could it be, given it is self-confessedly subjective?

BLOG: Those who Cannes, do. It’s in the Cannes. No Cannes do…There is something about Cannes that brings out the pun in me. Now it is over and the UK post-mortem is nearing its bloody end, I wanted to focus on the good news from Cannes for the UK – because there was some good news. It has been widely reported that UK ad agencies did not do as well as usual in the creative awards at Cannes Lions this year. They still won Lions but we didn’t roar. No creative Grand Prixes came back from the sun-soaked, fun-addled shores of France.

BLOG: My Cannes days are over. The Gutter Bar is just not big enough for me any more, quite literally. And anyway, unless I can have my own yacht, like in the ‘80s, I would sulk. But I feel as if I’ve heard every speech and morsel of gossip while watering my beans in Tring. We like Google UK at Thinkbox. We used to use a quote from Google’s Mark Howe (formerly of this parish) in which he encouraged advertisers to increase spend on TV advertising, in conjunction with spending more on search, because they work so well together. And Google’s Dominic Allon used the phrase ‘special relationship’ to describe TV and online at a Thinkbox event. YouTube is also doing good business with UK TV channels carrying some on-demand TV services...

BLOG: My highlight from this year’s Media 360 was when John Nolan of North One TV, talking about the dangers of nostalgia for a bygone TV era, just stopped himself before advising delegates not to look at the past through “rose-tinted testicles”. I can ‘testify’ it is indeed a dangerous game. At Thinkbox we try to avoid rose-tinted anythings at industry events. There is still the occasional danger that a speaker will get the basic facts about TV wrong and we’ll have to put our arm in the air and correct the telly bollocks being spoken . Blissfully, there was very little need for challenge at this year’s Media 360. Instead there was plenty to celebrate about...

BLOG: There are a couple of things one could read into the fact that the BAFTA Television Awards – broadcast live on Sunday night – enjoyed its biggest TV audience since 2008. The first is that it might reflect the renewed interest and passion for all things TV. TV has been undergoing something of a renaissance, with record viewing figures, new ways to watch, and – for commercial TV – a growing share of advertising revenue. It wouldn’t be surprising if a celebration of its best in class echoed this trend. The second thing to note is...

BLOG: Congratulations to all the marketers who have made it into Marketing Magazine’s Power 100 of today’s most influential marketers. How brilliant to see that for the first time ever, women make up 6 out of the top ten most powerful marketers including 3 past and future presidents of WACL (Dianne Thompson, Elizabeth Fagan and Roisin Donnelly, the president elect).

BLOG: For once, this blog isn’t about TV. Well, perhaps a tad. You’ll hardly notice. It’s about Twitter and (before you stifle that yawn, or perhaps tweet it) the furore around the superinjunctions. A lot is being made of how individuals on Twitter – we must remember it is not Twitter itself, just a handful of its users – and elsewhere online can ignore mainstream media constraints and reveal/speculate on the identities of those alleged naughty bed-hoppers and adulterers behind the superinjunctions. We have ended up in an odd twilight zone where professional journalists, whatever the medium, who know the names of those involved are only able to report on the fact...

BLOG: I know they probably weren't, but if Mary and Joseph had somehow been watching Comic Relief this year, they would have seen a sketch in which Lenny Henry tried to persuade James Corden's Smithy to come to the BBC to help sort out which celebrity messiah should go to Africa. You probably saw it on the night but, if you didn’t, Smithy doesn't initially know who Lenny Henry is despite Lenny reeling off a CV of TV programmes...

BLOG: Which would you miss most: your iPod, iTunes or music itself? Let’s say you are only allowed to take one with you to a desert island. Stupid question right? Today, you may have read about a survey by the usually very helpful and insightful Ofcom. It asked a similar sort of question. It found that young people say they are more likely to miss...

BLOG: A picture is allegedly worth a thousand words, though of course moving pictures with sound (aka TV) are worth even more. Sadly we don’t have any TV to make our point here, so a picture will have to do. It shows what each medium’s share of total advertising has been since 1995, according to the official Advertising Association/WARC figures...

