The JMS Group

Homewares Retailer Aldiss Continue to Advertise on ITV with Strong Results

tom mountford — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:36:53 +0000

Norfolk-based homewares brand Aldiss continues to advertise on ITV, running five campaigns a year – giving the brand near year-round television advertising across East Anglia.

In contrast to targeted ad platforms, traditional linear television’s ‘catch all’ nature could understandably be considered a rather archaic advertising channel. Yet, one of the primary advantages of linear TV advertising is the wide audience that can be reached within defined geographic areas. This broad-brush approach is still valued by regional bricks and mortar retail chains, whose distribution of stores often fall neatly within the bounds of transmission areas.

Aldiss Managing Director Darryl Simpson explains, “A lot of the media that’s available to us now is very targeted, but ITV is, by its very nature, broadcast. We can talk to our customers – and potential customers – across the whole region.”

While there is undeniably sound wisdom in the aphorism ‘targeting everyone is targeting no one’, a great many local brands really do possess an appeal broad enough to negate the wasted spend from casting a net as wide as the budget will allow. And let’s not forget that the established ‘traditional’ linear commercial broadcasters (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5) are the leaders in ‘shiny black floor’ entertainment and reality shows with broad appeal across multiple demographics. Mainstream linear can still capture the whole ‘family unit’ at prime viewing times with live programming that streamers don’t offer.

Darryl Simpson on Why Aldiss Continue to Advertise on ITV.

“TV is one of the main components of our marketing mix. We do printed media, so direct mail brochures, press, radio, and obviously in recent years we’ve been using digital, email, pay per click, and social media. However, it’s clear to us that when we have TV output, we can look on our online channels and see when there’s a spike in traffic. And that normally correlates with when we appear on ITV. When Loose Women is on, we see a spike. When Coronation Street is on, we see a spike when we’re in the ad breaks.”

Geography is also one of linear TV’s aces. In the digital realm, consumers are bombarded with advertisements that sometimes suffer from inept geographic targeting. We’re likely all familiar with responding to an ad on Instagram, only to find the item pushed to us is from a retailer on another continent. By contrast, regional television’s fixed and unchanging geographic transmission footprints is one of the notable reasons to advertise on ITV.

Local advertisers know almost to the exact mile where their broadcast region ends, and no doubt more than a few viewers can name the location of their county’s transmission mast. Regional TV’s ‘tangible’ relationship with viewers translates into a receptiveness to advertising messages from brands that actively capitalise on their ‘localness’. Some creatives might feel that name-checking the physical locations of stores in a commercial is a bit naff, but there’s no denying that it works.

Creative for the Aldiss ads closely matches the artwork used in the retailer’s sale-period door-drops, a bold price-point led design. Production house JMS Group is supplied with pack-shot photography and vector artwork for rapid turnaround of ‘Sale Starts’ ‘Sale Now On’ and ‘Sale Ends’ commercials – sometimes six to nine commercials in each campaign.

JMS Group has been producing the regular ITV campaigns for Aldiss for many years; a client relationship that extends to the Norwich production company’s formation in 1983. Darryl explains why the relationship has lasted for so long, “We’ve been working with JMS over several decades now. More recently, the campaigns have stepped up, where we’re running five campaigns a year. That requires quite a bit of energy and quite a bit of speed of production and flexibility. JMS brings that to us, and we’ve always found JMS to be responsive, speedy, and really gives us a complete service end to end dealing with ourselves as the client, but also involving the broadcaster and the regulatory authorities – Clearcast – as well, which is always useful.”

TV retains its ability to capture large swathes of viewers at specific times within a geographically fixed location. Its relative simplicity does not require an advertiser to ‘win’ at a strategy of keywords and bidding strategies, no technical SEO, no content creation, no optimisation – just a ‘take it or leave it’ message that can be delivered to a large demographic.

Local TV might sound like a blunt instrument, but the results speak for themselves, “TV advertising remains and will remain a large part of our marketing mix. And if we’re starting our business from scratch again tomorrow, it’ll be the first thing I put down in terms of how we go forward to establish our business.”

If your retail store brand would like to advertise on ITV in your region, drop us a message on the contact form below.

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Foodhub and JMS Group Debut Spicy TV Campaign to Gain Notoriety

tom mountford — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 14:58:43 +0000

Takeaway delivery app Foodhub briefed production company JMS Group to create the brand’s first television campaign, and for it to make a big impact. Love it or loathe it, the Foodhub TV advert ‘Hot Meals in Your Area’ hopes to gain notoriety via television and social media.

Foodhub is a challenger in the food-tech industry providing online food ordering marketplace and EPOS solutions. Despite Foodhub’s scale, its brand recognition to date had been overshadowed by app behemoths Just East, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats. Lacking the budget to bring in celebrity endorsement at the calibre of Snoop Dogg, the brief to JMS Group – and Foodhub’s agency CG Advertising – was to achieve the maximum impact and word of mouth around the brand within a modest production budget.

The commercial’s director, Tom Vaughan-Mountford, explained, “We’d developed some cracking creative for the campaign – but the brand’s USPs of better value for customers, and a fairer deal for takeaways were somewhat nebulous and proving tough to sharpen into a message that would tempt viewers to download the app. There were several cool ideas, visually strong, but the underlying argument just wasn’t moving the needle. After several weeks of back-and-forth rewrites and animatics, none of the concepts were quite what we were after for a launch.”

We all know the obvious equation between food and porn, indeed the term ‘foodporn’ is well used on its own. Throughout creative discussions, the obvious low-hanging gag had been sidestepped several times. JMS Group’s Elena Ford – the campaign’s creative lead – said, “Foodhub wanted to make some noise so having explored all the other avenues we broached the question with them: The Pornhub comparison has already been made… do you feel comfortable leaning into this and having some fun with it?” To make the case JMS Group wrote a creative concept based loosely on a ‘porn pre-roll’ or programme trailer on an adult channel. Elena added, “We started batting innuendo-laden dialogue around the studio, laughing like school kids telling dirty jokes, and knew we’d got a hook for the campaign.”

‘Hot Meals in Your Area’ – Cheeky Foodhub TV Advert Airing on Sky

Tom describes production of the commercial as a “Kick, bollocks and scramble shoot”. The entire cast was affected by travel delays which compressed the schedule of the single day’s shoot by almost two hours. “The styling of the commercial was intentionally low-fi as the creative called for a somewhat less than polished appearance, and some strange lighting choices, the look was ‘a foodie version of Babestation’. The spot needed to stick out like a sore thumb in any break, almost as though it’s airing on the wrong channel. So, the breakneck pace of the production day was in some respects conducive to the style we were going for.”

Knowing that ‘Hot Meals in Your Area’ was likely to prove divisive, Foodhub took an initial rough cut to a 30-person focus group, including several customers. Although several mentioned they felt the ad was potentially in poor taste, the overwhelming majority were not only positive, but voiced tremendous enthusiasm for the daring of the commercial.

Notable comments from the group included, “The best ad I’ve ever seen”, “Would go big on TikTok”, “Worth getting sacked for”, and “I love it, but I’m sure the snowflakes won’t”. As an intriguing aside, it was the men in the focus group who were more vocal in their criticism of the commercial’s content. Foodhub’s initial worries were largely allayed by the feedback from the group, and the cut that has gone to air isn’t far removed from the initial version viewed by them. Just one shot was removed as the talent’s outfit was deemed too salacious.

Actor Dan Dewhirst stars in the Foodhub TV advert. Image: Richard Jarmy

Tom is confident ‘Hot Meals in Your Area’ will hit the right notes, “The commercial was already being widely talked about even before we delivered it. Countless people were shown various cuts of the ad during production, and behind the scenes photos from the shoot were being shared too. We’ve got a lot of love for the concept but have also heard plenty of air sucked through teeth. No one is in any doubt there will be some flak, in fact we’re looking forward to it.”

“We were introduced to JMS Group by CG Advertising, an agency supporting us with our out-of-home campaigns. We gave them a difficult brief to start with, and then changed that brief a few weeks into the project. We certainly didn’t make it easy for them. We wanted something memorable and just on the right side of ‘naughty’; an advert that was translate easily from TV to social media and beyond. JMS brought their ideas to the table, and we loved the script that they came up with. It was refreshing, funny, and definitely memorable! However, that was nothing in comparison to the way they brought it to life during production. The set was perfect, the actors spot on, and the diligence to detail very much appreciated. JMS also listened to us when we asked to change some elements of the advert; we appreciated their flexibility. Overall, we’ve had a lot of fun with this project and we’re very proud to bring Foodhub to the masses with a Sky and digital campaign. We’re sure we’ll be working with JMS Group for a long time yet.” said Foodhub’s Jackie Sims.

