Marketer of the Year 2024, Frankie Coulter, has advice on successful TV ads.

Frankie Coulter, Goodman Fielder’s CMO and YouTube Marketing Awards NZ Marketer of the Year 2024, is tired of presentations telling him television is dead. “I hear it all the time,” he says, “but I don’t believe it. TV isn’t dead. It’s just changing.”

Coulter says part of the problem with the narrative about TV losing its reach and effectiveness is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“People go with the crowd, right? Especially in marketing and media, I think people like the shiny new toy. “So when something like social media and digital comes along, everybody starts to go to that. Then as an industry we post-rationalise why it was the right thing to do. We mimic and copy what everyone else is doing.

“There’s a narrative that TV is dying, and we fuel that by spending money on digital and in other mediums where we can’t really prove ROI, or if that spend is actually benefitting the brand.

“TV has always been the mainstay of any brand spend I’ve ever had, because I can demonstrate the eyeballs simply to my board.”

Creativity and humour are big drivers of engagement

Under his leadership, Goodman Fielder has used TV with outstanding results for Vogel’s, Meadow Fresh, Kaló, Freya’s and Nature’s Fresh.

“Over the past three years we’ve put out a lot of creative advertising that’s humorous and engaging,” Coulter says. “Over the years, people like System1 and Mark Ritson have talked about creativity and humour being an enabler of strong advertising, driving sales.

“If we go right back to the 1950s, guys like Leo Burnett were saying it then. Well, they’re right – we know from the past 70 years of advertising data, if you put out content that’s interesting, people will watch it, including millennials and Gen Z.

“I still think our responsibility as marketers is to make advertising that’s creative, because that’s what engages. That’s what’s going to get your attention.”

Goodman Fielder’s desire to entertain and engage audiences has helped its brands to grow in every metric Coulter measures, including the most important one – sales.

“If I entertain, I’m going to sell product, which is our core objective. There’s a value exchange: I’m going to entertain you, and in return, the behaviour I want from you as a consumer is to consider my product.

“The next time you’re in a store and you’re appraising what you see in front of you, if I’ve entertained you, I want to be in with a chance of being bought.”

Coulter says Vogel’s is a great example. “In a recent Kantar list of New Zealand’s top 10 ads, we were in there at number nine, along with a bunch of global brands that are spending 10 or 20 times what we’re spending on media in any given month.

“Our success is purely because creativity is cutting through.

“For example, I have people swear to me they’ve seen the Vogel’s ad last week, and they tell me how much they love it. But it hasn’t been on for months.”

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Steven Adams and TV take Meadow Fresh Quick Brekkie to 4% of category in just six months

Another award-winning marketer at Goodman Fielder who believes in the critical role TV has to play is Jennifer Jones, Head of Dairy Marketing and Category.

Jennifer says one of the critical components behind the success of Meadow Fresh’s current campaign with Steven Adams is understanding the shopper.

“We look at the personal shopper across a number of our categories and ask, are they still watching TV?” Jones laughs.

“It’s probably that simple. Even though we know their attention is being divided across multiple screens, we still see TV as providing a core role in achieving reach in a cost-effective way, and in connecting us with the household shopper.” Meadow Fresh’s current campaign with basketball star Steven Adams, for Quick Brekkie, its NZ made breakfast drink, has been incredibly successful.

“Around 60% of Kiwis are still watching TV, so I think some of the other channels probably get an elevated share of talk and voice because they’re new and evolving. But you can’t get away from the fact that Kiwis are still watching TV. “

Also, with other channels, a lot of the time they’re skippable, or the viewer is scrolling, just watching the first few seconds. With TV the audience is seeing the full duration of our ad.”

Jones says it’s been a challenge going up against a competitor with 25 years in market, but that after just six months the brand is creating a place for itself in the category.

“Our trial metrics tell us clearly people are seeing us and considering us, and we’re upping our ambitions on the basis of that. I’m quite a commercial marketer, so for me sales and market share are also key measures of success. We’re at 4% in just six months, but the category is massive and growing.”

Another component of the campaign’s success has been strongly supporting TV with other channels.

“We definitely ladder on top of TV,” Jones says, “because we think it works best when it gets cross-channel support. So, we’ve made a strong investment in digital to cover multiple screens, and out of home has also had a big role, particularly large and static formats. We also did showstopper buses to help drive the impact and scale.”

Then there’s in-store: “Because we’re a new product, in-store has been huge, using retail media to disrupt at the point of purchase.”

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