BLOG: There have been some shenanigans across the Atlantic that have seen social media’s power to impact on the bottom line being put under a glaring spotlight. Pepsi had been gearing up for a major social media push for quite some time, calling for ideas as far back as 2008. Its main activity in this area kicked off early last year: the Pepsi Refresh Project funds small public projects based on online votes. The Project was funded primarily – and very publically – with money taken from Pepsi’s TV budget. TV had been sacrificed for social media. A couple of weeks ago, PepsiCo’s CEO reported on progress at TED...

BLOG: Have you joined a choir, applied to be a midwife or booked a flight to Benidorm recently? Or are you perhaps in a choir of midwives on a tour of the Costa Blanca? If so, you may be experiencing the benefits of watching TV. In recent weeks there have been several reports of the effects TV programmes can have on our behaviour. From Today on Radio 4 I heard there is a ‘Glee effect’ going on that has provoked a recent increase in applications to join choirs. This joins reports that the names Quinn and Finn have increased in popularity for...

BLOG: Two Lords have leapt into senior media jobs in recent weeks: Lord Sugar has replaced Kip Meek as the chairman of YouView and Lord Patten has emerged as the next chair of the BBC Trust. It was amusing to hear Lord Patten announce he doesn’t watch much TV. Normally, we should be concerned when people attain positions of power over something they don’t understand, but we’re used to posh people under-reporting their TV consumption. “Oh, I watch very little TV. Just Channel 4 News and Newsnight - and an occasional documentary on Discovery. Downton Abbey was marvellous mind you, and I find myself watching the X Factor, The Simpsons and The Inbetweeners because...

BLOG: Knickers are getting twisted again. The Rasputin-like myths around TV ad-skipping will not lie down and die. If ‘ad-skipping’ is a problem, how come we’re watching a record number of TV ads at normal speed in the UK (2.6 billion a day)? The answer is the bleeding obvious: ad-skipping is not such a problem. But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to some of the commentary around recent developments in TV, namely the arrival of product placement in UK-originated programmes from next Monday; a recommendation by a House of Lords committee that the number of minutes of TV advertising should be reduced; and Ofcom’s announcement this week that terrestrial commercial television broadcasters will be allowed...

BLOG: Celebrities who appear on TV talent shows often talk about the raft of positive benefits they experience; losing weight, improving their fitness, marrying Jordan, and the obligatory emotional “journey” are all very well, but the most valuable of all is that they are suddenly catapulted back into the affections of the nation once again as they reignite (and sometimes exceed) their fame of previous years. A parallel process of reinvention and rediscovery also appears to be happening in the ad break. If you were watching Dancing on Ice last night you would have seen one of the most iconic British adverts of all time, Yell’s Fly Fishing starring J.R. Hartley, remade for 2011 with a new leading man, a new search for a lost classic and a new way to search. Rapier’s 2011 remake of the 1983 AMV ad follows a new character – former DJ, Day V Lately – embarking on a hunt for a lost trance mix of a 1992 track he produced called ‘Pulse and Thunder...

BLOG: I doubt that the big wedding of the year coming up in April (I’m talking Pattison/Weedon here) sent out any invitations to X +1 on them. The ‘+ 1’ designation can’t help but sound off-hand. But what might sound a bit rude when referring to a human being sounds like a great offer to TV viewers. Plus 1 channels are a very valuable tool in the evolving TV world, whether you’re a viewer or a broadcaster, offering their own particular form of time-shifting and control. They recognise real viewer behaviour and, when added to the DTR, narrative repeats and on-demand TV, are helping people watch more of the TV they love...

BLOG: In case you’ve missed it – and, if you have, it’s here – we’re now watching over 4 hours of live, linear TV a day. This is the most since records began. This really is remarkable and is worth taking a moment to consider. There are many reasons for linear TV’s pretty spectacular performance (in one year it has increased, on average, by 2 hours a week per viewer). The take-up of new TV technologies like DTRs; on-demand TV services – which we now know lead people back to watching linear TV; the economic and weather climates; the new measurement system introduced by BARB in January last year…and of course fantastic TV shows. The press releases Thinkbox issues on a quarterly basis announcing...

