 |
News
IAB research highlights the positive combined effects of mobile and online advertising
New research from the Internet Advertising Bureau - the trade association for digital marketing - has revealed that using mobile and online advertising in combination can significantly increase brand awareness and purchase consideration.
The study, based on a sample of 875 mobile internet users and qualitative focus groups, investigated current trends in consumer behaviour and specifically the impact of cross-media ad campaigns on a range of brand metrics.
The IAB partnered with research agency Brand Driver, mobile agency Mobext, part of and financial provider Nationwide Building Society, who ran a series of mobile and online display ads promoting Home Insurance. The campaign, which ran simultaneously over the mobile operator sites of 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and the mobile and web portals of MSN and Sky, found that when exposed to ads across online and mobile, recognition was 43% greater. For further information please contact Martyn U'Ren at martyn@branddriver.co.uk.
Brand Driver was commissioned by Channel 4 to investigate the audience reaction to their hit show Big Fat Gypsy Weddings
Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings triggered a huge response in terms of viewing figures and word-of-mouth buzz. To reflect this we combined surveys with social media monitoring to dissect the show's impact.
Our findings are fully featured in Research-live: http://www.research-live.com/features/centre-of-attention/4006212.article.
Please contact Karen Wise at karen@branddriver.co.uk for more information of how we can help you better understand your audience strategy.
Our very own Karen Wise along with Richard Ellwood from Disney presented the facts and myths of boys and shopping at this year's Market Research Society (MRS) conference. They engaged the mainly industry-insider audience by 'lifting the lid' on how brands effect the decision-making of this target group and how their attitudes to brands, retailers and character merchandise develop with age.
This is one of eleven papers presented on the day, all focusing on brand research. The aim of the day is to help companies to get closer to knowing what their customers want from a brand and identify how to match these expectations. Attendees heard how media, online, political and FMCG brands have incorporated consumer insights into their brand development, positioning and loyalty strategies to driver customer engagement.
To discuss your brand strategy and the customer insight to support it please contact Karen Wise on karen@branddriver.co.uk.
Social media gave a large boost to X Factor's audience engagement.
The X Factor final might have attracted 20m TV viewers but our survey of fans shows that these audience figures are only half the story.
We surveyed 1,500 viewers to find out how they interact with the show and to understand what makes up the X Factor experience for them. The results show that seven years into its history, the show and social media are highly entwined, as viewers turn to the likes of Facebook and Twitter to share the experience with their friends and wider public.
The X Factor is a viewing experience that extends far beyond the room in which people are watching it in on TV. 26% use Twitter or Facebook to follow the judges and contestants, join fan groups or post updates as the drama unfolds. The usual trends about participation in social media activates apply, with those aged 18-34 most likely to participate in this way (43%), compared to 16% of those aged over 35.
The buzz around the show's personalities shows a strong correlation to the media frenzy offline: Cheryl Cole is the most followed judge, by 12% of those who follow anyone from the show. In contrast, interest in the contestants is more muted. Cher Lloyd topped the list at 8%, but there was little marked difference in the popularity of the contestants.
While using social media gives viewers an opportunity to extend their X Factor experience, activity is typically concentrated around the weekend shows. 20% of those we sampled have commented about the show on Facebook during it's transmission, rising to 39% of women aged 18-34. At 21%, men in the same age group are nearly half as likely to engage via Facebook. Live chat was a new feature of the show last year, with almost 1m viewers using the service.
High levels of stickiness and sustained with the show may be contributing to a higher level of engagement among viewers, but for a show that's entirely commercial in it's nature, the need to translate buzz into revenue is a priority. Another new feature for 2010 was the number of viewers downloading performances from iTunes. This was relatively high at just over one in ten, rising to 20% of those aged 18-34.
This may have been the year when The X Factor's presence online began to match it's offline profile, but the challenge in future years will be to improve the ratio of online buzz to revenue opportunities.
GT Investigates: Television is under scrutiny to be better for queer audiences. But why? And what have the decision-makers got to say for themselves? Peter Lloyd and Dale McEwan ask the people at the reins why good visibility is crucial - and what's being done to achieve it.
Earlier this year, the BBC launched a major to improve how gays and lesbians are defined on national television. But, as a public body, it wasn't just a gesture of good will - it was to pre-empt a tricky piece of legislation called the Public Sector Equality Duty.
