TV marketing campaign

A landmark campaign promoting the benefits of free-to-air (FTA) television has “bolstered advertisers’ belief that FTA is the best medium to drive sales,” according to the Federation of Australian Television Stations (FACTS).

Findings from a Wirthlin benchmark study of advertising decision makers found 78% of respondents agreed with the main messages of FACTS’s recent marketing campaign.

Highlighting the objectives of three products, the campaign “delivered a strong message to advertisers of the power of TV to build brands and influence consumer behaviour. It ran on network television, in major newspapers and in trade publications from June this year.

FACTS Chief Executive Officer Julie Flynn says: “The potency of free-to-air television advertising remains strong, with 66% of respondents describing the campaign as effective, and one in four describing themselves as even more inclined to advertise on FTA than before the campaign launched.”

74% of respondents interviewed remembered the campaign unprompted and 94% of those said their primary recollection of the campaign was from FTA television.

Flynn said “advertisers also agreed that free-to-air television is the best way to build brands, deliver a message, communicate with young people and that it will continue to be the strongest medium in 10 years time.”

An earlier Wirthlin study that polled 1000 consumers in May 2002 on attitudes to television showed that television’s has “unique and irreplaceable strengths, over and above its pure reach – that make FTA the ideal medium to sell products. Unlike other mass media, arguably television combines moving pictures and sound, bringing images to life and making advertisements memorable.”

The Wirthlin consumer research found that 93% of respondents agree it is easy to skim over ads in newspapers, while 66% of people find Internet pop-up ads annoying and 60% say they are not as likely to take messages in from the radio as they are with television.