OK. Here’s how not to do trade advertising. Thinkbox is the marketing body for the UK TV industry. In other words, their job is to ensure that marketeers are aware of the benefits of spending money on TV, and not the internet (or anywhere else) where so much money is being redirected these days (Google seemingly earns more in the UK than Channel 4).
Anyway, Thinkbox has launched an effectvness campaign in the trade press. See what they’ve done? So this week’s Marketing magazine comes with one of those paper “straps” that go around the cover and are lightly glued to a couple of inside pages. Effectively, you’re forced to open the magazine on that page to remove the straps, forcing you to see the ad before reading the rest of the magazine. Usually when this kind of wraparound is employed, you’d be faced with a double page ad of some kind.
Evidently the Thinkbox cash didn’t spread far enough because they only have a right-hand page. On the left-hand side is a Media Analysis piece looking a TV advertising review of 2006, and at the negotiations that are currently underway to determine 2007 spend levels. The trouble is that this is a realtively gloomy piece with the most optimistic estimates predicting a 2% increase while flat or even another downward year seems more likely.
This tough advertising market isn’t a trade secret, and no doubt the editorial integrity of Marketing would have seen to it that this piece would have been published whoever was advertising. But effectively, this wraparound ad has drawn me straight to the article indicating bad news overall in the TV market. Perhaps it’s this year’s poor performance that meant that Thinkbox couldn’t spring for the double page spread? But I don’t think that this was the intended consequence…