News
Ask the audience I 1
Four things you should know about DRTV 4
f someone tells you TV is complicated, challenging or expensive they’re lying to you. Well not entirely, but it can be very simple, effective and cheap. So what is DRTV and what is it not?
DRTV (direct response TV) is any TV advertising that has a “call to action”, anything that asks the consumer to do something, call a number, visit a website, purchase a product or service. Everything else is generally brand advertising and this makes up the majority of TV adverts. The significance of this is that DRTV requires a different strategy and execution.
TV’s not expensive Television has the reputation of being fantastically expensive and it can be. Once you add up the cost of large shoot in an exotic location, a few weeks of post-production on Charlotte Street and then hours of peak airtime, you won’t see much change from several hundreds of thousands of pounds. Like so much though, make some savvy choices and you could get a campaign on TV and still have change from £20,000. Keep costs realistic, and stay focused on the bottom line. It’s easy to get carried away with grand ideas when it comes to TV; the challenge is to make a concept responsive through a cost- effective execution. Some of this can be achieved through a good creative concept. Sometimes less really is more as you keep your message clear. When it comes to media buying and DRTV, stick to daytime spots and buy “broad adult” audience. In most cases the responsive audience is similar across many products and services. Where you do have a narrower target audience the easiest way to reach them is to target your media choices while continuing to buy a broad adult audience. With so many channels now available, you’ll always find one perfectly suited to your target audience.
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It’s a buyer’s market The TV market is simple. You buy impacts and pay in cost per thousands. Here’s how it works: you may go to a media owner asking to buy an audience of 1 million adults. They could turn around and say, “we’ll sell that to you at £2.90 CPT”. The result is that you would pay £2,900 for your airtime. As it’s audience you buy, there
is a very simple supply-and- demand model. The more hours of TV people watch, the cheaper TV gets—there is more supply. The less money advertisers have
to spend on TV the cheaper it gets—there is less demand. One benefit of the economic downturn has been increased supply coupled with decreased demand; people are staying home more and advertisers are spending less. The result of this has been some uniquely low-cost airtime with some CPTs over summer hitting almost unheard of lows.
The market always recovers slightly in the last quarter as advertisers work towards Christmas. However, what goes up must come down and the market drops considerably during Christmas week, meaning Boxing Day is the ideal time to begin a DRTV campaign. People are still on holiday so supply is high but as advertisers stop investing, demand free-falls and the CPTs rapidly depress to some of the lowest of the year. If you’re thinking about beginning a DRTV campaign or test, start putting those thoughts into action now and you could take advantage of this post-Christmas sweet spot.
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What is going to trip me up?
The one thing that you need to be aware of from the beginning is the regulatory framework you must work within—ask your agency about this from the very start. There are some products that you simply cannot sell on TV, for instance ingestible tablets, alcohol breathalysers—which are very big in press advertising—and pretty much any weight-loss products. So know this before you commission an advert.
In most cases, your agency should manage this process but you will need to agree a script that is acceptable to the regulator. For TV, this is Clearcast, which follows the BCAP Code (Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice) that is laid down by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which is ultimately answerable to communications regulator Ofcom.
After the script is cleared, and any evidence for claims made in the advert provided, a rough cut of the ad will also need to be cleared. This allows Clearcast to raise objections to any visual aspects of the ad. Once any objections are addressed you can submit a final version that can be cleared to go on air.
Useful websites to check out:
www.the-broadcast-house.com www.thinkbox.tv
www.clearcast.co.uk www.cap.org.uk www.asa.org.uk
Tactics Views
Where to get help Find yourself a good agency. With few exceptions, every advert you see on TV has been put there with the help of an agency. In some cases, media owners will only work with agencies, refusing to work directly with advertisers.
Sourcing good agencies is always a daunting task but easier when looking to do DRTV; there are actually few agencies with solid experience of executing successful DRTV campaigns. When you find an agency, ask yourself, or them, these few questions: Do they have genuine experience of DRTV campaigns? You’ll be surprised how many don’t.
Who will be working on your account? It’s unfortunately common practice for agencies to wheel out their big guns when pitching to clients only to then step aside and allow the account to be run by junior staff. Make sure that when you’re choosing an agency you speak with the person who will be overseeing your account. What services do they actually offer? The easiest way to manage costs and your campaign is to use a full-service agency. Will they be able to do any production work necessary? Do they have specialist media planners to ensure you get a campaign that will work? Will they manage the required regulatory clearance through Clearcast? Do they have the skills to properly evaluate the campaign once it’s started? Will you need to go elsewhere for any part of your campaign and if so how will you manage the relationships between multiple agencies?
Armed with this information, whether you’ve done TV in the past or are considering it for the future, you should be able to make some informed decisions. TV really is a great medium and can be impressively responsive and profitable—a twisted testament to its power is its strict regulation. Get yourself some help and dive in.
By Pete Mills, director at full service DRTV agency The
Broadcast House.
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