Televisionaries

Massive congratulations to all the worthy winners at last nights IPA Effectiveness Awards, and in particular to the collective geniuses at BBH for scooping the Grand Prix and the Effectiveness Company of the Year award. God knows how big a mantelpiece they have in their building as they have to find room for both those special awards as well as two other Gold awards, a Silver and a Bronze. It should be a very happy Nick Gill who takes to the stage at Televisionaries.

We sponsor the IPA Effectiveness Awards for many reasons, but the main one is that word Effectiveness. Right now nothing is more needed than cast iron proof of the return on marketing investment. It’s a cause central to Thinkbox’s efforts and we couldn’t be more proud to be the sponsor of the awards.

We are also proud on behalf of TV. It once again proved its peerless effectiveness, dominating the award winners by appearing at the heart of 22 of the 23 winning campaigns (press was in 19, outdoor in 15, online in 14, PR in 13, DM in 9, and cinema in 6). It underlined the findings from the research Les Binet did with Peter Field in their book Marketing in the Era of Accountability. They examined 27 years worth of IPA case studies and found that campaigns involving TV are 25 per cent more effective than those without.

But also of interest (and lest we bang our TV drum too hard) is that it is not just TV on its own that creates effectiveness. Clearly TV needs to be at the heart of the most successful ad campaigns, but if the IPA Awards show us anything they show us the importance of an integrated approach. The average number of media channels used by winning entries was 6. It is TV plus other media that works best, not it or anything else in isolation. We’ll address TV’s evolving relationship with other media at Televisionaries I’m sure, but what do people think? How will integration develop in the future?

Welcome to the brand spanking new Televisionaries blog from Thinkbox. Here you’ll find the latest thinking and discussion about TV and TV advertising and we encourage you to dive in, shoot your mouth off, agree with, disagree with or add to what we’re saying. We want this to become the destination for anyone looking for informed debate about commercial TV.

Perhaps we should start by defining what we mean by television. Of course, it includes the form of TV we all grew up with; linear scheduled channels delivered by a variety of broadcast technologies to increasingly gorgeous screens in front of sofas. But by TV we also mean the professionally-made A/V content that people can now also enjoy via DVD, web, mobile or IPTV technology on any bit of hardware with a screen, from an MP3 player to a Wii. If viewers call it TV, then so do we. And, whatever the platform it is on, the advertising around that content will be seen as TV advertising not just another form of online video.

We quite clearly have an axe to grind that Gimli the dwarf would give up his helmet for, so, if you think something we’re saying is tosh or wide of the mark, feel free to tell us. But please also tell us why you think that, so that we have a chance to give you the evidence that shaped our view. We promise that we will be as open-minded and susceptible to reasoned persuasion as we hope our readers will be in return. Clean and dirty laundry; both will be very public.

I’d like to kick off by asking you what you think we should cover at our upcoming Televisionaries event on 20th November, which is all about the future of TV. What questions would you like our Televisionaries to address? What topics would you like to know more about? What do you think the future holds for TV? We’ve just announced our speaker line-up, which includes luminaries such as Peter Bazalgette, Roisin Donnelly, Andy Duncan, Peter Fincham, Nick Gill and Marie Oldham. They will no doubt be entertaining, inspiring and insightful, but if you could ask them one thing what would it be?