Because the BBC is funded by public cash, they're under pressure to reflect the range of license-fee payers fairly. And although they do some things right, they've admitted there's still room for improvement. Namely: relying less on lazy sterotypes and integrating the gay and straight worlds more effectively so that - over time - sexuality becomes less of a talking point and more a component part of a person's identity.
But the issue didn't stop there. Harsher facts came from the likes of lobby group Stonewall, who conducted their own independent review of television. Entitled Unseen on Screen, their research found that ordinary gay people are virtually invisible on the 20 programmes most-watched by Britain's youth.
Depressingly, just 46 minutes of 126 hours of output showed the community positively and realistically. Three quarters of portrayal was confined to just four C4 and ITV1 programmes: I'm a Celebrity..., Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and How to Look Good Naked. In comparison, BBC1 transmitted 44 seconds of positive and realistic portayal of gay people on more than 39 hours of output.
But how much influence can television really have? According to entertainment research specialist Brand Driver, the answer is a great deal.
They recently quizzed 1,500 young X Factor viewers about their reactions to the show and that it positively normalises homosexuality. Specifically, it found that the series aides coming out: 85% of queer respondents and 79% of straight people surveyed think winners like Joe McElderry have made it easier for others in general population to come out.
More than two thirds felt it empowers young queer people to be themselves, while over half reckon it makes life easier for those at school. In addition, they claimed that X factor promotes gay tolerance and that, surprisingly, the show should be more up-front about contestants' private lives during it's pre-watershed slot.
Karen Wise, managing director of Brand Driver, said the findings are significant. "We commissioned the study because we were trying to understand how these big shows are engaging with their audiences," she told GT. "There's increasing social connectivity around these programmes which isn't seen in other areas. We wanted to look at the aspect of The X Factor and see how it's bringing social groups together."
"For many, seeing diversity on TV is how their own lives and opinions are broadened," she adds. "Seeing things reflected on TV in a positive way is massively influential. It's in people's homes every day and it has a tremendous power to endorse behaviours and attitudes, or indeed to create negative behaviours and attitudes. So when seeing X Factor treat gay people entirely fairly and as a natural part of society, it has hugely beneficial effects.
"It's particularly interesting that the show is considered very supportive of gay contestants when, actually, it doesn't really make any reference to sexuality at all," she adds, "which suggests it's the smaller pincer movements of programmes that have the most effect - perhaps because they're subliminal.
But what are others stations and their programme leaders doing to make a difference? We spoke with Kevin Mundye, Executive Producer for leading independent TV company Shine. As a consultant flying producer, he works closely with international producers to ensure high quality projects are produced for various channels in other territories. He is also openly gay.
"People in Britain watch TV for many different reasons and now have an ever-increasing choice," he says. "This variety is created by competition between broadcasters and the need for all genres to feature current, credible material.
"As a result, the gay profile on TV has been given greater exposure over the last 10 to 20 years."
"With key characters like Sean Tully in Coronation Street, the public are clearly demonstrating their acceptance of the gay profile. Earlier this month, British TV saw a prime-time special where Piers Morgan interviewed Sir Elton John. It drew an incredible nine million people."
"Likewise, when Brian Dowling won Channel 4's Big Brother, people did not choose to vote for him because he was gay. These are good examples of how the gay profile on TV has become mainstream, acceptable and normal. It demonstrates how the TV industry has both unwittingly, intellectually and responsibly, helped to develop it more than any other platform."
"However, when Christopher Biggins and his partner were featured on ITV1's MR and Mrs, the viewing figures dropped dramatically, so it is hard to judge your audience."
So is this because Britain is still in the process of a shift in attitudes - and we haven't quite got there yet?
"I think the landscape is changing," adds Wise, suggesting that pushing the agenda from the inside is they key. "There's a lot of concern about young people still growing up gay and the challenges they face. Pro-gay, prime-time shows are very strong with young audiences and are helping develop that."
Ben Stephenson, one of BBC's most influential - not to mention successful - openly gay figures, is helping to do that as the head of drama commissioning, he is responsible for some of the most popular and critically acclaimed dramas on television. For him, getting gay representation right is part of his everyday duty.
"I commission around 50 new pieces of drama a year, on top of re-commissioning successful shows like Luther and Sherlock. The biggest way I make a difference is by commissioning to make the culture of BBC drama an open, diverse one. One that demands the best, riskiest and most ambitious. That asked for our drama to be varied, challenging and bold. And that values the broadcast range of contradictory, passionate contributors who can reflect every corner of our country and life experiences," he exclusively told GT.