BLOG: It’s not like me to resort to cheesey pop lyrics - though I do confess to an excess of breathless enthusiasm sometimes – but this time I want you to get excited with me about things that really matter: TV programmes. We are no slouches at Thinkbox when it comes to championing new TV technologies; you might have already seen our new Tellyporting research into TV’s future (if not you can see the re-run on 2 Feb). But all the iPads, and 3D screens and smartphones and companion social media sites would be dreary devices indeed without the life-force and well-spring of great TV content. Given the near 10% decline in TV ad revenue in 2009, it’s nothing short of miraculous that viewing hasn't suffered in 2010, with average viewing likely to tip over the 4 hour mark. Programmes like Downton Abbey (back again this year), This Is England ’86, An Idiot Abroad...

BLOG: It’s 1987, a hurricane has torn apart southern England, nobody is putting Baby anywhere near the corner in new release Dirty Dancing, and Alex Ferguson has been at Manchester United for a year. Elsewhere, and slightly lower key, the annual TGI survey of 24,000 UK adults has started to include dozens of lifestyle statements. One of those statements, which has survived to this day is “On television, sometimes the advertisements are as good as the programmes”. 25 years on and there is much debate about the consistent decline in the percentage of people agreeing with this statement about the relative enjoyment of TV ads and programmes...

BLOG: So that’s it then. After weeks of following the contestants, marvelling at their talent (or lack of it) and getting immersed in their life stories, last weekend the ultimate winner emerged: Adam. Adam? Matt, surely? No, dear readers. While the rest of the UK, including most broadsheet journalists, marketers, agencies and MPs it seems, was being sucked in by the enormous telly magnet that is The X Factor, the Alps family was engrossed in the final of Australian Masterchef on Watch. We’ve got our own Facebook fangroup, a fraction of the size of the X Factor Facebook group fair enough, but still...

BLOG: Has there really ever been a ‘Golden Age’ of advertising? Or, rather, is talking about one a kind of syndrome that strikes media types in their middle years and causes them to talk nostalgically or sentimentally about a mythical, better past – often using it as a benchmark to rubbish what is around now? In his new autobiography, 'The Fry Chronicles', Stephen Fry talks about the first TV commercial he ever recorded. It was this one for Worthington in the early 1980s. When retelling the story he has what might be described as a bout of 'Golden Age Syndrome': 'The golden age of British advertising...

BLOG: ‘Excellence is an art won by training’ said Aristotle. He probably wasn’t thinking about the training courses that we run here at Thinkbox, but I like to think he would have approved anyway. Excellence is what we should all be after and training – either on the job or more formal courses – is vital to it. One of my responsibilities is running Thinkbox’s (free) training courses and, with a moment to spare, I recently had a look at the attendance to see what, if anything, it told me. We currently run two different training courses; the first is designed for new starters to the advertising and marketing sectors, whatever their role or company, and gives an introduction to the world of television, covering everything from how TV is traded to the different roles it plays and how to get the best out of a TV campaign. The second looks at TV technology and provides information and insight into developments in TV technology and how advertisers can get the best out of them...

BLOG: A wonderful night at the IPA Effectiveness Awards. Congratulations to all the winners; we never get bored of pointing out how important these awards are. Proving the impact of advertising in hard business terms is the Grail; nothing is more deserving of awards, celebrations and hangovers For obvious partisan reasons we’re pleased here at Thinkbox about telly’s performance last night. 36 of the 38 winning campaigns had TV advertising at their heart...

BLOG: Cast your mind back. You may remember a year ago when our cheeky cousins at the IAB announced that internet advertising revenue had finally ‘overtaken’ TV advertising revenue in the first half of 2009. This prompted some ugly triumphalism from internet fundamentalists and telly was given a right old kicking in the press. A year on our bruises have healed, and we’re all friends again. But guess what; various press stories appeared last week using the 2010 first half figures from the Advertising Association to state that apparently TV had ‘overtaken’ the internet again. In the first half of the year TV had...

BLOG: The low cost, fast turnaround and ease of doing online research has turned it into the crack cocaine of media evaluation; we know it’s bad for us but it is also addictive and gives us an instant high. So a big thumbs up and round of applause should go to the IAB in the USA. They have just released an independent review of the methods used to measure online advertising’s effectiveness via the internet. This was a very brave move indeed by the IAB, given that these ‘surveys’ consistently claim that online advertising spend is significantly more effective than spend on established media. The IAB across the Atlantic took aim at many of its members’ own feet...

