Digital disruption continues its global impact on both businesses and consumers, with Christmas no exception. TV advertising stalwarts Hallmark have decided to cancel their famous ‘tear in the eye’ TVC’s for an all-digital campaign this year. Putting their investment into cheeky YouTube ads and partnering with bloggers to sing the brand’s praise, plus paying photo-sharing app Snapchat to put Hallmark’s logo onto family pics taken under large US city downtown Christmas trees.
Foregoing expensive TV ads will save them money, but can the Web solution truly replace the old-fashioned ‘pull at the heart strings’ campaigns of previous years? We’re not convinced, and neither is a media analyst for Pivotal Research. “When is the last time a banner ad made you cry, cause if you’re a greeting card company, it had better.”
It’s a marketing fact that consumers have shifted their viewing habits, spending more of their ‘screen time’ on the phone, tablets and laptops than TV, both in the US and Oz. In addition, the digital media is more targeted and easier to measure performance. But a chorus of analysts argue that the television commercial’s demise at the hands of digital upstarts has been wildly overblown, particularly in the coming weeks as millions of families gather around the hearth of holiday TV.
Take Apple for instance. Last year Apple spent 80% of its US$800 million advertising budget on TV. “Television is unique in being able to deliver that emotional power” stated a Forrester Research analyst. “I don’t believe human nature has changed so much that those kinds of classic impacts of marketing are irrelevant,” he said.
Call us old fashioned, but make your own mind up after watching these current TV ads. Wishing all our clients, suppliers and friends a very Merry Christmas and happy, prosperous New Year.