But how does he feel as a BBC viewer? "I found it hard to be objective, as I am so close to all our projects, but I've loved the level of feedback we've had from our viewers this year. Five Daughters and Sherlock have been standouts, and I know many gay audiences have loved new dramas like Toast, The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister, Lip Service, The Road to Coronation Street and Worried About the Boy, as well as some of the ongoing stories in EastEnders and Waterloo Road.
"This is about reflecting different life experiences and all corners of British life and society. Due to the public nature of our funding, BBC Drama is able to offer writers the most creative environment to work without commercial pressure. This means that we can work with a huge range of writers - well over 300 at any one time - and can encourage them to write, not the drama that fits a certain commercial model. Happily this ensures that we get passions that I hope means a broad range of audiences find different things to engage them."
But he's also aware that there exists a self-filling prophecy around gay representation.
"The greater the range of drama there is on-screen, the more writers from all walks of life will come into the business - and the more writers there are the greater the range," he adds.
"It's therefore important to keep being really ambitious about the drama that we screen - to never second guess, to never follow trends - to always try and back the best, most ambitious piece of drama."
But, naturally, corporations like the BBC operate by different rules to commercial channels, so not everybody can follow one approved template for positive change. It must come from within.
"The BBC obviously has a slightly different perspective in that they have their remit to represent society. They have a sort of statutory responsibility to do that, whereas a commercial station like ITV has no responsibility in that way but obviously has a clear social responsibility," adds Wise. "I think overall there's still a feeling that mainstream TV is not as representative as it could be and still doesn't completely reflect the attitudes that a broad society has.
"I think it's still the case that lesbian and gay characters are under-represented on television, so there's always interest in trying to see positive portrayals in today's media. Particularly amongst the really big shows, like on X Factor, because the scale is just massive."
But if cultural change has any hope of resulting from this, it will almost certainly be gradual.
"As with anything, it takes time for things to evolve - and the exposure to gay themes on TV has already improved dramatically and will continue to do so," adds Mundy. "It's likely to reach a plateau, at which point the gay profile on British television will cease to expand. But it's unfair to expect representation to increase dramatically to saturation point, but is it fair to expect that the quality of the representation to improve.
"One day a gay character will be introduced on TV because of who they are, and not because they're gay."
The Next Big Thing: Linear TV?
By Janko Roettgers
Still think DVRs killed linear TV consumption? Well, think again. Recent numbers from the U.K. Show that traditional TV consumption is actually more popular than ever. British viewers watched 28 hours and 15 minutes of linear television per week in 2010, according to the country's Broadcasters' Audience Research Board. That's two hours and four minutes per week more than in 2009.
In other words: Brits just added another 18 minutes of TV viewing to their day last year, and they're now watching a total of four hours and two minutes of linear TV per day. That's not only a lot of TV; it's more TV than the Research Board ever measured before.
Why do people stick to the broadcasters' schedule, you might ask? The U.K.'s Media Week blog, which first reported the Research Board numbers earlier this year, points to noe likely culprit: Twitter. Media Week author Arif Durrani writes:
"Turns out those younger audiences, which (were) moving away from television since the arrival of mass Internet access 10 years ago, are actually quite adept at multi-tasking. Behind the near 20m headline figure who watched last year's X Factor final on ITV lurks a social media success story. More than a quarter (26%) of all viewers used Twitter or Facebook to internet with the show, according to new research from Brand Driver."
We've been writing about Twitter's ability to function as a global water cooler around TV shows and live events for a while now, and it only makes sense that this phenomenon is now influencing ratings outside the U/S. as well.
But there's another factor at play here that shouldn't be underestimated, and that's the BBC's iplayer and it's ability to keep people connected to a show even if they happen to miss an episode. The Beeb once again reported record usage for the iPlayer in 2010, clocking up more than 900,000 requests for single episodes of hit shows like The Apprentices. Howver, most of these requests were coming from PCs; connected devices simply don't matter yer, at leadt not in the U.K.
This suggests ppeople catch up on shows via their PCs, then turn to their TVs to watch the next episode of a show in real time. Of course, this behavior could shift once Internet-connected TVs and other devices become more commonplace, but even then, Twitter might save the day. You simply don't want to show up late to the water cooler.
Entertainment trends: Viewing the viewers
Brand Republic have published an article by Karen Wise based on Brand Driver's True View media consumption tracker, which looks at viewing behaviour and trends in the UK, across traditional and emerging viewing platforms
The tracker study highlights the rapid take-up of online viewing platforms - a trend that points to the continual transformation of the entertainment experience in coming years.