For further information about using targeted television advertising to promote your app contact JMS Group. JMS Group has a lengthy track record in producing television campaigns for online services.

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Comparison Site Moneyfacts Launch Debut Television Campaign Targeting Senior Savers

tom mountford — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 14:11:39 +0000

Financial data company Moneyfacts Group has launched the first national television campaign for its consumer-facing price comparison site Moneyfactscompare.co.uk. Moneyfacts Group commissioned Norwich-based TV commercial production agency JMS Group to create a 30-second direct response spot for the price comparison brand’s debut.

Financial comparison sites have long found that advertising on television is an unrivalled way to build brand awareness in a highly saturated sector. Brand awareness is critical to driving conversion through the digital aspects of a campaign funnel. When a consumer is faced with two competing online ads they’ll likely click on the ad of the brand that feels the most familiar; and regular TV advertising keeps that brand’s identity at the front of a consumer’s mind. The same effect is true of brand-name search; television advertising can influence a consumer to Google the name of the brand they’ve most recently seen on television, versus making a generic long-tail query.

Competing comparison brands such as MoneySupermarket.com and MoneySavingExpert.com have traditionally cast wide nets to capture the full market, but Moneyfactscompare.co.uk has aimed its first campaign squarely at affluent savers, notably high-net-worth individuals over-50. The national campaign uses AdSmart from Sky to reach an audience of mature homeowners and Telegraph readers, a demographic already tried and trusted by Moneyfacts Group for its press campaigns. The targeted television campaign’s initial success was further enhanced by later advertising on GB News.

Financial services advertising campaign for moneyfactscompare.co.uk

The commercial positions Moneyfactscompare.co.uk as a straightforward, hard-working ‘underdog’, with a subtle nod to some of the recent tropes in financial services advertising. The spot’s creative message was developed by the client’s in-house marketing team, design and motion graphics produced by Hugh South at JMS Group.

Simple yet effective motion-graphics TV campaign for Moneyfacts, by JMS Group.

For further information about using targeted television advertising in your financial services advertising strategy contact JMS Group. JMS Group has a lengthy track record in producing television campaigns for financial services providers.

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Fine Watch Club’s Debut TV Campaign Features 64 Year Old Omega Seamaster

tom mountford — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 12:54:27 +0000

Classic collectible watch retailer Fine Watch Club has launched its first television campaign with an emotive 30-second spot featuring an Omega Seamaster manufactured in 1959. Creative direction and production of the campaign was by Norwich TV commercial production company JMS Group.

Classic watches are carefully considered purchases that attract savvy buyers with an interest in the provenance and investment potential of collectible high-value watches. Fine Watch Club has a clearly defined buyer profile that enables it to disregard the vast majority of casual watch buyers; the brand’s market already understand – truly obsesses over – the smallest details of collectible watches. The debut TV campaign aims to build on the objectives of the brand’s successful YouTube video content strategy; to demonstrate that Fine Watch Club is owned and operated by fellow watch enthusiasts. The iconic 1959 Seamaster featured in the spot was chosen because of the brand’s popularity among enthusiasts. Fine Watch Club was excited by the targeting capabilities of addressable TV – AdSmart from Sky – for the platform’s ability to narrow the focus of the campaign to reach affluent men with high disposable incomes.

Not only are the watches retailed by Fine Watch Club previously worn – even historic – many of them also command premium prices. The brand’s average sale value is £2,500, with some highly collectible models retailing north of £10,000. For Fine Watch Club, securing the trust of potential buyers to make a high-value online transaction is of paramount importance. Two of the greatest advantages of advertising on TV – from a brand perspective – are its ability to raise the perceived trustworthiness of a brand and to enhance the perception of the brand’s size and longevity. Brands that advertise on TV are generally assumed to be longer-established – and sometimes far larger – entities than might be the case. Fine Watch Club has a single physical retail store in Norwich, but its online business trades classic watches internationally.

‘It’s About Time’ debuted with a targeted campaign on AdSmart, before the client achieved ongoing success advertising on GB News.

Watch advertisements frequently highlight the future value of the product – that it might be handed down to future generations – but for Fine Watch Club we chose to look back at the history of a single watch, imagining the provenance of one Omega Seamaster and its accumulated value. The creative follows the Seamaster through the decades on the wrist of several wearers: 1950s rockstar, soldier in Vietnam, an Apollo launch spectator, 1970s family man, and a 1980s stock market trader. At the close of the commercial, the Omega is greeted by its newest owner. The creative approach solidly positions Fine Watch Club as a premium brand appealing to a knowledgeable audience.

The historical elements of the spot were filmed entirely at JMS Group’s production office, with the closing scene captured in a neighbouring hotel and spa. Era-appropriate props and costumes were sourced from eBay and local charity shops. On-screen performers are the client and JMS Group’s production team. The total commercial production budget was a modest £8,500 – which allowed Fine Watch Club to allocate a generous percentage of their initial advertising budget to the AdSmart media spend.

After a successful AdSmart debut, the commercial’s messaging was adjusted and the campaign joined a growing list of advertisers on GB News. The news channel engages Fine Watch Club’s core demographics and the results proved so successful that the campaign is scheduled to run until early 2024.

Fine Watch Club – AdSmart from Sky Case Study

E-commerce brands especially can see great results from targeted addressable television advertising. Addressable television advertising shares many of the targeting, analytics, and reporting features as online advertising—with the additional bonus of projecting a far more professional brand image than most online ads would. You can use addressable TV ads to target your ideal customers by age range and income level, so you can show your ad only to people likely to buy from you. You can also weave in data from your own customer database and analytics tools to further narrow the field and reach only those households who match your ideal customer profile.

Small and medium-sized businesses are often limited in their advertising budgets. They have to be careful about how they spend their money, which means that they can’t afford to waste it on ads that don’t work. That’s why addressable television advertising is such a great option for these types of businesses: it allows them to target potential customers at scale without spending money reaching people who aren’t in the market.

JMS Group is commercial production company highly experienced in creating affordable addressable AdSmart TV campaigns for SMEs. Fine Watch Club’s Sam Richardson is delighted with the campaign:

“We targeted over twenty-five-thousand affluent males, and delivered over a hundred thousand impressions across our target audience in the East of England region. Before our TV advertisement went live, we were averaging around five to ten enquiries a day through our traditional advertising methods. That number swiftly went up to twenty enquiries a day once we were live on Sky. This gave us a two hundred percent increase on quality enquiries! Some days, the phone just doesn’t stop ringing. With the successes and results from our first campaign, we’ve already booked a second campaign with Sky. It’s been a tremendous journey!”

To find out how to advertise on GB News, and invest in affordable and targeted television advertising to promote your e-commerce business, contact JMS Group. JMS has a lengthy track record in producing affordable and successful TV campaigns for SMEs.

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JMS Group Expand Foster Care Marketing Portfolio With Series of Animated Explainer Videos for BSN Social Care Group

tom mountford — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 11:47:18 +0000

Foster Care Marketing: There is an urgent and ongoing need for foster carers in the UK. The Fostering Network estimates a shortage of some 6,000 to 9,000 fostering families across the country. Both local-government and independent fostering agencies have seen dwindling enquiries from traditional campaign channels – regional press, bus advertising, leaflet drops – and are increasingly moving toward digital foster carer recruitment campaigns – including Google Ads, Facebook Ads, addressable (hyper-targeted) television advertising, and video marketing.

In the case of the IFAs (Independent Fostering Agencies) there is also an element of inter-agency competition, prompting fostering and adoption marketing campaigns to become increasingly sophisticated. Becoming a foster carer to a child or young person brings significant complexities and lifestyle considerations – so, potential foster families will also be influenced in their decisions by the quality of a fostering agency’s advertising, marketing, and support materials.

Norwich production company JMS Group had already produced several successful foster care advertisements for regional TV, and also video-testimonial case studies for Nexus Fostering. Impressed by the quality of work, the parent organisation of Nexus – BSN Social Care – commissioned JMS Group for an animated explainer video production, an FAQ video to guide prospective foster families through the process they might choose to embark on.

Nexus animated explainer video, part of a wider foster care marketing campaign for BSL Social Care Group.

