Why Brands Must Integrate TV With Wider Marketing Efforts

Cross-plat­form inte­gra­tion can boost sales, engage­ment, and aware­ness.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

The rise of dig­i­tal media as an engag­ing chan­nel for con­sumers has seen bud­gets, invest­ment, and mar­ket­ing efforts shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media such as broad­cast­ing and print, and toward paid and online. How­ev­er, while the rich diver­si­ty and engage­ment poten­tial of dig­i­tal media does offer an entic­ing propo­si­tion for mar­keters, the reach and impact of tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing still offers adver­tis­ers an attrac­tive propo­si­tion in build­ing the cru­cial aware­ness that reas­sures con­sumers about a brand. How­ev­er, air­time does­n’t come cheap, so how do adver­tis­ers ensure that their tele­vi­sion cam­paigns are deliv­er­ing the kind of val­ue that ensures the chan­nel remains a wor­thy invest­ment?


When you con­sid­er that 30 sec­onds of air­time cov­er­age dur­ing the Super Bowl cost adver­tis­ers $4.5 mil­lion, it’s clear that high pro­file (and high bud­get) tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing is still regard­ed as a valu­able chan­nel for brands to oper­ate. How­ev­er, it remains a chal­lenge for brands to mea­sure the true val­ue of their tele­vi­sion cam­paigns.

With the abil­i­ty to track, mea­sure, and attribute con­sumer inter­ac­tions on online chan­nels becom­ing more accu­rate, it’s lit­tle won­der that three dig­i­tal chan­nels (social, mobile, and email) are set to dom­i­nate mar­ket­ing bud­gets in the next three to five years.

Quite sim­ply, the advent of dig­i­tal media means there are oth­er chan­nels for brands to invest their bud­gets, such as paid or social media, chan­nels which are arguably more effec­tive at build­ing author­i­ty and trust, and cre­at­ing brand aware­ness among con­sumers.

Increas­ing­ly, adver­tis­ers who engage in tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing are under pres­sure to deliv­er. What can adver­tis­ers do to ensure their tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing counts?

Integrating Television Advertising: Super Bowl 2015

Insights from agency wywy, explor­ing brand per­for­mance over last week­end’s Super Bowl, sug­gest that the key to achiev­ing val­ue from tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing is to inte­grate it with wider cam­paigns. wywy’s research cit­ed that up to 78 per­cent of Inter­net users access sec­ond-screen devices when watch­ing tele­vi­sion, and one-third check out prod­uct infor­ma­tion after view­ing a TV ad.

A study of the Super Bowl 2015 ads that aired on nation­al TV, wywy found that most brands used social media in con­junc­tion with their tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

These are healthy sta­tis­tics, but sev­er­al adver­tis­ers still fail to inte­grate tele­vi­sion with wider mar­ket­ing efforts, result­ing in a dis­con­nect. Wywy’s study found that of the 56 brands who aired ads dur­ing the Super Bowl:

  • 18 per­cent did­n’t con­nect expe­ri­ences on brand web­sites with the mes­sag­ing or tag lines of their Super Bowl adverts.
  • 37 per­cent of web­sites dis­played prod­ucts with com­pro­mised vis­i­bil­i­ty (in a slide show, a small space, or low­er on the dis­play forc­ing users to scroll).

On mobile devices, some brands failed to con­nect up the adver­to­r­i­al push of their cam­paign:

  • 20 per­cent did­n’t con­nect their mobile web­site expe­ri­ence to the Super Bowl ad mes­sage.
  • 42 per­cent dis­played prod­ucts with com­pro­mised vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The fig­ures above rep­re­sent a large pro­por­tion of brands that are per­haps focus­ing too heav­i­ly on the impact of expen­sive tele­vi­sion cam­paigns, and neglect­ing the gold­en rule in mar­ket­ing: to inte­grate efforts in a way where chan­nels can com­ple­ment each oth­er and con­nect seam­less user expe­ri­ences.

The Super Bowl is a one-of-a-kind TV adver­tis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands and the recep­tiv­i­ty is high­ly pos­i­tive, but sales are being sent to the side­lines when the cam­paign isn’t car­ried through across screens,” said Andreas Schroeter, co-founder and COO of wywy. “Con­sumers now expect brands to tell the same mes­sage regard­less of the screen and way they inter­act.”