BLOG: The occasion is one of the IPA’s “Focus on Effectiveness” events which celebrate 30 years of the IPA Effectiveness Awards by premiering new films of some of the most inspiring case studies from its remarkable databank. You should go, and you can get tickets here. The case in the spotlight on Monday evening is PG Tips and I’ll be chairing the panel discussion following the screening with Nigel Jones of Publicis, the original author of the paper back in his BMP/DDB days, and Ed Warren, the creative director from Mother, who works on the current Al and Monkey campaign. The PG Tips film is not only a great excuse to revisit some brilliant PG Tips advertising of the last 30 years, it’s also an incredible...

BLOG: I’ve got used to reading articles from organisations which operate largely within internet marketing with a nice cup of tea by my side, so that I remain calm. But I recently read one the other day from Comscore (the major internet research company) that made me think someone from Thinkbox must have infiltrated them, bound and gagged its staff, and started writing blogs for them. It was entitled ‘The Lure of TV Advertising for Internet Businesses’ and it examined why so many online businesses are now advertising on TV. It gave three reasons why TV is so attractive to online businesses...

BLOG: Jimmy Saville, among his many gifts, was acutely aware of how time slips away from us, perpetually moving us from now… to then. Hence his catchphrase, which was, I’m sure, a profound comment on the nature of existence itself rather than the irritating and patronising tic that some would have us believe. Either way, Sir Jewellery draws our attention to the importance of 'nowness'. It would be nice if you commented on this blog once you've finished it, but if you don't do it now, then I suspect you never will, because the moment will have gone. Now will have become then...

BLOG: The results of two new research studies have made me question one of the final shibboleths of media planning: the idea that there is such a thing as an ‘effective frequency’ which can be easily defined and which offers a single, optimal level at which the advertising ‘works’. The first piece of research was a neuroscientific study we carried out. It revealed how we process advertising when we watch TV as opposed to when we are engaged in various online activities. It clearly points to the importance of emotion and engagement in driving performance – much more so than attention – and underlines recent insights into the role emotional association and implicit memory play in strengthening a brand’s position within our choice set. As the neuroscientists say, “the neurones that fire together wire together”...

BLOG: It might just be me, but the annual MediaGuardian 100 - just published - provides a lovely insight into the many ways TV touches upon our different media and various parts of our media lives. It is an elegant – albeit accidental – exposition of convergence and shows how TV is the strong and consistent thread running through almost every aspect of the media landscape. The set-up for the list betrays a lingering – though thankfully declining – propensity to play ‘old’ or ‘traditional’ media off against ‘new’ or ‘digital’ media...

BLOG: A few years ago, a prevailing theme at Media 360 was that TV was dead – or at least in intensive care. It was depressing (because it was nonsense). A couple of years ago, following the launch of our joint study with the IAB looking at TV + online, the tone had shifted a little and there was a bit more positivity about TV’s future; TV was out of intensive care and walking around the ward. It was heartening. Then, last week, its rehabilitation took a couple more strides. TV was voted the medium with the brightest future at Media 360...

BLOG: All the talk is of coalitions, of partnerships, of working together. In telly - especially online and on-demand - there have been many coalitions recently. Some have been between broadcasters and other broadcasters, some between broadcasters and platforms. SeeSaw has successfully brought together the BBC, Channel 4 and Five; Youtube now has dedicated Channel 4 and Five channels; Wii has the iPlayer; Xbox 360 has Sky Player...the list goes on and on. On top of that...

BLOG: I was struck when reviewing this month’s Thinkboxes’ shortlist firstly by what an incredibly powerful set of ads they are, and secondly by the fact that, as a group, they seem to share a particular vibe which is distinctive but which I found hard to define. I eventually realised that the word I was grasping for was ‘feminine’, without wishing to be too reductive. It seems to me that they all share a certain identifiably feminine aesthetic and that it is unusual to see this as the common thread among a set of award-shortlisted ads...

