A UNIQUE 30-SECOND spot began airing across most Canadian TV channels last week trumpeting how much Canadians love television, while promoting a new iOS and Google app which, it appears, will let some individual Canadians get on TV on February 6th.
While the whole industry has so far been pretty tight-lipped about the initiative, the ad and the app have been put together by the Television Bureau of Canada and its member companies. The raison d’etre of TVB (whose members count most of the channels available to Canadians, except for Corus Entertainment’s, Quebecor’s TVA and its French specialties and some other independents) is to exhort the effectiveness of television in all its forms to advertisers and agencies and it often undertakes research initiatives to prove TV’s value.
While no one would speak on the record, what Canadians are about to experience February 6th at 8:58 p.m. (ET) is an old-fashioned Road Block. Back in the days before there were hundreds of channels, brands would invest in an ad campaign for a new product or service that would air at the exact same time on every channel. However, with the proliferation of TV channels, that eventually became unworkable and unaffordable for even the biggest brands.
However, thanks to the co-operation of the TVB member companies, Canadians watching any of the brands owned by Bell Media, Blue Ant Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, Channel Zero, Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment, Rogers Media, Shaw Media, Stornoway and Zoomer Television, as well as some independents like APTN, Fight and Gusto, and who have downloaded the app by that Thursday night, will be able to record a video selfie, submit it through the TunedIn app and perhaps be one of the ones chosen to be on television in a follow-up spot later that night and in follow-up ads.
“TV is still THE way to reach people.”
The spot (where the actor loses and gains his beard while shows from CTV, Global, Citytv, CBC and Gusto play in the background) extolls the virtues of television and says that Canadians “can now tell us what you love about TV” and that “you could find yourself on TV.”
The goal, our sources told us, is to show Canadians and companies that television is still the primary, and best, way to consume video entertainment, t
hat TV is still the main weapon in the brands’ advertising arsenal, and that Canadian broadcasters can respond in direct, personal ways to clients and viewer demands.
“We are still creating and delivering most of the content that is out there,” one broadcaster told us on condition of anonymity when we asked what TunedIn was. “TV is still THE way to reach people.”
This campaign (click here for the web site) would seem to build upon the intelligence revealed by the TVB’s 2010 case study where it led a five week television advertising campaign featuring the benefits of broccoli (the “miracle” ads) that increased overall awareness of the vegetable, dramatically boosted its sales and spawned fan-created Facebook pages and spoof commercials – all of which backed up the TVB and its members contention that television advertising packs the biggest punch for the advertising dollar.
