New creative for TiVo generation

I’m one of the few people in the UK lucky enough to have a TiVo (most people who’ve heard of TiVo have been fooled into believing it’s like Sky+, more on that here). But talk of the TiVo generation is still rife in with-it marketing circles and yesterday James Cherkoff picked out creative guru Trevor Beattie’s take on the problem of people fast forwarding ads in the Independent.

Beattie’s responding to this Guardian article that claims that of 3,500 messages delivered by ads during a 45 minute walk in London’s West End, 99 per cent have no impact. Beattie uses this to turn fears of zapping TV ads on their head; that people filter stuff that’s of no interest to them is a ‘so what’ he argues that’s not new. And that seems to make sense as that Guardian article concludes: ‘…people don’t want 3,500 media messages every day. You probably only want three that are relevant to your life.’

If we all responded to three messages a day, advertisers would be laughing, despite the low conversion rate.

Nevertheless, while I rarely watch ITV I have been hitting fast forward hard through Lost, over which Channel 4 has been censured for having too many ads and I was thinking of Beattie last time round. He’s right that you do give the screen your full attention when fast forwarding, but I’d struggle to remember any of the ads I zapped.

So is there a creative solution? Ads that designed to played at high speed? Now that would be clever.
Contact Stephen Newton

Bookmarks: