Television's Marketing Problem

Commentary

• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, March 9, 2018

Many moons ago, I was in charge of a well-known FMCG beverage brand in a land far, far away. We had moved our local market corporate headquarters from city E to city B, which meant we lost about 65% of our people. In effect, we had to rebuild the company almost from scratch.

 
Rebuilding done, we decided it would be a good idea to hold a media event for our media partners — the leading media companies in that country — so that we could rebuild and re-establish connections between them and our new team. We choose to host an event at the country’s equivalent of Media Week.

To our surprise, we found that almost all the media companies accepted our invitation at CEO, CMO and national sales director level. After chatting with a few people who confirmed their attendance, I realized what had attracted them: our perceived value as an advertiser. And that perceived value was MUCH higher than our actual market spend. The reality was, we were a Top 40 advertiser as measured in ad spend. But our global status, our brand portfolio, our global and local history all created the aura of a Top 10 advertiser.

There are important lessons to be learned from this. First, it proves once again that perception is reality. Second, it shows how much brand value, health and status matter: not just to consumers but, equally, to your ability to be successful as an advertiser or marketer.

I was reminded of this story because I read an article this week about new research by Jack Myers’ TomorrowToday, in which a whopping 80% of the 1,200  U.S. brand marketers and agency executives interviewed rated the combo of Facebook, Amazon and Google very valuable for delivering consumer reach in campaigns. Meanwhile, only 61% rated the four leading U.S. broadcast networks “valuable” to deliver consumer reach.

I have written here and here about the marketing perception problem TV is facing. The results are of course in stark contrast to the realities of TV’s ability to deliver reach versus Amazon, Google and Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, the three online giants command a great amount of time spent, eyeballs and engagement. And TV is surely losing some eyeballs and reach, especially among younger audiences.
But the three online giants do not outperform TV by almost 20%. The problem is, that’s not what marketers think. Their perception is that Big Online outperforms network TV when it comes to reach. The Jack Myers study proves this point.

And perception is the most difficult thing to address as a marketer. Chipotle gives you the runs. VW diesel engines can’t be trusted. United Airlines is terrible to its passengers. These are all perceptions that some consumers might believe — and correcting them is very hard, if not impossible.
Jack Myers concludes that TV has a marketing problem, and I agree (it started as early as 2014). The only remedy is to hire the best of the best in marketing and start chipping away at the perception before it is too late. Otherwise, network TV might be bleeding ad dollars faster than it is bleeding actual audience.