Alive and Kickin'

Here's a post from our newest member of our Strategic Planning Group, Jacob Braude. He has something to say about the death of television advertising. Just because there's new media doesn't mean the old media totally goes away. We just have to understand its role in the mix.
Hope this finds you well -- Jim.

Take it away, Jacob:

Surprise Surprise, Traditional Advertising Still Works

I was excited to see an article today (http://adage.com/article?article_id=136993) on AdAge reporting on the results of an ongoing collaboration between the Wharton School and the Advertising Research Foundation which reaffirmed the continuing impact of TV and print advertising on sales.

One of the most interesting stats reported in the article tied together "old media" (TV and print) with the new fashion: word of mouth (WOM).

"A study co-authored by one of the biggest proponents of word-of-mouth marketing, Ed Keller of the Keller Fay group and co-author of seminal tome 'The Influentials,' finds 22% of word-of-mouth conversations were sparked directly by advertising. Moreover, those 22% are much more likely to include brand recommendations than the remaining 78% of brand-related conversations that weren't spurred directly by an ad."

If you're like me, you've been talking and hearing a lot about how new and social media are changing our consumers - and you've probably heard the phrase "TV is dead" more than a few times. Well, we'll be the first to tell you that our consumers are changing, and not just because of new technologies (although that has a lot to do with the pace at which they are changing). But as these papers confirm, the media and best practices that worked for brands 10 years ago, still work.

I think Professor Wind from Wharton said it best in the article: "The major concern about the decreased impact of TV advertising is not founded," he said. "TV is still very effective. At the same time, there are a lot of things we don't know."

There area lot of things we don't know. And the exciting part is that we all get to find out together.

- Jacob Braude, Strategic Planner at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness