TV goes app

Now, here’s a lovely thing that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while. The brilliant Barclaycard ‘Waterslide’ TV ad propelled its iPhone app spin-off to become the most popular free, branded game in the history of the iTunes App Store. This is a fine example of TV and interactive media cuddling up and making babies.

BBH’s Barclaycard's 'Waterslide Extreme' iPhone app has clocked up 4 million downloads from the iTunes App Store since its launch in mid-July. It became the top free app in 57 countries.

The Barclaycard TV ad was an instant hit and sparked lots of Twitterface activity.  I loved it too; given that their previous campaign had featured a heartthrob from an all-time favourite TV series, that’s quite an achievement.  Dare (the creative agency behind the app) also created a YouTube channel where people made their own versions of the ad for other to vote on (the excellent tea&cheese’s take on the ad got the most votes).

Apart from actually buying the product, in the ‘olden days’ (like 1998) we could only really show our love for TV ads or programmes by talking about them, imitating them, reading articles about them or buying some related merchandise, like a board game or a mug. We can and do still do all this both on- and offline but, as the existence of the Barclaycard app highlights, we can now do so much more with our TV creative.

We can be inspired to make our own versions, chat in real time about them with people on the other side of the planet, watch extra content, send them to friends, play games based on them or simply watch again. We can even have conversations with the fictional characters that TV ads give birth to, such as the half million Facebook friends and 24,000 Twitter followers of the pre-eminent meerkat of our time.

Of course not every app is as successful as Barclaycard’s but it does demonstrate how potent the TV + online combo can be. T-Mobile’s Life’s for Sharing campaign gets it right too.  Nothing gets the party started like telly and interactive media extends the fun.

Follow Thinkbox on Twitter

Most irritating things in media: ‘digital’. No 2 in an occasional series

You’ll have gathered by now that I am a bit of a pedantic old bag but I have nothing against the word ‘digital’ per se. It is a perfectly lovely antonym to ‘analogue’. It is, according to a dictionary, a ‘description of data which is stored or transmitted as a sequence of discrete symbols from a finite set, most commonly this means binary data represented using electronic or electromagnetic signals’. So that’s nice and clear.

My problem is how ‘digital’ has come to be used in media and marketing.  It doesn’t do the job required of it.  Even worse than imprecision, it causes confusion.  Earlier this year I witnessed a very senior media figure stand on a platform and tell the audience that when digital TV switchover is complete in 2012 all UK TV will be delivered via the internet.  Erm…sorry, but no.  More and more media are becoming digital; we now have a date for radio broadcasting to go totally digital and outdoor  has lots of exciting new digital formats.  Even print media are compiled digitally, for heaven’s sake.  

There are plenty of other people - Nigel Walley and Ian Darby among them - who object to how ‘digital’ is being used. It is at its most absurd and meaningless when it is used as an alternative to TV. Yet we hear and read it all the time; people talking about choosing between TV and ‘digital’. How on earth did that happen at a time when digital switchover is nearly 90% complete, with many more people enjoying digital TV than have digital broadband? TV could hardly be more digital.

What people mostly mean when they say ‘digital’ is internet or web-based media. What’s wrong with using those words? You could argue that they are too broad already, given that internet media covers a vast range from search and websites, to social media, email marketing and online TV.  But if you are looking for a bigger umbrella word, that can embrace every medium with a built-in return path, including mobile and gaming, then I suggest the word we should all be using is ‘interactive’ media.  This is my personal choice because it’s a truly accurate differentiator between those media and more linear formats; interactivity requires very specific creative thinking and skills.

I accept that language shifts and morphs as we use it to take on new meanings and shake off others, but it still needs to make sense along the way and, anyway, technical terms don’t tend to shift their meanings as much your average word. If we can’t agree what a supposedly technical term like ‘digital’ means then it probably needs a re-think.

Flo Heiss, creative partner at Dare - an agency which has won more ‘Digital Agency of the Year’ accolades than any other - talked at one of our recent events about how he’s bored with the digital word. Dare has dropped it from their name.  Do you dare drop it too?

Follow Thinkbox on Twitter

Most irritating things in media: ‘long-form video’. No. 1 in an occasional series

This is the first in an occasional and cathartic series where we pick one of the most irritating things at large in media at the moment. It could be anything; a word, a phrase, a person, some research, a trend or even an ad (probably not a telly one obviously as they are all beyond reproach). There will be no itch that won’t be scratched, no eyelash beyond the probe of our media fingers; anything is fair game. What is the point of a blog, frankly, if you can’t use it to swat the bees in your bonnet from time to time?

To kick off I offer you ‘long-form video’, used recently by YouTube to describe their recent tie-up with TV broadcasters which will finally get some proper telly programmes legally onto their platform.

People in media have a pathological need to abuse, water down, neuter, twist, murder or mutilate language to the edge of reason and beyond, right into the choppy waters of lunacy. ‘Long-form video’ is a perfect example of this, as used in a Media Week headline this week. It takes a perfectly lovely concept – television – and hammers it flat into bland, technical nonsense.

