Posts Tagged ‘tv’
Don’t write TV off as a news medium yet
February 19th, 2010
I recently watched the film Frost/Nixon which is a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.
As a quick bit of background for those who aren’t familiar with the Nixon Interviews, in 1977 (three years after his resignation), Nixon granted British journalist Sir David Frost an exclusive series of interviews for which he was paid $600,000. The interviews began on March 23, 1977 and lasted 12 days. They were taped for two hours a day, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for a total of 28 hours and 45 minutes. The interviews were were edited into four programs, each 90 minutes long.
The premiere episode drew 45 million viewers, the largest television audience for a political interview in history — a record which still stands today.
For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a brilliant demonstration of the power of TV as a news medium. No other media would have been able to capture the “cascade of candor”, as Frost termed it, when Nixon said the line: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”, effectively giving the US public the admission of guilt that they so desperately craved.
Today so much emphasis is placed on social media, that as an industry we need to be careful not to prematurely write-off media that can still be incredibly powerful for a person or brand. Very recently we secured an interview for a client of ours on Sky News, and the next day their phone did not stop ringing with new business enquiries. We mustn’t forget that audiences can still be reached via linear TV.
An interesting statistic is that average daily hours of television viewing rose to 3.94 hours in Q4 2009, driving 2009 figures to the highest since 2002, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s latest Trends in Television Report. TV consumption is on the up, and remains to be taken seriously as a news channel.
Finally, I leave you with a great six minute video on how Richard Nixon turned the media into exaggerated fearmongers. It’s not completely relevant to the post, but well worth watching.
Honda’s leap of faith challenges TV advertising
May 30th, 2008
For those of you who missed it, last night at 8:10pm Honda and Channel 4 staged the ‘first’ ever live advert on British television. Whether it really was a first is debatable - I’ve heard reports to the contrary - but nevertheless it was a brave attempt to turn TV advertising on its head by promoting relevance and engagement, and was very successful.
The commercial, which is part of Honda’s ‘Difficult is worth doing’ campaign, featured 19 skydivers who had three minutes and 20 seconds to spell out the word H.o.n.d.a during freefall, before deploying their chutes. A replay can be watched here (suprisingly it has not yet been uploaded to the Honda YouTube channel).
The stunt was a teaser to Honda’s Accord new multi-million pound ad campaign, which airs on 1 June - the production of which has been documented on the ‘Difficult is worth doing’ blog, designed by Collective.
Overall, the ad seems to have been very well received. A Tweet Scan reveals a very positive reaction, with words such as “awesome”, “incredible” and “cool” cropping up a lot.
I was suprised by the limited amount of Honda branding - I’ve seen several reports questioning why there was so little, and I have to admit had I not read about it on the MediaGuardian website in the morning, I might have been a bit confused until the end.
However, setting minor criticism aside, the campaign is a big step towards TV and online ad campaigns being better integrated. With the fast-paced, time-shift culture that we live in today, TV advertisers are going to have to work harder to keep audiences engaged. Could live TV advertising be the answer? It’s not the only solution, and obviously demands big budgets…bit it will be interesting to see the conversion rates this Honda campaign produces.