BLOG: Twitter announced last month that it had reached its ten billionth tweet. That, dear readers, is Numberwang. The news provoked the esteemed Claire Beale to comment that Twitter had therefore become a ‘mass medium’. Brand Republic recently ran the following story: ‘A cinema ad for South African Tourism delivered an estimated 451,289 impacts last weekend, according to figures from cinema sales house Digital Cinema Media’; this was shortly followed by another story about cinema delivering ‘at least one million impacts over the weekend’ for a new ad from Puma. More classic cases of Numberwanging. We’re no better at Thinkbox; we can Numberwang with the best. We have taken to telling people that 2.5 billion TV ads are seen every day in the UK, at normal speed. In our monthly reports we now have a page where we list the brands with the most ‘views’ in the month (fyi in February it was Morrisons with 695 million TV ‘views’). All of those numbers are accurate – but what do they mean?..

BLOG: As Uncle Bulgaria could have told you, it’s a lifetime’s work clearing up the rubbish that litters the marketing landscape. One of the current topics flapping annoyingly in the breeze is all the nonsense uttered about ‘word of mouth’, or WOM for short. Most weeks you’ll find a story about some brand abandoning brand advertising and instead investing in a WOM strategy. Last year, I attended two conferences where the same speaker – a renowned expert in the social media space – put up a chart headed “Word of mouth is the new television”. It’s difficult to know quite where to start with such a statement, but I’ll have a go...

BLOG: I saw an ad for Sony's new generation of internet TVs this morning. The interesting part about it was the new functionalities it chose to focus on; in this case, the ability to merge Facebook and Twitter into the TV viewing experience. A lot of discussion has taken place about what internet-enabled TVs will be used for. As one of those lucky people invited to the launch of Microsoft’s Web TV product over a decade ago, I am pretty sure it won’t be what Microsoft had in mind; lots of unrelated information appearing over the TV content being viewed. TV is an immersive (and predominantly shared) experience and anything that distracts from that experience will generally not be welcomed...

BLOG: The nauseatingly cute and diverse young cast of Glee has been summoned to the White House to perform for the Obamas this Easter. But our favourite character from the show won't be there; Sue Sylvester (actress Jane Lynch) will be busy washing her Adidas track suits...

BLOG: One of the many marvels of Google is Google Alerts. It allows me to appear as though I am very widely read indeed. So I thought I’d mention an interesting article I spotted in the New York Times. It was about the fact that the winners of the BTAAs, which took place last week (the ‘beef’ has nearly been digested), are about to tour the US. The BTAAs were, as ever, a great window into the best British TV advertising. Personal highlights from the winners include T-Mobile’s ‘Dance’, which I will never tire of no matter how many times I see it; The Department of Transport’s hugely powerful ‘Live with it’; and Weetabix’s return to glory...

BLOG: I attended the Mediatel ‘Future of Online’ seminar recently, where much was made of the launch of UKOM, the online industry’s attempt to get a measure of exposure and reach with the aim of attracting more brand display revenues. It has been a tortured process. Now, this may seem strange, given that TV achieves levels of reach that other media channels can only dream about, but I think we need to think beyond exposure and reach in terms of planning integrated media campaigns...

BLOG: Amid the cutbacks and regulations that have hamstrung some advertising categories, there is one that has recorded rapid and continual growth in the money invested in advertising in general, and TV in particular. It is a category that has access to a wealth of data to evaluate the success of its marketing activities, much of it instantaneous. It has witnessed rapid growth in sales revenues and the number of brands entering the market. I am talking, of course, about online brands. Yesterday morning, we held an event (and streamed it live online) looking at this phenomenon and exploring why it is happening and how best for online brands to use TV. We’ll be making it available on the Thinkbox website to watch in the coming weeks....

BLOG: One of the regular taunts Thinkbox gets is that Google has become the biggest brand in the world without using TV advertising. We usually respond by saying a) no-one says you can't build a brand without using TV, it's just easier and quicker if you do and b) brands which occupy significant real estate have a great advantage. Marks and Spencer eschewed any advertising for decades; significant presence on the high street...

BLOG: A couple of weekends ago I was fascinated by all the chat on Twitter about Johnny Depp; he had been killed in a car crash apparently. Except that he wasn’t dead. Oh yes he was, oh no he wasn’t. So determined were the scammers they had even mocked up a superficially convincing CNN.com homepage link that was doing the rounds. Let me make it clear for all Johnny Depp fans, he is NOT dead - or not, at least, at the time of writing. But it was a perfect example of how easy it is for mischief to spread, how hard it is to authenticate sources in all forms of gossip, and how very vulnerable Twitter is to manipulation, whether for fun, evil or just plain old profit. Which brings me to the Rage Against The Machine...

BLOG: Three momentous things began on Friday 1 January 2010: a new decade, a World Cup year, and a brand new BARB contract. Days very rarely get bigger than that for me. So, BARB has changed - what it does and who is doing it – and the thought of this originally filled me with fear, not joy. I have been closely involved in monitoring previous changes to BARB supply and still wake up screaming with memories of being drowned in computer printouts during the interminable ‘parallel runs’, when the old and new services were run simultaneously in order to pick up any major inconsistencies in the data...

BLOG: They were not quite Christmas presents but, in the past month or so, three pieces of independent research have landed on my desk, all of which run counter to the prevailing wisdom (cf. Chris Anderson) that ‘free is best’ and paid for media have had their day. The first piece of research came from Kantar Media (part of the WPP Group) who looked at consumer willingness to pay for different media experiences. They looked at willingness to pay for content across newspapers, radio, mobile phone, internet and television...

BLOG: We’re now at roughly the half way stage in our annual (well, second) ad industry TVIQ competition and patterns are starting to emerge about which sectors of the industry have more TV nous. It is a viciously fought competition. Friendships could break. Lunches might be cancelled. So far we have had well over a thousand people take part and, although it is close, media agencies are marginally ahead (of journalists, who are currently second). Both buyers and planners can hold their heads pretty high. So far... My Christmas TV viewing - when it wasn’t either David Tennant or a Big Fat Burp of the Year - seemed to consist of reviews of the best TV ads or programmes of the decade. The best 20 TV ads of the decade (all of which you can see here) give the lie to any suggestion that British advertising creativity isn’t what it was, with as many landmark ads as in any previous era. If TV advertising’s quality is not in question, how about a quick look at some of the numbers...

BLOG: A decade ends and an armada of navel-gazing features about the previous ten years is launched. My Christmas TV viewing - when it wasn’t either David Tennant or a Big Fat Burp of the Year - seemed to consist of reviews of the best TV ads or programmes of the decade. The best 20 TV ads of the decade (all of which you can see here) give the lie to any suggestion that British advertising creativity isn’t what it was, with as many landmark ads as in any previous era. If TV advertising’s quality is not in question, how about a quick look at some of the numbers...

BLOG: There’s nothing quite as nauseating as someone revelling in an “I told you so” moment but there’s no stopping me; you might like to retreat now. Jubilation all round today at Thinkbox Towers thanks to YouTube’s new ad campaign promoting the arrival of proper TV content (courtesy of its deal with C4) which uses the line, “YouTube’s got TV”. What they didn’t advertise was “YouTube’s got long-form video”. We’ve been banging on about...

BLOG: So Jedward are out and didn’t they do it in spectacular style? Moaning and growling through a uniquely atonal version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Boyzone classic “No matter what”. It clearly even tested Louis’s powers of positive thinking. At one point the camera turned to him and there he was, fixed grin, singing along under his breath clearly in a desperate attempt to guide his protégés back to the tune. Before striking the killer blow, Dannii was prompted to ask whether this was a singing competition; a question to which none of the other judges seemed able or willing to give an adequate answer.

BLOG: It is important to respond, to act. Ask Gordon Brown about biscuits and he’d better respond with something – anything – or else there will be trouble. Deafening silence rarely suggests success. Advertising doesn’t always expect an instant response; often it is trying to change the way people feel or think about a brand. But if advertising doesn’t eventually lead to a response (ideally a purchase or a change in behaviour), then it is difficult to see its point...

No other awards do what the IPA Effectiveness Awards do – honour the actual, transformational effect that good advertising can have. For this reason above all they remain the gold standard in awards. And for that reason Thinkbox is extremely proud to sponsor them. At Monday night’s awards do, all winners were deserving of praise. The campaigns had worked brilliantly and the brains behind them had gone the extra mile to show how they worked. They proved the influence of advertising on the bottom line and they deserve our thanks for that effort...