Quite simply, everyone searching for information today expects to be able to find it available in short video form (more than 90% of people want to see more explanatory videos from brands, preferring them over text-only information). The greater the quality – and candid transparency – of explainer material at the outset of the fostering process, the sooner non-suitable enquirers remove themselves, while leaving high quality candidates better-informed to move onto the next stage.

The base animation of the explainer was tailored with different characters and branding for rollout by several agencies within the BSN Social Care group – Nexus Fostering, Olive Branch Fostering, Blue Sky Fostering, and Calon Cymru Fostering (Wales).

Nexus Fostering ‘One Day’. Using targeted AdSmart TV advertising as part of a foster care marketing campaign.

For further information about using animated explainer videos or targeted television advertising in your foster care marketing strategy contact JMS Group. JMS Group has a lengthy track record in producing fostering campaigns and case study videos for both local authority services and IFAs.

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How Does TV Advertising Work?

tom mountford — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 09:56:54 +0000

During 2020—despite widespread economic turmoil—1,243 UK businesses saw the advantages of TV advertising and went on air for the first time. But why would so many advertisers choose to add an additional untested advertising channel to their marketing spend during such uncertain times?

How does TV advertising work? Simple: It’s the most credible! Illustration by Freepik

Why Advertise on Television?
Does TV Advertising Work?
Television Builds Brands!
The Problem With Ads on Video Sharing Sites
What Is Linear TV?
What Is Addressable TV?
How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on TV in the UK?
How Much Does a TV Commercial Cost?
How to Make a Professional TV Commercial
How Long Does It Take To Make a TV Commercial?
What Is Clearcast, and What Is Clearcast Approval?
How to Produce a TV Commercial

Download The 'How Does TV Advertising Work?' Guide

Why Advertise on Television?

Simple: Television campaigns are effective; they provide a dependable return on investment for advertisers, and television advertising remains the public’s most trusted advertising channel— both extremely valuable attributes during risky times.

So… TV Isn’t Dead?

TV has continued to be the medium people spend the most time with. Commercial television’s popularity has endured, no mean feat considering ITV aired the UK’s first television commercial in 1955. Incidentally, the first product to be advertised on TV was toothpaste, a consumer product that has remained loyal to TV ever since.

Broadcast TV accounts for 91% of the video-based advertising seen by all adults in a single day, and a healthy 77% for 16-34s. While traditional (aka. ‘linear’) TV has experienced a decline in viewership over the past decade, the slack has been picked up by Broadcaster Video-On-Demand (BVOD) apps. The viewing time of ads delivered via BVOD climbed 22% during 2020. On-demand programming reaches those younger, lighter viewers who have drifted away from traditional fixed-time TV viewing. Incidentally, BVOD ads are every bit as effective as linear TV ads, sometimes even more so.

Is TV Dead? Nope. We still watch a LOT of TV! Illustration by Freepik

Even the explosive growth of Subscriber Video-On-Demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime hasn’t severely impacted commercial services, the amount of entertainment we watch is up across the board. Watching a lot of programming inevitably means each of us is exposed—on average—to 41 TV commercials per day; but that’s a trade most viewers are happy to make in exchange for free high-quality entertainment. Do some viewers skip the ads? Sure, a small number do. Despite what cynics might have you believe; most TV viewers do not go to the additional effort to avoid ad breaks.

To put television’s share of our viewing day into a wider context, the video content behemoth YouTube takes only 5.6% of the video ad pie (a more substantial 15.5% among 16-34), with new kid TikTok displaying 1.4% of the video ads viewed per day. While Facebook serves video ads, it’s slice of the average day’s viewing is too small to be accurately measured.

Does TV Advertising Work?

Yup! Television advertising is still extremely effective!

TV is a wildly effective medium for all sizes of brands, and it can efficiently create sales uplift even at relatively low levels of investment (we’ll delve into TV advertising costs later). Television advertising has a stronger proportional effect for smaller brands; small brands are working from a lower baseline and are often communicating products or services that are entirely new to viewers.

TV starts delivering sales results from the first week of a campaign, and that uplift can sustain for 3-6 months after a campaign has finished. An average 4-week campaign can build to a weekly sales uplift of around 25%, with the profit payback point arriving at around month 4*.

TV is also the medium of choice for advertisers specifically wanting to drive online traffic. Online-only businesses are television’s biggest-spending category, and they invested almost £800m to advertise on television in 2020! One of the mammoth advantages of TV advertising is its proven ability to drive search traffic; TV impressions will directly correlate to uplifts in your brand-name search.

*Supercharge: TV Advertising for Small Businesses, May 2019, Data2Decisions/Work/Thinkbox. Data2Decisions database of smaller brands. All categories. Based on campaign spend of £1.25m.

Online-only brands are TV’s biggest spending category. Illustration by macrovector / Freepik

Even during a year when many advertisers deferred or cancelled campaigns, the UK’s advertisers still spent a whopping £4.35bn on television airtime. While TV spend by ‘bricks and mortar’ high street retailers temporarily slumped, 2020 saw a surge in spending by FMCG brands. TV delivers 87% of all advertising-generated profit for FMCG brands (2017 Ebiquity ROI campaign database).

But of course, you don’t only want an immediate sales uplift: You’ll want to shape public opinion of your brand and build long-term reputation and memorability.

Television Builds Brands!

‘Signalling Success’ is a 2020 study conducted by TV advertising’s marketing body Thinkbox, in conjunction with house51. The key findings of their study highlighted the trust that viewers place in television when forming an opinion of a brand:

1. Television advertising drove the strongest fitness and social signals in all categories tested. TV outperformed social media and online video across every category.

TV’s ability to drive fitness signals outperformed all other media tested: 36% stronger than the average. Half of all respondents rated brands that advertise on television as financially strong.

2. Brands that chose to advertise on television were significantly more likely to be perceived as financially strong, confident, and of high quality.

TV’s ability to drive fitness signals outperformed all other media tested: 36% stronger than the average. Half of all respondents rated brands that advertise on television as financially strong.

3. TV helped brands convey popularity and success more than any other medium.

TV was 23% stronger than average in delivering social signals. Half of all respondents believed that advertising on television meant lots of other people were buying the brand.

4. Brands advertising on TV, in magazines, and on radio are perceived as the most trusted to deliver on promises.

30% trusted TV advertising to deliver on the promises made, making TV the most trustworthy medium, just ahead of magazines (29%) and radio (28%). Advertising on video sharing sites was the least likely to deliver brand trust, with only 19% of respondents placing trust in the claims of advertisers.

Brands that advertise on television are perceived to be of high quality. Illustration by macrovector / Freepik

The Problem With Ads on Video Sharing Sites

Okay: The stats for public trust of ads on video sharing sites don’t look too hot, but let’s be fair to online advertising for a moment; a great number of businesses thrive using Google Ads (the PPC platform running the video ads on YouTube) and there is very often a place for video ads within a campaign mix.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a business that operates a DTC dog-treat subscription service, and you offer free shipping across mainland Europe. You have a ‘first-month free’ call to action, and a click-thru from the ad would drop your potential customer directly into a sign-up page. I’d wager that targeting a YouTube TrueView (in-stream) ad at people watching dog-grooming or dog-training videos from a European IP address could be a good call when paired with television advertising and OOH (Out Of Home) to build brand-recognition in the countries with the greatest market potential. Solid campaign strategy.

Now suppose you’re a dealership selling high-performance cars to affluent individuals. My gut feeling is that placing in-stream ads on videos that are popular with petrol-heads would trigger many impressions, because car videos are a popular genre. However, those impressions will be unlikely to convert into clicks that lead to sales. Sure, your ads will be seen by people with an interest in high-performance cars, but without being able to target the campaign using accurate data on household income, car ownership, or postcode (Zip code) you’ll not know whether those impressions are being made to high net-worth individuals or to teenagers who enjoy watching drifting videos and playing Grand Theft Auto. It is anybody’s guess as to whether the clicks you pay for are coming from individuals with the intent or means to buy.

Writing purely from the perspective of a guy who has spent more than twenty years working in television advertising, online video campaigns raise four potential concerns (especially if it is being used as a standalone advertising channel):

1. Ad placement is highly dynamic.

It can be tough to grow brand recall through repeated impressions when your campaign is being adjusted by an algorithm-based bidding system. You can control a lot of the parameters for your campaign, but ultimately, the system doesn’t answer to you. You might only get one-shot at the click.

2. You don’t know whose company you’re in.

The internet is full of unsavoury and even illegal content; and much of it can be monetized by ads: potentially your ad.

