The F word, the C word and the TV word all produce the same effect. Recommending TV sure isn’t easy these days, says Martin Yeoman – it’s like trying to herd sheep.

"Oh, and this campaign will be digital – our CEO doesn’t believe in TV,” was the final comment in a recent packaged goods briefing.

In various ways we hear the same refrain time and again – TV’s not right for this category, no one’s watching it, I don’t watch it, my kids don’t watch it, TV is dead. Apparently, the only people watching television are Gold Card holders. This isn’t a new narrative, it goes back decades, but it does ramp up year after year.

There’s been plenty of times I’ve seen someone advocate for television advertising and all of a sudden tumbleweed drifts through the room. It’s like something a little stronger than the F word, but not quite the C word, has slipped out. The message: you need to move with the times.

Part of the problem is that it becomes a zero-sum game. If you’re for TV you’re obviously against something else – generally digital, which means you’re a dinosaur – or if you’re a digital advocate, you must be anti-television. It’s nonsense.

In the past few decades, we’ve had media options explode from the small set of TV, magazine, press, OOH, and radio to numerous platforms and ecosystems, all with untold ways to use them. Never has there been a more exciting, stimulating and intellectually challenging time to work in our industry. And we’re really only starting to get a grip on how to best use them all.

But too much choice in anything is overwhelming and, being human, we look to simplify by attaching easy-to-understand narratives that make sense of how we see the world. Then we look for evidence that reinforces our view and dismiss anything contrary. It’s called confirmation bias, and TV gets the wrong end of it.

Evidence says TV is still a brilliant advertising medium – so do I

The accepted narrative right now is that digital is far more efficient and effective than television – which is wasteful and expensive, with few viewers left. Everyone writing in this publication will challenge this in different ways and there’s plenty of data emerging to support the counter argument.

My take is more personal, but also supported by the evidence. I got into this industry because I loved the way the best of our work makes you feel something. The early Levi’s ads, Smirnoff’s ‘Through the bottle’, Stella Artois films, Telecom’s ‘Father and son’, the Anchor family, and Spike Lee for Nike all left a strong impression on me. These memories are locked in my mind and heart decades later.

Today, if I see a Hilux on the street, long-held memories of ‘Bugger’ surface and occasionally even a flicker of Scotty and Crumpy (I was 10 years old but I can still recite a few lines). We now understand why – amazing storytelling that evokes an emotional response ultimately makes you like the brand more – and is the most powerful driver of demand. It’s really as simple as that.

Each of these campaigns took the time to tell a story, to draw me in, and to earn my focused attention. They’re rewarded with a little place in my long-term memory.

If television is an option for a campaign, I jump at it, because it gives us everything we need to make that emotional connection – the time, the space, the visual and audio possibilities, and the reach.

Living the dream – working on Tux

Last year, we developed a campaign for Tux dog biscuits. It’s another brand that holds a tiny piece of real estate in my memory from sitting on the living room floor watching Saturday afternoon dog trials (Wayleggo Blue!), and the romance of a 90-second high country farming TVC accompanied by Murray Grindlay’s national treasure soundtrack: “Tux keeps them full of life, fit as a fiddle, sharp as a knife.”

We took many of these ‘codes’ as we now say – the rural life, characters, dogs, sheep and of course the soundtrack – and applied them to a contemporary story. And we played it on television.

My teenage daughter thought it was super cool we were using that song – how on earth did she even know it? A few months later at a family catch up, my 14-year-old twin nephews told me how much they loved the ad. They claim not to watch TV, but dig a little deeper and you find there’s plenty they watch.

My Gold Card-carrying mother loves it too, and pretty soon it became a topic that connected three generations of family. Everyone involved in the project has similar stories.

Television advertising can be a shared experience which intensifies and amplifies emotional engagement. Then there’s those times at a BBQ when someone asks what you work on and you list off what you think are the most interesting projects, which receive an underwhelming acknowledgment. Then you mention an ad that’s on TV and they light up. That’s the power of the channel.

Effectiveness requires attention

More and more, I’m interested in idea attention. Like many people I spend way too much time on my phone scrolling, but I love the way I’m connected with things I’m interested in from all over the world.

For brands, the opportunities to connect more personally, to have a deeper relationship, to move into editorial spaces are amazing. And some brands can do this (if it’s about cycling then I’m all in) but for most brands – the things we buy day in day out – bread, insurance, electricity, loo paper, hamburgers – they often rely on these platforms for advertising. Their currency is impressions.

The industry definition of an impression is simply an opportunity to view, being that it appears on your screen, even if your eye doesn’t register it or you scroll right past. Ironically, the dictionary definition of impression talks about an “idea, feeling, or opinion,” and this requires attention.

Social media is low attention or passive attention as Professor Karen Nelson-Field, author of The Attention Economy, would define it – so the term ‘impression’ is itself misleading. Nelson-Field’s work found that we need at least 2.5 seconds of attention before a memory can be formed.

More than 85% of digital video ads don’t reach the 2.5 seconds viewing threshold and therefore no memory can be formed. Peter Field’s article in this publication expands on this point and rightly argues we need to move to a measure of attention, rather than impressions. In which case television, a high-attention medium, has a lot more effectiveness.

Social and digital play an important role in our media eco-system. There have been plenty of deals on flights, sneakers, tech, bike bits, whiteware, furniture, maybe even a car that I’ve bought because the right offer has been served up at the right time – harvesting the positive feeling I have toward that particular brand often formed via television advertising. That’s combining the mediums at their best.

Stick with the winners

The biggest, most successful brands are still on TV. I’m always intrigued by who is advertising on television. In the US, Procter & Gamble is typically the biggest spender on linear television advertising, but Amazon – one of the biggest online retailers in the world – ranks not far behind.

This summer, Salesforce was a heavy New Zealand advertiser – a B2B CRM brand. These are hugely sophisticated tech brands making data-driven decisions, but they’re investing big in television advertising. They know something.

The other category I watch closely is retailers – they know what drives sales. Rod Duke is one clever retailer and there wouldn’t be too many nights where you don’t see a Briscoes or Rebel Sport ad. The same goes for McDonald’s, The Warehouse, and Harvey Norman.

These companies will use a wide variety of media, but television advertising still plays an important role. Why? Because it works for them.

There’s many reasons I advocate for television advertising, but it all comes back to the reason why I entered the industry: because it uniquely allows us to create work that makes a mass audience feel something that creates a lasting memory.

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