BLOG: In media, we like to create either/ors. Different media are generally pushed (or pulled of course) into various binary oppositions. As well as push/pull, we have lean forward/ back; interruption/engagement; new/old; and, today’s niggle, passive/active. Unless you are reading this from a print-out (which is either very dedicated or rather weird), you are probably leaning forward, switched on, plugged in and active. Either way, you should be explicitly conscious of my every word landing neatly in your pre-frontal cortex. But tonight at home...

BLOG: In a surreal moment, the respected media analyst and futurologist Rio Ferdinand has linked the fact that the England-Ukraine match is going to be online pay-per-view to the recent claim that internet advertising has ‘overtaken’ TV advertising: "I read that online advertising has taken over from TV”, he apparently said, “so that tells you something about where it's going in terms of the digital world…So I’m sure it'll be the way forward and in the future it'll probably be the reality. I think it's a good way to gauge how many people are interested." If ever the IAB’s claims needed a dose of credibility, surely this is it...

BLOG: It was supposed to be her day off, but then there was a lot of fuss about a story claiming online advertising revenues were now bigger than TV advertising revenues. What does that mean? Does it mean anything? Tess Alps put down her trowel and blogged about it to add a bit of context…

BLOG: David Reviews, the influential TV and film aggregation site, has recently started something called The Lunch Break. This is a selection of TV ads put together to watch as if in an ad break. The very good idea behind this is obviously to better replicate the experience that viewers have. People rarely watch any advertising with devoted attention - unless they've specifically sought it out to view again. TV viewers watch a series of different ads from non-competing markets with varying levels of attention (all of which we now know are valuable to advertisers, thanks to neuroscience). The research, which was conducted by...

BLOG: Prepare for the whiff of burnt rubber in the air as the government begins its u-turn on product placement in UK TV programmes. There is no doubt that this is a fair decision. Product placement is already on our screens in various forms within acquired programming and as legitimate prop provision. We can trust that broadcasters, programme makers and advertisers will be culturally sensitive and won’t allow it to alienate British viewers. The difference to the viewing experience will be negligible and programmes will arguably become more authentic.

BLOG: Quality Street, the Olympics, the UN, The Krankies – aren’t variety and difference wonderful things? This struck me when I had a look back over the winners of our monthly TV ad creative awards – the Thinkboxes – which have been up and running for just over a year now. It felt like a good time to step back and survey the ads that have won. I wondered what the winners – voted for by the creative community via our Academy – would tell me about the last year or so in TV advertising creativity, if indeed they told me anything. What were the trends, the patterns, the creative motifs that captured the imagination?

BLOG: Now, here’s a lovely thing that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while. The brilliant Barclaycard ‘Waterslide’ TV ad propelled its iPhone app spin-off to become the most popular free, branded game in the history of the iTunes App Store. This is a fine example of TV and interactive media cuddling up and making babies. BBH’s Barclaycard's 'Waterslide Extreme' iPhone app has clocked up 4 million downloads from the iTunes App Store since its launch in mid-July. It became the top free app in 57 countries. The Barclaycard TV ad was an instant hit and sparked lots of Twitterface activity. I loved it too; given that their previous campaign had featured a heartthrob from an all-time favourite TV series, that’s quite an achievement. Dare (the creative agency behind the app) also created a YouTube channel where people made their own versions of the ad for other to vote on (the excellent tea&cheese’s take on the ad got the most votes).

BLOG: You’ll have gathered by now that I am a bit of a pedantic old bag but I have nothing against the word ‘digital’ per se. It is a perfectly lovely antonym to ‘analogue’. It is, according to a dictionary, a ‘description of data which is stored or transmitted as a sequence of discrete symbols from a finite set, most commonly this means binary data represented using electronic or electromagnetic signals’. So that’s nice and clear. My problem is how ‘digital’ has come to be used in media and marketing. It doesn’t do the job required of it. Even worse than imprecision, it causes confusion. Earlier this year I witnessed a very senior media figure stand on a platform and tell the audience that when digital TV switchover is complete in 2012 all UK TV will be delivered via the internet. Erm…sorry, but no. More and more media are becoming digital; we now have a date for radio broadcasting to go totally digital and outdoor has lots of exciting new digital formats. Even print media are compiled digitally, for heaven’s sake.

