Last minute More4 advertising

When watching the More4 at around 8pm Tuesday night (6th March), I noticed that an advert for Crufts came up. It was advertising that on 19.30 Thursday 11th March , Friday 12th , Saturday 13th and 19.00 on Sunday 14th March they would be broadcasting selected sections from Crufts. On the Sunday they are showing a two hour special. These broadcasts will include popular highlights including the stories of 'hero dogs' in the Friends for Life competition and the live award of 'Best in Show'. It also will provide a high profile platform to inform the public about issues of health and welfare in pedigree dog breeding.

Hamish Mykura, Head of More 4, said:

“More 4’s coverage will enable dog lovers to see all the Crufts favourites, with fresh and stylish coverage that will give the show a More 4 twist. Crufts has a long-standing place in British broadcasting, and people who watch it want to know that the dogs are, above all, happy and healthy. Our programmes will place a particular emphasis on dog welfare issues, reflecting different points of view.”

When looking at the statistics on the BARB website, it stated that More4 reaches around 2,789 daily. which according to the site, is 4.9% of people out of the others that chose to watch alternative channels. The issue I have with this however, is what if people are flicking through channels? They may not have necessarily been watching the advert but still been recorded. I don't know whether they have a set time someone has to stay on a channel before it is counted....

But saying this, since seeing the advert that evening I have seen it another 2 times, so this suggests that a lot of people are being made aware of the event and perhaps even if they don't actually attend the event, will watch it and perhaps decide they may want to go next year.

However, when looking at a TGI survey using the demographic group: Women aged 45-54 ABC1, I did discover that 36% agreed that when watching programmes that they have pre-recorded for later viewing, they fast forward through the advertisements. This suggests that unless the viewers are watching the TV broadcast live, they will be much less likely to actually be subjected to the Crufts advert. 

I also found on TGI that actually 17.4% of adults (15+) out of a sample size 49077, stated that they find television adverts most useful when making purchase decisions. This was the highest percentage compared to internet (9.8%), magazines (10.6%), newspapers (12.0%), radio (1.8%) and cinema (1.1%). This then suggests that marketing the event via a TV advert would be effective in helping to influence peoples purchase decisions, i.e. to purchase tickets.

BUT... on the same survey it also stated that a high percentage of people (30.3%) found television adverts to be most annoying out of those categories. Magazine and newspaper adverts were viewed to be least annoying (4.1% and 4.8%). This contradicts the previous point but it goes to show that although people may find these adverts annoying, they still play a major part in convincing people to purchase goods whether they like it or not! Maybe because we are constantly exposed to them, they are having a brainwashing effect on us viewers, who knows!? 

Reference:

BARB. (2012). Weekly Total Viewing Summary. Available: http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weekly-viewing?_s=4. Last accessed 08th March 2012
https://www.kmrsoftware.net/netquestuni2/default.aspx