FRANKthoughts

Here is the “Inspiration, anyone?” campaign from Microsoft advertising.

It’s about advertisers, consumers and agencies. If you’re one of them - watch it!

Watch the trailer:

Watch the first episode:

Web series on social networks are massively successful and are getting millions of views per month. Now TV wants a bit of the action. But can web content be successful on TV? or is it best viewed online?

Lonely Girl 15 was the first to become an international phenomenon and social site Bebo quickly got the same crew to make LG15 sister series KateModern. In its first season, Katemodern garnered nearly 2 million viewers a week, for 24 weeks, totaling 48 million views. On myspace a show called Quarterlife achieved over 9 million views in five months. In November 2007 NBC acquired the rights to air Quarterlife on broadcast television. The show was canceled after airing only one episode. Actually it was the worst performing show for is time slot in the last 17 years.

Now UK’s Five TV station is going for another try with Bebo’s Sofia’s Diary. Online, the show achieved 5 million viewers within the first two weeks . What do you think will be the outcome? Is web content suited to be viewed on TV?

About a year ago I was speaking with the MD of a Melbourne advertising agency who told me online is still being looked at as BTL by most clients.

Today we see more and more TV commercials pointing to websites and clients starting to realise that the experience online can’t be matched by a 30 sec ad.

Unless it’s an ad about your website. Here’s the latest (and very clever) ad from VW UK:

So is TV going BTL? Or should we just stop using these old school marketing terms and start thinking about “experiences”?

Word is that the writer’s strike is expected to be resolved within the next fortnight.

Regardless, I wouldn’t anticipate any drastic declines in TV viewing that would see the networks worried, particularly Channel Seven.

7’s top performing programs in 2007 were the likes of Dancing With the Stars, Border Security, Kath & Kim and City Homicide to name a few.  All Australian produced programs.  Seven is not in a position in 2008 where they are relying solely on US programming to generate ratings.

It’s difficult to imagine that if a handful of these programs were rescheduled for a few weeks that this would greatly impact the average Australians daily TV viewing of 3.23 hours.  TV Networks will often pull off series midway through the season to extend their life.  As irritating as this can be, it certainly hasn’t deterred viewers in the past.   And sponsors certainly don’t jump off these programs in outrage when this occurs.

If anything at all, Subscription TV may see some good numbers on that night (particularly from younger viewers who pull in the numbers for programs such as Greys).  But also likely, is that 7 will have plenty of programs on hand ready to run that will keep the majority of TV viewer’s content to stay in front of the box.

The Writers’ Guild of America downed pens/keyboards about 80 days ago.

In Australia the implications for the Seven Network are that hero shows, attracting the hero dollars, such as Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Lost only have 10, 11 and 8 episodes “in the can” respectively. Normally they would have twice this amount. Nine’s and Ten’s situations are slightly better because they have less reliance on US programmes (than Seven) but also the nature of their programming is that of self contained episodes such as the CSI and Law & Order franchises which can bear repeating unlike Seven’s serialised programming which just run into a wall of silence.

On the upside this situation is a bonus for local production companies and hopefully will give vent to upcoming Australian talent on both sides of the camera.

A great post from Get Shouty so whatta ya going to do? prompted me to consider what will Australians do with the approximate 1,200 million hours that we currently spend watching commercial TV each month (based on people aged 14+, source Morgan) and what opportunities and advice we might be imparting to our clients who are in some part “reliant” on 30 second solutions in high rating programmes.

If we can ‘reallocate’ 10% of this time, 120 million hours per month, what are the opportunities?

Well we could get people off their arses tackling obesity, creativity and mental health. We might imagine that cinema attendances and DVD rentals will increase, conversely we might see an increase in gambling and alcohol consumption. The web will undoubtably benefit as more people turn to it for entertainment and that surely is an opportunity as people switch tubes.

Ideas anyone? A resurgence of board games?

If you always wanted to broadcast yourself live on the web, your dream just came true. Operator11 is a new TV style application allowing users to broadcast their own shows. It even gets better – viewers can join the conversation using IM or join with their own webcams and be part of the show. Sure, at the moment most shows get an average of 5 viewers and are basically a conference call with complete strangers, but there are a few pearls out there.
Will this be the next youtube? Maybe if they’ll get a viral piece of content like Lonely Girl 15.

AdNews has asked me to “mouth off” on the topic of

HOW IMPORTANT ARE RATINGS FOR INDIVIDUAL STV PROGRAMS?

Free TV last week took out a full page ad in The Australian Financial Review slamming its subscription TV rivals for not scoring any shows in the top 1000 programs of 2007. The question, however, is: should we be comparing STV to Free TV? Isn’t it all about niche audiences? Do advertisers care about individual STV program ratings?

So I said … “the approach being taken by “Free TV” (FTV) is ego-driven and lacks perspective towards the medium as a whole. To my mind STV has never sought to compete as a mass audience alternative, rather providing a mass of audiences. STV is becoming an increasingly important component for delivering TV ads in an environment of falling FTV audiences. The facts are that STV’s audience is growing largely at the expense of FTV’s audience and the opportunity, for advertisers, is to identify these audience “chunks” such as NRL in NSW and QLD and capitalize with environmentally engaging ads.

The opportunity for TV, and surely the issue, is to be collaborative. Check out thinkbox. This is an initiative which celebrates the use of tv, whether it be web tv, free or subscription. It includes information on the growth of TV, how it can work for all budgets, case studies, an ad gallery and the ‘Thinkbox TV Planning Awards.’

This kind of forum/community provides energy, innovation and perspective for one of the world’s most accepted mediums, as opposed to petty infighting. United we stand.”

This will be printed in AdNews issue 30th November 2007.