BLOG: While it is music to Thinkbox’s – and advertisers’ – ears that commercial TV has increased its share of viewing and that commercial broadcast TV viewing is continuing to grow, it certainly wasn’t our intention that this should be used as a stick to beat the BBC, as some have. There are quite enough sticks beating the BBC at the moment. The fact is that, all things being equal, commercial TV’s share of broadcast viewing is likely to keep nudging forward - and the BBC’s diminish - for the next couple of years until everyone has digital TV and all the extra commercial channels that it brings. In that sense, commercial TV simply has a built-in, mathematical advantage. But any advantage is pointless without skills to seal the deal. The strongest, fastest rugby player in the world is worthless if he or she can’t catch the ball. So it is all very well having the choice of more channels, but there has to be something on them to persuade you to watch. For this, commercial TV broadcasters deserve praise. After 2012, changes in channel viewing shares will be driven chiefly by programming and marketing, not distribution.

BLOG: Our lovely cousins at the RAB have made an online TV ad to promote radio advertising. The cheeky blighters have based it around our TV ad, but, as they don’t say much we’d disagree with, we have decided to take it as a tribute. Don’t forget to put the sound up. Our TV ad does strongly feature lines and catchphrases from TV ads but also important gestures and movements: the Cornetto gondola rowing, the R White’s dance, the JR Hartley head-nodding. No matter; the RAB has highlighted an issue we feel strongly about which is the importance of sound in TV ads. Radio can indeed through sound alone provoke a visual memory from a TV ad; in one of our own research groups someone talked about the British Heart Foundation’s TV ad from a couple of years back where blood clots were seen moving sinisterly under the skin to the accompaniment of the Frank Sinatra classic ‘I’ve got you under my skin’. She said that every time she heard the music she could visualise those clots creeping along veins.

BLOG: As I sometimes get called ‘Statto’ it is only fitting that I start with a stat. 99% of our time spent looking at AV content on screens at home is spent looking at the screen of a TV set (for digital natives only that figure is 98%). So says a new ethnographic study in the US by Nielsen/CRE. The screens of PCs, laptops, games consoles, mobiles etc. make up the remainder of our home screen time, says the study. There are obvious reasons behind our preference for the largest of the small screens when it comes to watching TV. Among other things, you don’t have to hold it, squint at it, wear earphones to use it, refresh it, or uncomfortably crowd round it to share the experience. That 99% highlights that it is still a compromise to watch TV on a laptop, PC or mobile, although it is a compromise that will have to be made less often as online TV services arrive on TV sets.

BLOG: This is the first in an occasional and cathartic series where we pick one of the most irritating things at large in media at the moment. It could be anything; a word, a phrase, a person, some research, a trend or even an ad (probably not a telly one obviously as they are all beyond reproach). There will be no itch that won’t be scratched, no eyelash beyond the probe of our media fingers; anything is fair game. What is the point of a blog, frankly, if you can’t use it to swat the bees in your bonnet from time to time? To kick off I offer you ‘long-form video’, used recently by YouTube to describe their recent tie-up with TV broadcasters which will finally get some proper telly programmes legally onto their platform. People in media have a pathological need to abuse, water down, neuter, twist, murder or mutilate language to the edge of reason and beyond, right into the choppy waters of lunacy. ‘Long-form video’ is a perfect example of this, as used in a Media Week headline this week. It takes a perfectly lovely concept – television – and hammers it flat into bland, technical nonsense.

BLOG: Has Samuel Beckett become a headline writer at The Guardian? I ask because one of their recent headlines was so absurd, so fist-bitingly contradictory that I spat out my snail porridge and had to have a lie down. The piece was about Hulu launching in the UK. The headline was: 'With all this online, why watch TV?' It might as well have been ‘With all this internet shopping, why shop?’ or ‘With all this blogging, why write?’. It’s times like this I wish I could ban headlines, or at least vet those that have the words TV and online in them. Headlines are the boastful show-off who wants your attention and is willing to say anything to get it. This is fine with straightforward issues like ‘Man found hanging out of goat’ or ‘England cruise to Ashes victory', but most media and advertising issues are more nuanced. There’s no little irony in the fact that they can’t always be reduced to catchy slogans.