3. Online advertising has a worryingly low barrier to entry.

All of us see enough clickbait ads to grasp that any scammer with a credit card can fund an advertising campaign. Accordingly, viewers of ads on video sharing sites have relatively low expectations of the credibility of advertisers.

4. Potentially lower quality of leads.

From my own experience of running various types of PPC campaigns—the process has been akin to writing our phone number in a bathroom stall. The number of impressions would be high; but of the tiny number of clicks we would receive, 99.9% of the resulting contacts were either tyre-kickers or outright weirdos.

Let’s be frank: With online advertising, it is often only after the money has been spent that you gain any kind of idea who your message has been reaching.

But, isn’t the same true of television advertising?

Well…yes, and no. Television advertising comes in two varieties: Linear, and Addressable.

What Is Linear TV?

Linear TV reaches large audiences of viewers, and TV commercials are placed by making educated judgements about the demographics that each show—or genre of programming—is most likely to attract. Scheduling of ads can also take advantage of the time of day, and the geographic transmission areas (which loosely align with UK regions).

The traditional broadcast model casts the net wide in the knowledge there will be some wastage, but that the intended demographic will have been reached within that broader audience (and that there will likely be some out-of-demographic viewers that also respond to the ad). This is a proven methodology that has been refined to a form of art by broadcasters and media planners, but—essentially—the underlying premise has not changed much since businesses were first given the opportunity to advertise on ITV in the 1950s.

Linear TV campaigns can be exceptionally powerful, especially for national brand-building and FMCG promotions with broad consumer appeal. But for a smaller first-time TV advertiser with a niche-interest product a linear campaign can be a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

What Is Addressable TV?

Addressable TV is quite simply the greatest development in the history of advertising, ever! Okay, a slight exaggeration, but it is cool.

Addressable TV takes advantage of the fact that modern entertainment services require the viewer to activate a subscription of some type; telling the broadcaster or streaming service plenty of information about who is on the receiving-end of their content. In the case of Sky and Virgin Media (that provide hardware and telecoms services to their subscribers) there is a legal contract between the broadcaster and the household. The broadcasters near-enough know exactly who is watching their programming.

What is Addressable TV? Illustration by macrovector / Freepik

The dominant addressable TV platform in the UK is Sky’s AdSmart which launched in 2014, and the AdSmart platform also serves ads in Virgin Media homes. (ITV and its BVOD service ITV Hub use a comparable addressable advertising solution). The set-top boxes in viewers’ homes can then be used to dynamically construct custom playlists of ads, seamlessly creating bespoke ad-breaks for the household. The most appropriate ads to display are selected by blind-matching detailed consumer datasets (such as Experian: detailing income, property value, number of cars, age of dependents, supermarket spend, and household debt to name just a few) together with first-party data (such as viewing habits and device usage) collected by the broadcaster.

One of the cool features of AdSmart is that suitable commercials will be triggered in the household regardless of the channel or programming being viewed. Because the commercial is seamlessly inserted into the video stream even the smallest advertiser can (from a viewer’s perspective) appear to have bought a spot in a prestigious hit show.

How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on TV in the UK?

TV advertising has prestige and is widely regarded to be a cut above the rest (which is why it’s so great for building brands) but this positive attribute might also account for a lingering belief that television advertisers are part of an exclusive club, open only to those with vast marketing budgets.

In 2020, 888 advertisers invested less that £50k on their television campaigns, and almost 60% of all advertisers spent less than £250k. Big spenders were in the minority, only 25% of advertisers spent over a million pounds, and a mere 4% spent over £10m.

So, if your budget is on the smaller side, you’re in good company!

How much does it cost to advertise on TV in the UK? Illustration by catalyststuff / Freepik

The average cost of buying the media space to enable one person to see a TV advert once costs just over half a penny. That said, every channel has a ratecard, and it will be based on supply and demand.

Having an ad shown nationally on ITV during ‘peak’ (aka ‘primetime’) might cost between £10,000 and £35,000 dependent on the programming. If you want an ad in the final of I’m a Celebrity or Love Island it’s potentially going to come with a bigger price tag.

Meanwhile, a similar peak-time slot on ITV3 might start at £600. Comedy Central comes in at just £50. Or, if your audience are gripped by an especially eclectic mix of archive programming, a peak slot on Forces TV starts at £3 (yes, three quid).

If you only need to show your commercial within one or two regions the ratecard (even at peak) will be significantly lower. And if you show your ad during the day (popular for DRTV) the cost will be lower still!

I’ll circle back to buying TV airtime later, but for now just keep in mind that ratecard prices are just an indicator of the prices channels can command during different dayparts.

AdSmart brings the entry level cost for an entire television campaign down to just £3,000. Naturally, there are a great number of variables involved that can make that low baseline cost scale quite significantly. We have produced a lot of campaigns for AdSmart, and our clients have found the investment sweet spot is around £10k to £15k. To put those figures in context, placing a full-page ad in a national newspaper (for just one day) is going to cost between £30,000 to £60,000. In that light, the cost of television advertising is far from prohibitive, and it provides astounding value for money.

How Much Does a TV Commercial Cost? Could I Make One Myself?

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to disappoint you and be rather vague: There is no average cost of TV commercial production. The creation of a commercial will be tailored to the requirements of the campaign. That said, TV ads don’t necessarily need to be extravagant or overly artistic, they simply need to serve a purpose. As legendary ad-agency founder David Ogilvy wrote in his 1983 book Ogilvy on Advertising, “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

The cost of making a TV commercial doesn’t necessarily correlate with its effectiveness. That said, every commercial must meet a certain benchmark of quality to be able to perform its duty effectively. So, I would not recommend trying to go it alone; not least because the TV commercial regulations in the UK are especially stringent. Wayward commercials produced without adhering to the rules cannot be aired. I’ve picked up the pieces for several advertisers that had embarked on the self-production journey and been forced to turn back.

How much does it cost to make a TV commercial? Illustration by macrovector / Freepik

I recently pitched to a client who had already jumped the gun and spent thousands producing a commercial with a script that broke numerous ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) guidelines. To the client’s surprise (and horror) their commercial was refused clearance to air on TV, and it was beyond any editor’s rescue. The money invested had to be written-off, and it was back to the drawing board.

How much more would it have cost to have done it right? Nothing at all. Any experienced commercial production company will make sure the script is totally watertight and cleared prior to production as a matter of course.

Producing the ad to the correct technical specification, booking airtime, and delivering the finished commercial—with its scheduling information—to multiple broadcasters can be a complex undertaking. Sure, some major advertisers use TV so frequently their in-house creative team will learn how to handle the process themselves. Most advertisers simply opt to save themselves headaches and work with experienced TV advertising agencies and commercial production companies that are clearing and delivering ads daily.

How to Make a Professional TV Commercial

First: Define the Type of Campaign You Want to Run

What are your objectives? To sell more stuff? Okay, I am about to blow your mind! Not all the commercials you see are trying to sell you something—at least, not right away. TV commercials (frequently abbreviated to TVCs in advertising circles) come in three varieties:

Branding Campaign

Brand commercials are beloved of big business because they help shape public perceptions of the brand. Think of almost any commercial for a bank, car manufacturer, or price comparison site; they are all exercises in brand recognition and recall (what advertising folks call ‘front of mind’). Brand ads rarely delve into pricing or the gritty details of the product or service, they usually have high production values: impressive visuals, celebrity endorsement, or a chart-topping music track.

Those achingly sentimental 60-second ads for supermarkets and big retail stores around the festive season: 100% about branding! So, what do they achieve? Simple: They make viewers receptive to other messages in the campaign.

Activations

Activation ads prompt viewers to act. Activations are often delivered around the same time as an advertiser’s branding commercial. The soppy 60-second festive commercial I mentioned will be accompanied in the campaign by a flurry of straightforward 10 or 20-second commercials featuring little more than products and prices.

When a commercial for a familiar brand contains a limited-time offer or a ‘Was-Now’ price, it is almost certainly an activation ad. The advertiser’s identity needs no introduction as it is already ‘front of mind’, the brand commercial has already done the heavy lifting, allowing the activation ads to do their job: getting stuff sold!

DRTV Campaign

What is DRTV advertising? The literal meaning is Direct Response Television; but the definition is a little vague. In a sense, DRTV is a hybrid between branding and activation in that the commercial usually introduces a brand that is likely unknown to the viewer, while also trying to get them to take immediate action or to make a purchase.

‘Direct Response’ refers to the action a viewer should take. Traditionally the desired response would have been to call a freephone number, but DRTV campaigns are now almost exclusively designed to drive traffic to a website, or prompt brand-name search; something television advertising does exceptionally well.

