At the risk of incurring wrath, I am going ask you to spare a moments pity for Boris

If the stories doing the rounds of TV producers last Monday are correct, Boris’s address to the nation a week ago yesterday had been carefully crafted. Hours spent filming across two days and multiple takes tell the story that this “client” wanted his “audience” to not only become aware of his message, but also to act upon it.

If that was his intention, he failed. Dismally, if we are to believe the verdict of the opposition; the unions; the media; and the assembled ranks of the creative industries last Monday morning.

Our view at The Kite Factory is that, as with many campaigns, you can’t judge success by the launch ad. That’s built on 20 years of collecting performance data from hundreds of clients and tens of thousands of campaigns. Academic and effectiveness research supports our findings.

So, what else could Boris have done (and we aren’t saying change the message- we are a media agency, not a creative agency!)

He could have used more than one media channel

We are all in favour of TV as a lead channel. At TKF we invest more of our client’s money on TV than any other channel. We do it because we see it as the most effective channel for most of them (and Binet & Field agree with us) but we don’t just use TV.

We know, and analysis of the IPA effectiveness databank confirms, that if audiences see a message in different forms in different channels they are more likely to act, and an investment will yield better returns.

Use just one channel and only 58% of award-winning campaigns report a very large effect on the business. Add another three channels and that jumps to 74%. Plough on and use eight channels and now 80% of campaigns have a big impact on the business.

Expect the media multiplier effect to help cut through the confusion for the government this week as rational media amplify and clarify the emotional foundations from the first TV broadcast.

He (as we all do) will benefit from frequency

Some bright US academics caused a bit of a storm in 2019 with some research that said “more frequency is more effective”. That went against conventional wisdom that says “maximise 1+ reach for performance (response); and 4-6 frequency for consideration (brand).

What Jennifer Lee Burton and her team in Tampa found was this.

The audiences who responded to the ad having only seen it once or twice saw the message as fulfilling a need they knew they had. In other words, that’s the “Harvesting” strategy that most performance advertisers pursue.

The audiences who responded to the ad having seen it between 3 and 10 times are in the research stage of decision making. The ads help guide them through search and evaluation.

The audiences who responded to the ad having seen it more than ten times need to be reminded and reassured of the decision they are about to take, or have just taken.

The activation of each of these audiences is cumulative (and only comes with more investment).

But given Boris needs to convince all of us that the governments message is right, and his cost per response is probably the least of his worries, expect more frequency, and more of us to accept the new “Stay alert” as the days and weeks unfold.

How is all this useful for us when choosing how much and where we should spend?

There is a temptation in pure performance advertising to restrict investments to one channel and to limit frequency. That will ensure that the cost of recruiting each new customer is as low as possible.

It also limits the number of customers that can be recruited before ROI’s (or effectiveness) plummet.

Christian Taylor, our strategy director, has a couple of useful tools that can help determine effective frequency and channel mix.