Think Tank: Social media and TV need not be enemies

Television and social media are complementary, not competitive. That's the headline conclusion from a report published last week by consultancy Deloitte, whose poll of 4,000 British consumers established that approximately half of us simultaneously watch television and surf the net.

On first inspection their findings are another nail in the coffin for the theory that consumption of one medium must necessarily grow at the expense of the other (and it is "digital" and TV that are most often set against one another by the protagonists in that debate). It is apparent evidence also for the unstoppable advance of social media in our lives, and therefore into the brand builder's toolkit.

Closer examination of their findings, however, suggests different conclusions for marketeers. It's worth noting, for example, that the most prevalent form of surfing while watching TV is in fact internet shopping, closely followed by communication such as email and instant messaging, and only then by social media proper in the form of Facebook and Twitter.

Viewed this way, sharper alignment of a brand's TV laydown with its website – for example, by a clothes retailer making sure an advertised item is only one click away in real time – might therefore be a better allocation of limited resource than trying to win friends on Facebook.

But the standout data in the report isn't about the mix of so-called old and new media at all. It is, rather, about the relative size of each. A typical Briton, Deloitte finds, spends 118 hours watching TV each month and just 3.3 hours on social networks. Even at current growth rates – which we might expect to favour the newer medium – 10 years will elapse before Facebook accounts for 10pc of the time spent watching television.

It's a timely corrective against a view still held a little too forcefully by some: that social media is the brand builder's new best friend.

That social media may be a useful new tool in the marketing armoury is not in dispute. Although its detractors claim otherwise, there are in fact some well documented cases of hard return on investment from brand activity in the social space – most notably perhaps Cadbury's relaunch of Wispa – and not just the soft returns such as affinity that come a little too easily and fall less reliably to the bottom line.

The question, as ever, is one of degree and – at its simplest – one of how much budget to devote to the task of winning friends in the service of winning sales.

The cola wars – still playing out as consumer and business news in the US – are a case in point, with Pepsi now retrenching its marketing activity around America's X Factor after noisily eschewing TV last year in favour of a scale commitment to social media. It was a commitment that the company and most commentators now deem to have been a mistake.

Last year, Pepsi dropped its traditional multi-million dollar Superbowl advertising investment in favour of social media (in the company's words, trading a "moment" for a "movement"). This year, the company has just announced, the winner of the Pepsi-sponsored X Factor will go on to appear in their Superbowl commercial.

The enduring power of TV, and indeed celebrity, to make or break a brand in the US was underscored less typically by cult youth fashion brand Abercrombie & Fitch's cash offer to a reality TV star to stop wearing their clothes – so at odds was he with their preciously nurtured brand.

More generally, the answer to any question of investment prioritisation will differ across categories, audiences, brands and budgets and we should not be surprised that this is so. Indeed, it is one of the pleasures of investing in brand-building, as well as one of its chief frustrations, that there is no single theory of investment or strategy to adhere to.

Advertising works, we know, but works in different ways, and attempts to codify a single theory of advertising have invariably failed. As long ago as 1898, the acronym AIDA was advanced as the four-step guarantor of sales success: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action!

Others followed but most quickly fell into disrepute, not least once the so-called "creative revolution" of the 1960s had passed and American copywriting legend Bill Bernbach famously declared that, "Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science but an art."

That advertising is an art, and one which comes in many forms and largely resists codification, is underscored by the recently published shortlist for the Account Planning Awards.

Famous advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Stella Artois and Orange are among the contenders for this strategy prize, but each is using its brand investment in different ways (and in media old and new).

But the shortlist also comprises papers on Icelandic tourism, motorcycle safety, organ donation, knife crime and – most surprisingly and perhaps heroically – a case history that describes how advertising was used to demobilise 331 FARC guerrillas in Colombia. Is it any surprise that tasks such as these, that start in such different places, also work in different ways?

Despite this diversity, our industry still has an alarming habit of researching and "testing" creative work not against its own brief and task but against fixed models and bogus precedent – like measuring all athletes against their ability to do the triple jump. Many campaigns that have gone on to achieve spectacular sales success have failed these narrow tests – and often precisely because they worked in new ways.

But if we can't have iron-clad rules for our business, and shouldn't test diverse work with cookie-cutter methodologies, we can at least aspire to some generalised framework for success.

Few have done more diligent, evidence-based and interesting work in this field recently than the marketing academic
Byron Sharp. His advice to brand owners, as laid out in his best-selling book How Brands Grow: "Prioritise reach, get noticed, use distinctive assets, build memory structures, be consistent yet fresh."

Along the way he demolishes some keenly-held marketing myths about loyalty and differentiation.

Sharp's work and book is a reminder, like the data nestling in the Deloitte report, that a wise advertiser challenges accepted wisdoms and catch-all theories and finds the right place in their own unique mix for the new possibilities of digital.

Laurence Green is a founding partner of creative company 101.