If you are a new-to-TV advertiser aiming to grow brand recognition, while also getting an immediate ROI, a well-executed DRTV campaign is a powerful advertising tool.

Now that you know the three types of TV advertising, I guarantee you will immediately spot the advertiser’s intent behind every commercial in the break!

Second: Design Your Media Plan

How does TV advertising work: What does a Media Planner do? Illustration by pikisuperstar / Freepik

It is possible to reach any given market with TV, not only because of TV’s scale but because of the infinite variety of entertainment now available. While primetime drama and ‘black shiny floor’ shows with studio audiences are still a family-friendly staple of British television, there is also an endless choice of niche-interest channels, and a vast back-catalogue of series available on-demand: and they could all be vehicles to deliver a commercial to your marketplace.

I’ve been in the TV advertising business for more than twenty years, and I still get a headache even thinking about media planning and buying airtime. It is a dark art, best left to those who know what they are doing!

Media Planning / Buying Agencies:

These can be wholly independent businesses that specialise in booking the media for a campaign, or they might be contained as a department within an advertising agency. Whatever the setup, a media agency will be able to mix and match a load of media besides TV; they can expand your campaign into programme sponsorship, cinema, social media, out of home, newspapers, tube platforms, and anywhere else you can think of putting advertising!

Media agencies have channel experience. They know which platforms work best to reach specific audiences, and they can also negotiate the best prices based on volume and their trading relationships with media owners.

Channel Sales Teams:

Major TV networks have their own sales teams, but that does not necessarily mean they can only book a campaign to air on their flagship channels. Media ownership is highly complex! For example, Sky Media sells airtime on Sky-branded channels and on-demand services but using AdSmart it can also sell ad impressions within the breaks of almost any channel airing on Sky’s platform.

As a long-established TV commercial production company (delivering a couple of hundred ads a year) we have a hotline to several trusted media agencies and both the Sky and ITV sales teams; all of whom can put together illustrative campaign plans for your objectives.

Three: Plan Your Timeline

How Long Does It Take To Make a TV Commercial?

How long is a piece of string? Three factors will influence how long it will take to produce your commercial:

1. Budget

Smaller production budgets often call for straightforward production concepts that will require less time in production. The smaller the budget, the less time the production company will be able to allow for the commercial to be created.

2. Complexity of Production

Production style can greatly influence time requirements. In broad terms, a live-action (filmed) commercial will demand a greater lead-time than a commercial created with graphics alone.

Most often lengthier timelines are dictated not by creative considerations, but by the logistics of production planning. Auditioning multiple actors, negotiating licensing rights, gaining substantiation for claims about the efficacy of the product, or simply scheduling filming for when better weather is predicted can add days—or weeks—to a production schedule.

3. Airtime & Clearance Processes

If you have already booked airtime with the broadcasters, the deadline has been set and the clock is ticking! Broadcasters will require the commercial to be delivered to them well-ahead of the first date of transmission, so the timeframes for commercial production might be constrained by a deadline imposed by a broadcaster. The clearance process (coming up next) must also be factored in as another immovable element of the schedule.

In short: You should have production underway several weeks back from your airdate. If the complexity of your campaign is likely to bring a lot of variables or complex logistics into play, you should be getting the ball rolling at least a couple of months ahead of the delivery deadline.

Four: Develop the Best Creative Treatment

Copywriting for TV advertising is a highly skilled form of writing, as is the development of visual concepts. TV commercials are produced to rigid durations: 10, 20, 30, 40, and 60 seconds – with 30 being the most popular option for most advertisers. (FYI: Producing ads in 10-second increments allows channels to assemble breaks that run to round durations and keep TV schedules running on time!)

My production company—JMS Group—specialises in activation and DRTV campaigns, so I’ll explain how we come up with creative treatments for those purposes. We develop creative concepts that translate into successful TV ads by using the ABCD structure:

ATTRACT

Something attention-grabbing must happen in the first couple of seconds: rapid edits, the first beats of a music track, a tasty shot of the food, a ‘big’ voiceover posing a question. If people will feature in the creative treatment, open with them already in shot, speaking right from the start. Activation and DRTV ads are NOT slow burners.

BRAND

Introduce the brand and demonstrate the product or service, highlight the USP, “Removes stubborn stains in seconds”. Call out the brand name in the voiceover or dialogue. In a 30-second commercial, this should all happen within the first 10-15 seconds.

CONNECT

Having explained and demonstrated the product or service, the commercial needs to hammer home reasons the viewer should act. This can be purely functional, “Our widget could save you time and money”. Or the connection could pull on emotional levers if they’re suitable, “Provide peace of mind for your loved ones after you’re gone”. This all happens around 15-25 seconds.

DIRECT RESPONSE

Go out with a bang! Close the ad with a specific Call to Action (CTA) with a sense of urgency, “Visit the website today and get 50% off!” or “Call now to get your first month free!” The CTA should fill the last five seconds of the commercial, and it should be bold and clear. Do not use space at the close of the commercial to shoehorn in other messages or catch-all contact methods. For instance, if the intention is to drive customers to a website do not muddy the water by adding a phone number.

The ABCD structure of a TV commercial is not set in stone (it’s a useful guide) but if a creative concept lacks the elements of being attention grabbing, connecting with its audience, making a great case for purchasing the advertiser’s product, and pushing the viewer to take a specific action… well, the concept likely has more style than substance. Creativity and pleasing visual design are essential attributes that should be woven into a good TV commercial, but never to the detriment of the overriding objective: Successful television ads must function as effective sales tools!

Five: Gain Script Clearance

What Is Clearcast, and What Is Clearcast Approval?

Earlier, I was banging on about TV advertising’s trustworthy reputation. Television’s value to advertisers relies on that high level of trust being maintained. Clearcast is a body funded by major broadcasters to police UK advertising laws (published and enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority) where they pertain to television commercials. Clearcast is a firewall between the hyperbolic claims of sub-par advertisers and TV viewers (it also protects the broadcasters’ interests; their airtime rate cards rely on the medium maintaining its value). Clearcast keep the riffraff out of the commercial breaks.

So, how does the advertising clearance process work? We will get the process underway as soon as we have a script ready to take into production, at this point we will submit the script for Clearcast script approval; a critical (unavoidable) step sometimes missed by inexperienced producers. It is a whole lot easier to make an adjustment to a commercial before it gets produced! At the script approval stage Clearcast will highlight any potentially contentious claims and request adequate substantiation to be supplied to them by the advertiser.

If you are advertising a toothpaste that claims to whiten teeth more than other brands—and that 80% of dentists use it themselves—Clearcast would need to be provided with the scientific papers that prove its efficacy, and details of the research studies that prove 80% of dentists really DO use it themselves! Clearcast might request that studies be repeated at a larger scale; 80% of a survey of 10 dentists just isn’t going to hold water!

Legitimate advertisers have no problem providing substantiation of their products and services. In most cases it’s as simple as confirming that a ‘special offer’ price is a genuine time-limited discount, and that the advertiser has enough stock to meet demand during the run of the campaign.

What is Clearcast Clearance? Illustration by iconicbestiary / Freepik

Clearcast might insist that small print (known in the business as ‘supers’) appear across the bottom of your commercial. This text must meet Clearcast specs for size, legibility, and duration on screen. Some new advertisers feel supers intrude on their commercial’s creative elements and try to negotiate the wording but honestly, don’t worry them. Next time you watch TV make a deliberate effort to look at the lower third of the screen throughout the ad break. Almost every commercial will have some type of super, you just hadn’t noticed. They’re no biggie, and you’re not being unfairly penalised in any way.

Six: Produce the Commercial

Finally! You’ve agreed the creative concept with your commercial production company, you’ve got your script through Clearcast, your airtime is booked, and now you’ve got a timeline for production! So… how do you make a TV ad?

Production is often (perhaps surprisingly) one of the more straightforward elements of a television campaign. With your script locked down and the storyboard decided, the production process of your commercial will be much like that of any other.

How to Shoot a Commercial for TV

Big branding campaigns often have all the bells and whistles (and expense) involved in shooting feature films. However, DRTV commercials often work with smaller production budgets and tighter deadlines than brand-led campaigns, which is why the narrative of a Direct Response commercial often plays out in just one or two locations. To make the most efficient use of the cast, crew, and location we will usually aim to shoot a commercial within a single day— two days at most. Post-production editing and the creation of motion graphics for the commercial will often take several more days to create. A professional voiceover will then need to be recorded, and the soundtrack mixed to broadcast specification.

