He let his to the research methodology lead him into making several unfounded criticisms of TV advertising itself.
It's important to say that the research had nothing to do with Thinkbox or anyone in commercial TV sales. It was commissioned by the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival, an event organised mainly by eminent TV producers, not dinosaurs. Just because research findings are favourable to whoever commissions it, doesn't mean that it can't be believed. Healthy scepticism is a requirement for all journalists and academics but Mark's column betrayed cynicism and bias against TV. Does Mark think that the TV industry shouldn't undertake research to defend itself against the sort of entrenched negativity that we saw in his column?
We at Thinkbox prefer not to rely on claimed behaviour research, in fact, and instead use rigorous and impartial econometrics to prove that, pound for pound, TV advertising delivers more incremental profit than any other form of advertising, 4.5 times the investment according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Other respected impartial sources such as the IPA's Marketing in the Era of Accountability also concluded that campaigns which included TV were the most effective of all; I should add that they found that the most effective media combination of all was TV + online.
The IPA study also found that TV is becoming more effective over time and the Deloitte study gives a glimpse of why that may be so. People can now react to a TV ad much more immediately than in the past, thanks to that other 20th century medium, the internet. Rather than have to wait a week to go shopping people can now search and purchase online soon after seeing the TV ad. This means that TV advertising's effect is less dissipated and consumers are more conscious of what drove them to a website.
TV advertising's effect on younger viewers also makes perfect sense and ensures TV advertising's positive future. The IPA Touchpoints2 study showed that TV represents 47% of 15-24s' media consumption, less than the 54% for the total population but way ahead of any other medium. Young people like brands and ads more than older people, whatever the medium. And they are more likely to multi-task, making TV advertising's direct influence on internet purchase even more immediate and fruitful.
This year's major business success stories add additional weight to TV's effectiveness story: Hovis, Reckitt Benckiser, Wickes and comparethemarket.com among many others. None of them only used TV, but all either returned to TV or had a higher weights or proportion of TV spend than their competitors.
Econometrics plus ethnography (when we can afford it) are a cast-iron defence against the shabby research (often a self-selecting online questionnaire) that is often carried out to try and denigrate TV advertising. We look forward to Mark exposing that whenever it appears in future. But well-conducted research that polls the public, undertaken by a respected independent company such as Deloitte, is something we should welcome, adding valuable insight to the plethora of evidence that TV advertising is the best marketing investment a brand can make.
Tess Alps
Chief Executive
Thinkbox