There is certainly a recognised format of online video; those little windows with moving images in them on text-based websites - that’s online video.  More like digital outdoor than TV.  Short user-generated a/v, the sort of thing YouTube depended on until now, are also video.  We’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when TV goes online it doesn’t cease to be TV and become something else like ‘long-form video’. Do we say online video is short-form TV? No, that would be silly. Is watching a film online better described as watching ‘ even-longer-form video’? No.  Ask the average consumer what they are doing when they watch Emmerdale, Peep Show or CSI via the web.  They will almost all say “I’m watching TV on my computer/the internet.”  No conflict there at all between the content and the distribution technology.

There are plenty of very solid reasons why we should kick ‘long-form video’ straight into the bins. TV is a shorter, quicker, neater and instantly understandable word for everyone on the planet. It is what real people call it. Even when they’re watching YouTube, if you ask them what it is they’re watching on YouTube, if it is proper TV they’ll say so.

Creating jargon can often be a means of taking ownership, of being a bit elite and smart-arse about things. We shouldn’t tolerate it. We don’t have to reinvent perfectly round and smoothly running wheels just to make them sound more complicated, new or thrilling than they already are.

Next…’digital’.

Follow us on Twitter

Unintended headlines

While it is music to Thinkbox’s –  and advertisers’ –  ears that commercial TV has increased its share of viewing and that commercial broadcast TV viewing is continuing to grow, it certainly wasn’t our intention that this should be used as a stick to beat the BBC, as some have. There are quite enough sticks beating the BBC at the moment.

The fact is that, all things being equal, commercial TV’s share of broadcast viewing is likely to keep nudging forward - and the BBC’s diminish - for the next couple of years until everyone has digital TV and all the extra commercial channels that it brings. In that sense, commercial TV simply has a built-in, mathematical advantage. 

But any advantage is pointless without skills to seal the deal. The strongest, fastest rugby player in the world is worthless if he or she can’t catch the ball. So it is all very well having the choice of more channels, but there has to be something on them to persuade you to watch. For this, commercial TV broadcasters deserve praise.  After 2012, changes in channel viewing shares will be driven chiefly by programming and marketing, not distribution.

Other reasons for commercial TV’s success – which apply equally to the BBC – include a recession that makes free entertainment at home even more appealing, and new technologies – like digital recorders and HDTV – that make watching telly an ever better experience. 

And we mustn’t forget that we are only talking about share of broadcast TV here. If you added on all the online TV people now watch, via the likes of the ITV Player, 4OD, Sky Player, Demand Five and most of all BBC iPlayer, then you’d see that the TV medium as a whole is growing on all sides. No sticks required.

Sounding off

Our lovely cousins at the RAB have made an online TV ad to promote radio advertising. The cheeky blighters have based it around our TV ad, but, as they don’t say much we’d disagree with, we have decided to take it as a tribute. Don’t forget to put the sound up.

Our TV ad does strongly feature lines and catchphrases from TV ads but also important gestures and movements: the Cornetto gondola rowing, the R White’s dance, the JR Hartley head-nodding. No matter; the RAB has highlighted an issue we feel strongly about which is the importance of sound in TV ads.

Radio can indeed through sound alone provoke a visual memory from a TV ad; in one of our own research groups someone talked about the British Heart Foundation’s TV ad from a couple of years back where blood clots were seen moving sinisterly under the skin to the accompaniment of the Frank Sinatra classic ‘I’ve got you under my skin’.  She said that every time she heard the music she could visualise those clots creeping along veins.

But unless that strong visual image had been linked to impactful sound via the TV ad the radio wouldn’t have worked as well.  TV works that way with other media too. Seeing a still image in print or outdoor from a TV ad can remind people of the full glory of the original, but they can be confusing without the TV narrative.

Current fashions in TV favour some stylish action with either a voiceover or a music track; think Sony Balls, Guinness surfers or Cadbury’s eyebrows.  And fabulous results can be produced in that way; the latest Budweiser and Hula-Hoops TV ads are part of that trend – even the Philips Carousel film.  All of them could – and do – run in any market in the world, either as they stand or with a local voiceover.

But what we’re seeing less of is TV ads with dialogue, where we get to know and love characters through conversations.  Some of the classics like Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins for Cinzano or the Gold Blend couple gave us ongoing mini-dramas that compelled us to watch the next instalment.  

There are ways round this of course and one of this year’s most successful campaigns has created a loveable character, with a back-story, narrative thrust and great scripts.

His name is Aleksandr Orlov.  VCCP has created strong emotional connections for the comparethemarket.com brand in a low interest crowded market with some classy anthropomorphism.  If they did need to export the advertising I guess that the marvels of post-production could transport Aleksandr and Sergei anywhere in the world.  It would work for the PG Tips monkey too, though Jonny Vegas wouldn’t travel so well I guess.

The combination of moving images with sound is one of the enormous advantages TV (and cinema) has over other visual media like digital outdoor or online video. Yes, online video has the capability for sound but the reality is that the speakers are only likely to be on if you’re watching TV or a film online.  Music is a surefire solution to the sound element in TV ads; we have footage of people dancing, singing, clapping along to them.  But hearing and seeing words come out of real people’s mouths – with or without music - is a special treat and provokes a deep emotional response.  T-Mobile did it in Trafalgar Square.  We’d love to see more.


Follow us on Twitter