How to Produce a TV Commercial With Graphics

Graphics is a broad umbrella that can cover an almost infinite variety of styles, each with their own complexity, and each requiring widely different investments of creation time. For the purposes of lower-budget TV commercials we can safely assume the word refers to ‘motion graphics’ (mo-graph) which is the addition of creative movement to otherwise static artwork, logos, pre-existing images, and text.

If you are advertising products—where physical appearance and functionality are the key selling points—the case for filming an ad is clear-cut. Car commercials show the actual car, because an attractive drawing of the car is not what the manufacturer is trying to sell! Yet many advertisers—even gigantic ones—often use nothing but graphics in their TV advertising. Graphics can be especially suited to selling services (i.e., where there is no physical product to point a camera at).

Graphics also provide flexibility for campaigns likely to require future changes to their messaging. Shooting storyboarded footage to fit a pre-written script can ‘set in stone’ many elements of a commercial, which can sometimes limit options for future tweaks—or at least require some editorial compromises to be made. However, every element of a motion-graphics commercial can be altered at relatively short notice.

Long story short: Many factors can limit what can be filmed within your production’s budget, but the options for commercials produced with software are infinite.

Seven: Deliver to the Broadcasters

The finished commercial must be viewed by Clearcast to ensure it has not deviated from the script that was approved at the beginning of the process. Broadcasters will not transmit commercials without Clearcast approval, so we make allowance for this process in the production timeline. Most of the time Clearcast approval is smooth-sailing (we keep them informed of any changes made to the script during production), but sometimes minor adjustments need to be made to get the commercial signed-off.

Back when I began producing TV ads there was only one way to get an approved commercial to broadcasters: Putting multiple videocassettes in the post! This was a process plagued by potential mishaps and was especially stressful as deadlines loomed. Today your commercial will be delivered to all the channels in your media plan via a media logistics company. We use one of the largest, Peach. We will upload the final master of your commercial to Peach (using a regular web browser) and their automatic quality control system will check the video file conforms to broadcast specifications before delivering to the file into the transmission chain at the channels airing your commercial.

In Summary

TV advertising remains an effective, trustworthy, and high-status advertising medium that—despite its immense power—has become increasingly affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes. Television advertising has relentlessly moved with the times, even creating new delivery technologies to benefit advertisers. On Sky’s AdSmart, commercials are seamlessly inserted into the only most appropriate viewers’ video streams, and that addressability translated into low wastage and exceptionally detailed campaign reporting.

Modern commercial production companies (did I mention JMS Group?) are adept at tailoring concepts and production resources to meet the objectives of your campaign, and that usually means effective TV commercials can be produced within almost any budget.

In addition to all the other great reasons to embark on a TV campaign, there’s still something special about being able to say, “As seen on TV”.

Download The 'How Does TV Advertising Work?' Guide

If you’re considering advertising on television, get in touch below.

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JMS Group Donates Jingle Production Archive To History of Advertising Trust

tom mountford — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 11:50:47 +0000

JMS Group | Archive Independent Local Radio Jingles from JMS Group on Vimeo.

Most people can hum a jingle they heard twenty… thirty… forty years ago. Some advertising campaigns had such potency they were able to persist as part of the national consciousness for decades; sometimes outliving the very businesses they were advertising.

Yet, every year millions of other advertising campaigns successfully serve their purpose, then—to all intents and purposes—cease to exist.

So, where does all the old advertising go?

Historic ad campaigns often sit as keepsakes or reference materials in the archives of the agencies that created them. But agencies come and go. Perhaps a bitter creative might chuck away work when a relationship with a client goes sour. People move on, and the relevance of past projects is lost to time. Brands themselves inevitably get dissolved during mergers and acquisitions or otherwise fail and vanish. When banks and creditors pick over the carcass of a dead business, the deceased’s back catalogue of advertising is of no financial value— all too often decades of ad creative will be buried in a skip alongside the broken office furniture.

Historic advertising frequently falls through the cracks; either because its significance is undervalued, or the person throwing it away doesn’t consider they could well be holding the only remaining copy!

Again, and again, we don’t realise the significance of something until it’s out of reach forever. Remember that cheesy, catchy, jingle you’d sing along to with mum whenever it came on the radio in the car? The one for that long-gone department store whose name escapes you. How did the tune go again?

Advertising is an important part of our cultural heritage yet—by its very nature—it is created for a short-term purpose; its value is spent within weeks. Ads are a snapshot of time. This is especially true of TV ads, radio ads, and jingles. They are inherently ‘of their time’ because they attached themselves to whatever was the trend in the moment. Individual ads were never designed for longevity. Brand identities and flagship products are designed for the long-haul, but the ads that sell them are usually fleeting. If a campaign doesn’t perform to expectation, it will be canned—never to be seen again—and replaced with fresh creative, almost overnight. On a more practical level, TV and radio campaigns were mastered on formats that are now obsolete— and if the equipment to reproduce the recordings is no longer readily available, it’s just a useless old tape: Content unknown. Chuck it out.

JMS Group launched in 1983 (as John Mountford Studios) to serve the commercial production needs of the exploding local radio industry. At peak throughput—during the mid-90s—four studios worked in tandem to produce radio spots and jingle production for more than 60 radio stations*. We have produced more than 100,000 radio spots during almost forty years of production. The most memorable of our creations—those notable campaigns that managed to run in various forms for years—were built around bespoke tracks of music, jingles.

The lyrics of many jingles were—to be candid—somewhat left field, but that has always been real beauty of the genre. Songs written about builders’ merchants, car dealerships, or dry cleaners are—by their nature—destined to be endearingly eccentric. Jingles were created with the specific intention to be catchy and memorable, to get inside listeners’ heads, to keep the client’s name—to use a marketing term— ‘front of mind’.

Despite enjoying decades of immense popularity, jingles—in their original long form variety—have somewhat fallen out of fashion (though some of our clients do cherish and frequently broadcast jingles we produced for them many years ago). Bespoke musical identities are still enormously powerful tools but today’s ‘sonic idents’ are often pared back to just a few notes, or a memorable vocalisation of the brand name.

As advertising strategies—and music trends—changed, most of our clients shelved their use of longform jingles. Also, by the simple passage of decades, many of the advertisers for which we produced jingles went out of business. In our archive we held the last scraps of many hundreds of perished brands.

In 2021 we decided the most culturally significant part of our vast archive—hundreds of local radio jingles—should be donated to the History of Advertising Trust, where the collection could be curated and made available for study.

The History of Advertising Trust was founded in 1976. A small group within the advertising industry decided its heritage needed to be preserved and that the study of UK advertising should be encouraged. HAT’s mission is to promote learning and creative excellence by preserving and celebrating the advertising heritage of the UK. This includes rescue, cataloguing, and preservation of creative works to enable access to all for study and research.

Learn more about the History of Advertising Trust.

*Sidenote: The boom of independent local radio (ILR) came to an end when swathes of local stations were gradually consolidated and rebranded by large national media groups. The exit of original founders, paired with rebranding by an acquirer is a common way for corporate archives to be lost.

How to Start a Successful Small Business Podcast

tom mountford — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 12:46:30 +0000

Small business podcast recording session in progress. Image credit: Pexels

I’m bored of podcasts. Anyone else? Every business seems to have a podcast right now; and lockdowns around the globe prompted countless individuals to create millions more hours of pointless drivel. Why even bother?

Okay, okay, okay! I cannot lie— I ABSOLUTELY LOVE PODCASTS!

But—to some degree—is there an element of truth in thinking there are no interesting angles on any given subject left unexplored? Apple alone (far from the only place to get podcasts) carries more than 550,000 shows—north of 43 million individual episodes—and that number, like all internet statistics, climbs by the minute.

Most likely you will have recently taken one of those new podcasts for a spin. Perhaps you listened to one episode, maybe one and half? Weeks went by, and you eventually got the message ‘iTunes has stopped updating this podcast because you have not listened to any episodes recently.’ You unsubscribed. I do the same, many podcasts do not even survive the full duration of Episode 1. So, it is understandable that you might wonder if you have missed the boat for launching a podcast. Do listeners have the appetite for any new shows?

Yes. Categorically, 100%, yes! Sure, the podcasting boat sailed a long time ago, but many of the passengers are creating total garbage— and inevitably fall overboard when life gets in the way. There is ALWAYS an audience for CONSISTENT QUALITY!