Cross-Screen Integration: Budweiser And Minibar

One exam­ple of a brand that man­aged to put cross-plat­form inte­gra­tion into prac­tice was peren­ni­al Super Bowl adver­tis­er Bud­weis­er. The beer man­u­fac­tur­er part­nered with Mini­bar, an on-demand alco­hol deliv­ery plat­form. The case shows how tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing can be con­nect­ed with cross-screen expe­ri­ences to help dri­ve sales.

When Bud­weis­er screened their “Lost Dog” pup­py com­mer­cial, Mini­bar sent a syn­chro­nized push noti­fi­ca­tion to their entire net­work, allow­ing brand buzz and excel­lent pro­vi­sion of user expe­ri­ence to work togeth­er to gen­er­ate healthy sales.

minibar

The move result­ed in the high­est sin­gle day of Bud­weis­er sales on Mini­bar, ever. In addi­tion:

  • Bud­weis­er orders up 500 per­cent vs. pri­or week
  • Bud­weis­er dol­lar sales up 650 per­cent vs. pri­or week
  • In-app mobile engage­ment jumped 400 per­cent dur­ing the 10 min­utes sur­round­ing the push noti­fi­ca­tion
  • 80 per­cent increase in sin­gle day new app users

Advertisers Must Ensure TV Campaigns Deliver Value

All too often, brands neglect wider mar­ket­ing goals in their attempts to deliv­er impact­ful adver­tis­ing. To real­ly deliv­er val­ue, brands need to inte­grate efforts and tie togeth­er omnichan­nel expe­ri­ences to fit the way peo­ple are con­sum­ing dig­i­tal media.

Tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing fits in only if, for the most part, it com­ple­ments your oth­er forms of media in a way that can be sus­tained over the medi­um and long term,” said PR expert Jason Vines, com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant and author of new book “What Did Jesus Dri­ve?: Cri­sis PR in Cars, Com­put­ers and Chris­tian­i­ty”, and for­mer head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Nis­san, Ford, and Chrysler. “One-off hits are noth­ing more than a mas­sag­ing of cor­po­rate ego. Tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, no mat­ter how clever, must relate a mes­sage that is mem­o­rable and can be regur­gi­tat­ed by the tar­get audi­ence.

A Super Bowl ad is no use to a brand if a week lat­er, peo­ple are say­ing: ‘Hey, you see that cool ad with the cats?’ ‘Yeah, what com­pa­ny was that for?’ Ouch,” he added. “Brands need to ensure they don’t let the clev­er­ness over­whelm the nec­es­sary prod­uct mes­sage they need to com­mu­ni­cate.”

Essen­tial­ly, brands should approach tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing as many in the indus­try have learned to approach dig­i­tal media: by putting con­sumers first, and encour­ag­ing engage­ment across screens and chan­nels, rather than pro­mot­ing siloed pro­mo­tion­al con­tent.

Adver­tis­ing on tele­vi­sion needs to be regard­ed as just one part of a com­plete con­nect­ed sto­ry­telling cam­paign, and ide­al­ly as the start­ing point.” Schroeter said, “Brands should aim to ignite the con­ver­sa­tion with TV adver­tis­ing and encour­age fur­ther con­sumer engage­ment and action via online chan­nels and search.”

One in three TV view­ers look up prod­uct relat­ed infor­ma­tion after watch­ing a TV ad, and 80 per­cent of TV inspired site vis­its take place with­in 90 sec­onds of an ad being aired, accord­ing to Schroeter. By syn­chro­niz­ing TV ads with search engine adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, dis­play­ing the adver­tised prod­uct on the brand’s home­page, and mea­sur­ing the result­ing traf­fic uplift via TV ana­lyt­ics, ROI and con­ver­sion rates can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost­ed for adver­tis­ers.

Adver­tis­ing on tele­vi­sion is now regard­ed as a ‘tra­di­tion­al’ adver­tis­ing method, but it still serves a vital role for mod­ern adver­tis­ing cam­paigns and has two main USPs. First­ly, the sheer audi­ence reach and sec­ond­ly, the greater emo­tion­al engage­ment achieved via audio and visu­al brand sto­ry­telling,” Schroeter said. “Although the ben­e­fits of tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing are high­ly desir­able to mar­keters, TV needs to be regard­ed as just one part of a com­plete con­nect­ed sto­ry­telling cam­paign, and ide­al­ly as the start­ing point.”


How can tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ers engage in bet­ter cross-screen and inte­grat­ed prac­tices?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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