Smart planning is clearly as integral to a campaign’s success as great creative. Mediacom’s Sue Unerman shared some of her thoughts with us on camera. Play the above film to hear what she said about the art of Innovative Spot planning.

If you prefer to read all about it, you can explore some of Sue’s key themes below.
To get more value from TV you need consumer insight into how and when and what it’s watched for.

Here are a few ideas:

Event programming & Solus viewing
Event programming is where friends get together to watch TV as an event. Max and Paddy on Channel 4 was one such programme and, as such was exploited for the release of the Keane Hopes and Fears album, where Mediacom ran four ten second ads in a break to stimulate conversation during collective viewing.
As well as targeting communal viewing, you can also focus on solus viewing. For example Glenmorangie’s TV activity focused in on solus viewing by ABC1 men for the ‘personal appreciation moment’.

Appropriate moments
Ads can be targetted at our experiences at particular times of day,
Rennie is a great example of this: the ads are talking to people when they’d just eaten (the point of suffering!)

Breathe right, the nasal strips which aim to improve breathing also focused their Spot activity around appropriate moments. GMTV talked to the show's female biased audience and leveraged it's "trusted advisor" perception - it aimed to stimulate purchase after a difficult night's sleep due to excessive snoring. The female being the injured party. Clever stuff, once more targetting "the point of injury!" And it worked.

See the IPA award winning Fire Service of Northern Ireland work for another example of this sort of smart thinking.

Addressing Men and Women differently
Fiat’s Spirito di Punto created different executions for men and women and placed them in men and women’s programming.

The Mediacom Affinity Break 
MediaCom became the first media agency to create an ‘affinity’ break for their clients on national television.  The exclusive breaks featured advertisements from Kwik-Fit, Churchill Car Insurance, Shell Optimax and Volkswagen Golf, all MediaCom clients and, more importantly, all with a central theme in common – motoring.

The affinity break initiative aims to add leverage to the advertisers’ messages by removing the clutter surrounding them.  Cognitive studies indicate that the mind is more astute at recalling data that is tonally or thematically similar. By aggregating particular clients’ advertisements and placing them in the correct environments it is possible to magnifying the effect of the break and improve viewer involvement and recall.

Tactical advertising
Expanding on this idea of association with surrounding content, ads can be placed tactically to reflect what is going on in a particular TV Programme. Coke bought spots right next to Celebrity Big Brother to play off John McCririck's anger at there being no Diet Coke in the house. Trojan Condom bought spot in Big Brother, when a particular couple developed their affections under the table and Vanish bought a spot in the Bill Clinton documentary when Monica was being interviewed. All good clean fun …

Fives affinity creative break
Five have also created ad breaks in programmes to best suit particular advertising creative of adjacent spots: i.e. if there is a pertinent scene in a film they drive affinity by taking the break at that point and ensuring the first or last in break is as close as possible to it.

Exclusions  
In the US, Ford took ownership of the World premier of a new season of 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland. They pulled all of the ad breaks to the front of the show, topped the programme with a gripping Ford advertainment (in the style of 24, directed by the 24 director, and featuring Ford) then promised viewers an uninterrupted viewing of 24 courtesy of Ford (delivered to camera by Kiefer, himself). This treatment would break current UK regulations but it is an example of clever thinking, and may be the shape of things to come …

Taking a whole break / Road blocks
Some brands have taken the whole break, some brands take identical time slots on a number of channels – both create “road blocks” of sorts.

EA Sports kicked off a huge marketing campaign for their new FIFA 09 video game with a four minute ad on Sky Sports 1. This played out during the half time interval of a premiership clash of the Titans, Manchester United versus Chelsea. It was the only ad in the break and a great fit with this appointment to view programme for footie fans.

Make poverty history occupied the whole break with their extended message, whilst Ford played wittily off the break around the movie Groundhog day.

Henkel use spot road blocks allied to sponsorship to gain ownership of DIY on GMTV. They focused on the growing influence of women in the DIY market which itself, is not usually associated with the breakfast day-part, and a created a TV campaign to make the Henkel pound work harder. They sponsored the Handy DIY Hints strand and bought the entire following ad break to showcase their range of products. Henkel extended this online on the GMTV website. This was a highly visible and successful campaign and was well received by the trade.

SUMMARY
Today’s television provides an increasing number of targeting opportunities. Smart creative planners are overlaying these with key behavioural and psychological insights to get the most out of the medium for their brands.