How to Start a Successful Small Business Podcast:

Short answer: Signing up to a podcast platform, recording, syndicating, and promoting are just routine procedures and housekeeping. You need to get those things right but—even done well—they are not going to magically create a podcast anyone would listen to. Get your strategy nailed down before anything else! Reach a point of absolute clarity about why you want to launch a podcast, and who really needs it in their lives.

Produce entertainment or information, NOT advertising.
Carefully prepare every episode.
Choose your guests carefully.
Commit to the work involved.
Deliver on time.
Consider outsourcing production.

**#1. Produce entertainment or useful—actionable—information, not advertising!**

Podcasting for business listeners is an especially competitive category; the category has been bloated by the low-to-no investment required to throw a handful of episodes into a free publicity channel. Creating a corporate podcast with hopes it will become a promotional vehicle for your business is short-sighted.

Listeners are discerning, they can smell a superficial PR exercise from a mile away. Too many entrepreneur podcasts launch for no deeper reason than to increase the exposure of their host. There is nothing inherently wrong about that. But, honestly, do any of us really want to listen to another narcissistic wannapreneur documenting their hustle and their gratitude journaling? Even if there are self-promotional benefits for the host, they should be a happy side-effect, not a driving purpose. Be genuine. Your podcast should offer a truly unique insight into your field of expertise.

If you regularly create episodes that listeners are eager to hear, good karma for your brand or personal reputation will flow naturally from the value you are providing.

#2. Prepare every episode

Almost all every small business podcast episode I have deleted shared two common faults: they were freewheeling and unfocused. Two or three people had gathered in a studio, confident their collective expertise and humour would effortlessly align into a great podcast— but the result was often muddy, aimless, and lengthy. Episodes should be researched, planned, and produced.

You will no doubt have seen a celebrity on a chat show respond to a question (without a moment’s hesitation) with a word-perfect, truly hilarious, anecdote that just happens to be about their new movie. Wow! Are they simply gifted in the art of spontaneous sparkling conversation? Unlikely. The host and guest almost certainly discussed the setup question that would seamlessly segue into the story at just the right moment.

Prepare your questions, brief your guests, do your background research. Choose to wing it, and you will likely end up recording hours of rambling small talk.

#3. Choose your guests carefully

If your format relies on getting a good podcast guest, you should be very selective. Do not be afraid to pass on people who would not be a good fit for your listeners; a friend expressing an interest in being on your show is not a good-enough reason to have them involved. Neither is someone who insists on a plug for their new business, app, or book as a prerequisite for an interview. If they are not going to be a good fit for your audience, pass on the opportunity. But, when you do get a well-connected guest on your podcast, ask them whether any of their connections might also be interested in coming onto the show.

#4. Commit to the work involved

Planning and producing something that is worth listening to is seriously hard work, and it is going to occupy a lot of time in your calendar. Linda Holmes of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour said in an interview with The Guardian, “People have a really inaccurate understanding of how much work they [podcasts] are, both from a content point and especially from a production standpoint. People don’t understand that people who produce high-quality chat shows spend a lot of time editing and cutting them. Don’t be in the position of thinking that for the low, low price of a couple of hours of work a week you can make something that is going to make something that sounds like it came out of BuzzFeed.” Be sure that your podcast is sustainable, can you really stick it out for the long-term… or even ramp up production if your show takes off.

#5. Deliver on time

Work to a schedule. If you promise a weekly show, deliver a weekly show. Delivering on schedule reassures listeners that you are committed, that you have a plan, that it is worth subscribing. Superficial vanity podcasts seem to be all-or-nothing; the host will use some downtime to upload an episode every day for a couple of weeks, then go AWOL for months while they work on other projects. Upload sporadically, or go quiet for too long, and subscribers will assume you have quit. A disciplined production and uploading schedule will also be noticed by ‘the algorithms’, i.e., an account with regular fresh content, good ratings, and comments from subscribers will have more positive ranking indicators that a stale account.

Entrepreneurs recording a small business podcast. Image credit: Pexels

#6. Consider outsourcing production

Full disclosure, JMS Group is a recording studio near Norwich that regularly records business podcasts, so I am somewhat biased toward capturing the very best audio possible! That said…

You can record a podcast on your phone with reasonable—but less than ideal—results. As a minimum though, I would start out purchasing a high-quality condenser microphone, headphones, and a professional audio interface for a couple of hundred quid on Amazon (check out Focusrite’s excellent Scarlett range). The results will be dramatically more professional than using the inbuilt microphone on any device. Plus, you can use the same kit to seriously dial-up your audio quality on Zoom calls.

So— with inexpensive equipment available for next-day delivery, it might feel like wild extravagance to consider booking a professional recording studio. Yet, many business podcasters (especially those recording with multiple guests or connecting with guests remotely) choose to hire a studio— strategically delegating parts of the process that do not require their personal attention. Preparing a quiet room for a recording, arranging two or three microphones, making sure the audio is capturing correctly, then spending hours editing the episode, transcribing the text, and getting it all uploaded is— well, a faff that someone else can spend time doing.

Artists creating albums are often booked into top-flight studios to work with big-name producers and engineers. Most artists are entirely capable of operating a studio themselves (they likely have decent studios at home) but booking somewhere else gets them ‘in the zone’ and frees them to do the stuff they are best at, while someone else takes care of the technical stuff. A pro studio also brings more pairs of ears—and more years of experience—to an album than if it had remained a solo endeavour. An experienced producer can be transformative.

The same will be true for your podcast; you could do it all yourself—you might even really enjoy doing it yourself—but if producing and engineering are not in your wheelhouse, there are plenty of ready-to-roll podcast recording studios that can make you sound like a professional right from Episode 1.

If you’re considering recording a business podcast professionally fill in the form below.

[contact-form-7]

How Much Does It Cost To Advertise On TV?

tom mountford — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 09:48:13 +0000

During 2020 we all had a pretty good excuse to sit at home and watch even more TV than usual. Research by Thinkbox indicates that viewing of live and broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) was 5% higher than 2019, an extra ten minutes of viewing per person. In 2020 the average person watched 3 hours, 22 minutes of broadcast TV each day.

Sure, TV has its detractors (looking at you ‘Pay Per Click’) but it still has the same impact as ever. In striking contrast to the grimy landscape of social media, television has credibility— it has maintained the trust of its audience. The tight regulatory environment of broadcast media is why most advertisers still consider TV the go-to medium for high profile campaigns.

Television is a brand-safe environment, and it still has an air of prestige. As Rory Sutherland—Vice Chairman of advertising agency Ogilvy UK—stated, “Public promises carry more weight, hence why the words ‘as seen on TV’ are more convincing than ‘as seen on Facebook’.” Not least, television still has the largest slice of the pie, accounting for 91% of all video advertising in the UK. YouTube holds just 5.6%.

Television remains the gold-standard of advertising channels.

Okay, I want to get on TV! But how much might it cost to run a campaign? How do you get the ball rolling?

The size of your business, your budget, and whether you have done much advertising before, will likely be the deciding factor in who to contact first. If you already retain the services of an advertising agency, they will likely be your first port of call as they will have established relationships with media buyers and commercial production companies (ahem, you’re welcome to put your agency in touch with us!)

If you have not advertised on TV before, have an in-house creative department, or an agency unfamiliar with broadcast advertising— who you gonna call? You call us! We frequently produce campaigns for first-time TV advertisers, our team will develop creative concepts, take care of production, and arrange the delivery of your campaign. We have a hotline to the most experienced media planners and buyers in the business, we’ll get you seen in all the right places.

Anyway, enough about us. How much does total world domination cost?

A television campaign budget has FOUR key cost-centres:

#1 Airtime

Also known as ‘the media buy’, these are the fees charged by broadcasters for showing your commercial, and the fees to the media agency for the strategy and planning of the campaign. Airtime always forms the largest part of the cost to advertise on TV, and for good reason— what would be the point of making a commercial if only a handful of people get to see it?

AdSmart from Sky is a smart ‘addressable’ platform that can seamlessly insert your commercial into ad-breaks in Sky and Virgin Media households. AdSmart uses precise targeting criteria to deliver the commercial only to homes that meet your carefully defined audience profile (using thousands of data-points). AdSmart is powerful, and you can test the water with a small campaign for as little as £3,000.

#2 Production

Commercial production will usually account for less than 10% of the cost of the campaign. That percentage is not carved in stone (a test campaign for instance) but if you were to spend far more money producing the commercial than showing it to viewers, the lesser impact would be self-defeating.