For more information about True View, please contact Karen Wise or Tim Julian.
Brands pay a premium to reach big audiences, but cutting through is less simple
A Question of X Appeal
Earlier this month, The X Factor drew its biggest audience to date, outside a final, when 17.7m viewers tuned in to watch Cher swagger, Katie weep and Aiden pull some mighty unpleasant faces, then cry 'fix' when voted off.
While not everyone will admit to being a fan of the talent show, it's appeal spans generations, gender and socio-economic backgrounds, Nintendo says The X Factor presents a mass-marketing opportunity in the UK akin to that of the Super Bowl in the US; but just which consumers are represented in this audience, and how do they engage with the show and those brands who advertise in the prime ad spots?
A survey of 1500 regular viewers of The X Factor, conducted this month by entertainment research specialists Brand Driver exclusively for Marketing, found that the show's viewers can be broken down into three categories: 'passive viewers', 'fan voters' and 'fan social networkers'.
According to Brand Driver, this is the first in-depth glimpse of The X Factor audience, beyond its demographic composition.
'Those "fan" viewers who are the most engaged with the show have a better chance of remembering the ads,' explains Brand Driver managing director Karen Wise. 'The more engaged that people are with The X Factor, the more responsive they are to the ads. This will be reassuring to advertisers, who are looking to grab every opportunity to reach their audience.'
Overall, spontaneous recall of ads during The X Factor is low, however. While about half of the viewers across all groups were able to recall TalkTalk as the programme's sponsor, other advertisers proved harder to remember even Nintendo, which has used stars including 2008 X Factor runner-up JLS to front it's ads, scored only 0.1%.
In fact, it appears that the popularity of the show could be what makes ad recall harder.
'The scale and momentum of The X Factor mean that a lot of advertisers are attracted to it,' says Wise. 'As a result, they may lose impact amid the other brands, despite the large audience numbers - they need to fight harder to stand out.'
Yeo Valley's comparatively high recall rate of 2% reflects the 'talkability of the brand' at the moment, says Wise, adding that the 'rapping farmers' in its ad have created content that some viewers will look out for specifically, giving it 'extra currency'.
While the prime-time ad spot is enticing for advertisers, the findings suggest that it may not be right for all brands.
'Advertisers should be looking at buying airtime according to when their core target market has real engagement with a TV show', suggests Karen Wise. 'Just because there's a bumper audience watching, doesn't mean your ads will cut through. Advertisers should look for programmes that their audience really connects with, which may mean lower audience figures, but greater engagement.'
In addition, brands that advertise around the show should consider whether their target audience is participating in other media, be that The X Factor website or magazine, or talking about the show online.
As Wise points out: 'Recall of online ads on the show's website is better than for TV. Where the viewers' interest spills over from watching the TV show, these are the people who remember your advertising the most.'
X Factor Exclusive New Study From Brand Driver
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/nov/21/why-reality-tv-works
Over 14 million viewers to X Factor every week but is the message getting through for advertisers?
X Factor is the biggest thing on TV in the UK today with up to a fifth of the UK population tuning in every week, over 2.5 million people voting and advertisers paying huge premiums to secure the top spots.
But who is really watching and why? Who are the fans and voters? And are those sponsorship and advertising messages really getting through?
In an exclusive nationally representative research study, which surveyed over 3400 Adults 15+ in the UK, Brand Driver answers all these questions to build a unique understanding of what makes X Factor a hit, and why viewers, fans and voters are so emotionally engaged with the show.
Our study looks at the motivations to watch X Factor in detail, viewing habits, how people watch the show, their spontaneous recall of advertising and sponsorship, their use of social media in connection with X Factor, their voting patterns and their emotional connection to every aspect of X Factor including contestants and judges.
We are excited to see that three very clear segments have emerged: die-hard fans who vote every week, fans who engage obsessively via social media, and a large core of passive viewers who engage with the main live shows only at the weekend.
Advertisers inparticular will be interested to see the recall scores for their ads we have uncovered.
Further findings from the survey will be released in the coming weeks across the national and industry press, and can be obtained directly from Brand Driver.
For more details and exclusive analysis please contact Tim Julian at tim@branddriver.co.uk.
Understanding the rapidly evolving TV market in the Middle East is a challenge Brand Driver recently faced for clients investigating the opportunities there.
