BLOG: Two things happened when I read this week’s report that Gavin Darby, chief executive of Premier Foods, had followed up his good financial results with the statement that his company would be “unashamedly sticking with TV advertising”. Firstly, I gave a little inner cheer for Premier Foods and their supreme good sense at investing in TV advertising. But then I couldn’t help sighing over the word ‘unashamedly’ and the fact he felt the need to use it. Why should he feel even a tad guilty at using TV when it has never been cheaper in real terms or as effective or as technologically dynamic. Why does he need to apologise to...

15 million people watched all or part of the first ever live televised election debate between our three largest political parties, delivering an average live audience of 9.4m. This was not only something quite new in the evolution of our democracy, but also a gripping bit of telly that got us tens of thousands Twittering, Facebooking and Googling – plus millions chewing it over in livings rooms and pubs across the nation. A programme like this reminds us that TV is the most social medium of all. In all the hype about social media’s important role in the Obama campaign, it’s often overlooked that it was the live TV debates and a huge TV advertising campaign that mobilized support for Obama in the first place, which the web then captured and amplified so profitably. The money that Obama raised online was then ploughed back into buying more TV advertising. Here you can read about ITV’s innovative cross platform approach to the debate, get the key social network figures and also find out how various types of analysis were used to monitor the performance of the contenders in real time. It’s a story of sentiment analysis, a worm and a place called Tweetminster.

In this extended interview for our Televisionaries series, David Wheldon tells us how Vodafone have leveraged TV to drive their business in the UK, and how this has worked globally via televised sports sponsorship. David has worked on both sides of the media fence and has a unique perspective on clients and agencies; addressable advertising; mobile phones as a medium; media multi-tasking; addressable advertising and TV’s crucial role in the centre of most marketing plans. You can watch the full interview here.