We can produce motion-graphics commercials (licensed for use in perpetuity across all media) from £2,500, and very simple filmed commercials in the ballpark of £5,000. Every creative idea is unique; there is not a ‘standard’ price for commercial production. That said, there are eventually diminishing returns where spending extravagantly on production is unlikely to make a commercial any more effective. The ad most likely to provide the greatest return on your investment is not necessarily the most expensive.

#3 Licensing

Voice artists, actors, and musicians license (and bill accordingly) their contribution to a TV commercial based on both how long the campaign will air, and the number of Television Viewer Ratings— TVRs are a combined measurement of several factors that loosely indicate how ‘big’ a campaign will be. For example, the voice artist on a daytime commercial airing for a couple of weeks in a single county would charge a heck of a lot less than for a national ad running in primetime for the entire run of X-Factor.

The fees and terms are often negotiable for small-scale campaigns, and the cost is usually bundled into the production budget. But in the case of celebrity performers, endorsements, or royalties negotiated with an artist or label for a well-known track of music, the process can be a significant undertaking (and a large additional expense) that is billed separately.

#4 Clearance and Delivery

Getting the commercial to multiple channels and video-on-demand services is a frequently overlooked part of the process— yet the commercial must first be approved by Clearcast, the body responsible for maintaining TV advertising standards compliance. The slots in which the commercial will air must be scheduled. The commercial master must be checked by a quality control system, and the file delivered to a server at each of the delivery points. The fee for delivery of a single commercial to one broadcaster is insignificant. But a complex campaign formed of commercials of multiple durations running on dozens of channels and on-demand services, can stack up.

If you’re looking for a creative production company in Norwich, or are just investigating the cost to advertise on TV in the UK, JMS Group has been producing commercials for over forty years— JMS has unparalleled experience of creating effective campaigns for new-to-TV brands, making the process both creative and straightforward.

Find out how much it might cost to advertise on TV, drop the team a message!

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How to Create High Retention Videos for YouTube

tom mountford — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 16:45:21 +0000

Somehow your video climbed from the swamp of invisibility to being visible-enough to get some clicks (check out our other article, 8 Rules to Get the Ultimate SEO Benefits of Video Marketing) but your viewers just aren’t sticking with it. You’ve got low audience retention! So, here are eight solid-gold production tips for creating high retention videos for YouTube:

#1 State the agenda and the benefits from the jump

Don’t bother with corporate logos. Don’t waste time with title sequences. No one cares about lengthy personal bios. Right at the top of the video use the first two or three sentences to make clear exactly what the viewer will take away from watching. Use those first few seconds to make a great first impression and lay out the reasons to stick around. Make it 100% clear from get-go what the viewer will learn, and the benefits they’re going to have gained, by the time they have reached the end of the video. Hook them with the first few words!

#2 Work from a script

Some people put a microphone in front of themselves and deliver the exact message they want to convey – totally freestyle, in a single take! Isn’t it sickening? How on earth do they manage to do that? Most of us aren’t so lucky as to be either naturally energetic presenters or filmmakers. This makes advance planning and scripting all the more essential. Drafting what you want to say in your video in advance, and reading it aloud several times before recording it, removes the temptation to go off at a tangent. Writing a script also allows you to check that the video will make sense, and deliver its objectives, before you bother investing the time in producing anything.

#3 Get your audio up to scratch. Viewers hate rubbish audio!

Sure, on YouTube anything goes, but if your audio is sub-standard – making voices difficult to understand – viewers will look at the remaining duration and make a quick assessment as to whether they can sustain the patience to keep watching. Most of the time, they’ll give up.

A decent professional audio setup is not that expensive at all. You only need to buy a professional condenser microphone and an audio interface to 10x the ‘watchability’ and professionalism of your videos. Yes, video quality is also of great importance, but I’d wager that most people are forgiving of slightly sub-standard video if the audio quality and the value of the content itself more than make up for it. But, if I’m going to struggle to hear the information I came for, I’m leaving!

#4 Manually add subtitles

Sure, YouTube uses AI to automatically generate subtitles that can be toggled on and off, and they’re pretty good (assuming you’ve recorded a clean soundtrack, see previous rule!) But many people will view your videos, or teasers for them, via other social platforms (such as Instagram) which are sound-off by default. More than 80% of people browse their feeds with the audio muted. To grab, and maintain, the attention of these viewers you should add burned-in (or ’embedded’) subtitles that are added as graphics during the post-production stage.

I prefer videos with subtitles created in this way, often I will view the first few seconds of a video on mute, and if the transcript of the dialogue catches my attention, I’ll un-mute it. Professionally designed and embedded subs also scream that additional effort has gone into making the video worthy of a potential viewer’s attention. If you are unfamiliar with Gary Vee, look the guy up – I can positively guarantee you that the very first video returned by the search will have highly compelling embedded subtitles appear within the first few seconds.

#5 DON’T get hung up on duration but DO keep up the pace!

You thought I was going to say, ‘Make no video longer than two minutes!’ didn’t you?

Two minutes is an arbitrary duration that gets copied and pasted across blogs all the darn time. It’s fundamentally flawed guidance. Video content should serve the needs of its audience; and your audience might be looking for fuller – more in-depth – content, so maybe a longer duration really is appropriate.

Yes, shorter videos are statistically more popular – but that DOES NOT mean that ALL videos need to be short. There’s an old filmmaking maxim, ‘Never let anything run a second longer than it’s good to watch’. Keep up the pace, always be looking for surplus elements to cut. If your video is marketing a new product, you’ll want to throw any dead-weight overboard and keep your edit as concise as possible. Think about TV ads and movie teasers – 30, 40, 60, 120 seconds – they just show the most compelling bullet-point features and benefits that will attract someone to find out more.

That said, if you’re making an in-depth ‘ultimate’ tutorial you can run as long as it continues to provide information the viewer will find valuable. Don’t believe me? Check out Taran Van Hemert’s ‘World’s Most Advanced Video Editing Tutorial’ – You’ll see overwhelmingly POSITIVE vibes in the comments about the incredible 4 HOUR duration: ‘4 hours, No ads, Fully captioned. My gosh, well done!’, ‘4 hours. No ads. Give this man a round of applause!’, ‘Thank you so freaking much for this! Just awesome! Learnt a ton of everything! WOW!’, ‘I genuinely watched the entire thing and it’s been the proudest moment of my life’.

So, make your video the RIGHT duration for needs of your audience, but never let anything run a second longer than it needs to!

#6 Watch a LOT of videos on YouTube

Can you imagine a feature film director who isn’t also a movie-nerd? Or, a novelist who doesn’t much care for reading fiction? No way! Folks who are truly intent at getting good take the time to study the principles and methods of people already successful at their craft. Create a playlist on YouTube, and add to it all the videos on your topic that really stood out from the rest. What do you like about them? What made them better than the videos you ditched after a just a few seconds? How could you emulate their success while putting your own expertise and enthusiasm into the mix?

#7 Be prolific. Make LOADS of videos!

Countless marketing ‘gurus’ promise that their list of tips and tricks add up to a failsafe formula for high-engagement videos that will ‘go viral’ and deliver huge returns for their creators. That’s not how the universe, or the internet, works. Fact is, you can make absolutely no mistakes in your execution yet still not achieve your objective. Video content creation is as much an art as it is a science. You can objectively get everything right, yet – for reasons you’ll likely never discover – some people just won’t like what you’ve made and will click away. The world’s most famous artists – in any medium – get known for their breakthrough ‘hits’, yet almost all of them sit on a back-catalogue of obscure and under-appreciated work; oftentimes HUNDREDS – even THOUSANDS – of creations that failed to take off. So, if you do everything ‘right’ and your video doesn’t perform, just make another, and another, and then another! The great news is, most people don’t bother striving to become prolific – so when their first few attempts are non-starters, they quit. Keep on going!

#8 Don’t be a copycat

The problem with following random lists of advice (yeah, I’m aware of the irony) is the risk of creating cookie-cutter videos that look like they followed the same recipe as everyone else! Following generic recommendations that have been bouncing around online for years is why so many vloggers end their videos with, “Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!” The stakes are low, you can afford to experiment with your style. If a video premieres to crickets and tumbleweed, and fails to gain traction, just adjust your strategy and make another.

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Tom Vaughan-Mountford is an expert in television advertising and video marketing for SMEs. He has more than twenty years’ experience in production and post-production for broadcasters, major advertising agencies, and name-brands.Tom is a Production Director at JMS Group, a long-established TV advertising and video production company near Norwich.