Independent, The; London (UK)
Claire Beale
on advertising
More time on the lavatory? More time making tea? More time for a quickie? God forbid, more time pressing the fast-forward button? Or more time for watching some damn good ads? Take your pick, commercial breaks are set to grow.
Oh, you might think that they're big enough already. But in global telly world, they're quite modest. At the moment we get seven minutes each hour of ads on ITV1, Channel 4 and Five. On average. It's not much, really. In the evenings it's higher...up to 12 minutes. On satellite channels (which, don't forget, you're paying to receive) an average nine minutes of every hour goes to ads. Americans, they get 13 as standard.
A European directive, coming into effect at the end of this year, will sanction 12 minutes an hour of ads on television channels in the EU. Britain doesn't need to follow suit, but the television gatekeeper, Ofcom, will now consider whether it should nudge closer to the new European norm. Specifically, Ofcom is looking at giving our terrestrial channels more advertising welly. Another couple of minutes every hour. What will you do with yours?
Of course, the broadcasters are hoping that you'll keep your backside on your couch and your eyeballs on the box. I'm not so sure. I love ads. Love 'em. Watch as many as I can, at least once. But sit through the ad breaks on Sky Plus? Forget it. Unless my fast- forward spots a favourite. It doesn't happen often. So I'm not sure that viewers want more television ads. And I wonder how many people in television actually want more airtime to sell.
More supply of advertising minutes means (theoretically) cheaper prices for advertisers. But more ads will also mean more clutter, more time for viewers to wander off to do something else, more ads for the anti-advertising pressure groups to complain about. And the couch commandoes, the remote control-touting, multi-channel zapping, PVR'd 21st-century versions of the old couch potato TV addict, will have more time to roam the airwaves in search of something better to watch.
More ads on the big terrestrial channels also makes life more difficult for the smaller, niche satellite channels scrapping over the same ad budgets. And more advertising airtime will certainly set a challenge for adland. Filling that extra time with some great commercials will not be easy. Look at the contents of the average seven minutes that we get at the moment. Does adland really need more rope?
ITV has a new man to steer it through these shifting commercial waters. Well, I say new man: new to ITV. But he's an old ad hand. Rupert Howell. He's the new managing director of "brand and commercial", which crudely translates as "the bloke in charge of all advertising, marketing and selling".
It's a big job. Howell will work alongside Dawn Airey, ITV's new director of global content, Carolyn Fairbairn, the strategy director, and Simon Shaps, programme chief, to drag ITV back to health.
ITV reckons that it has landed a real coup with him. John Creswell, the chief operating officer, says that Howell is "widely regarded as one of the most talented advertising executives working in the industry today". As anyone who's looking for ad staff will know, that's not necessarily much of an accolade.
But of all the most recent names that have been linked with the ITV job, Howell's is undoubtedly the best and most appropriate. Still, it makes you wonder quite what the headhunter brief was. There are better commercial brains at other broadcasters whom ITV might have lured - after all, this is the job in commercial television. So, presumably, ITV wasn't looking for a crack TV salesman. Anyway, it already has a brutally impressive trader: Gary Digby.
Still, ITV might not have been looking for a crack airtime salesman, but Howell will definitely have to architect fundamental changes to the way that the broadcaster sells its advertising slots over the next few years. He certainly has a whole heap of learning to do before he can hope to do dirty battle with media buyers and clients over the minutiae of the airtime market.
No airtime expert, then. But Howell brings something quite different: showmanship, front, Teflon confidence, the ability to play with CEOs. And he is certainly one of adland's most famous faces. His old agency, the now defunct Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, was an industry bar-setter at the end of the last century (they did the brilliant Tango commercials, Pot Noodle, First Direct).
Working alongside the broadcaster's top marketer, David Pemsel, Howell will also be guardian of ITV's advertising and marketing efforts - much more up his street. ITV is reviewing its ad account and is seeing some of London's best creative agencies for the job. Howell, no doubt, won't be able to stop himself getting involved, even though the pitch seems to be progressing nicely without him.
Some background: Howell loves golf, has a helipad at his country estate, is married to a former Top of the Pops dancer, has a second home on the Isle of Wight, loves Sky Sports. He's utterly charming, clubbable, a first rate networker, a terrific presenter. And, yes, he's passionate about advertising.
The dangerous bit (if you're ITV) is that he's slick, smooth, self-satisfied, smug even. For a broadcaster that desperately needs to wipe the slate on its arrogant, bloated, monopolistic past I wonder whether Howell isn't too much the classic adman.
To the Hospital, that's the members' club in London, a convenient venue for one of those adland lunches that melts into dinner. Being an establishment for creative types, the Hospital has its very own set of cross-industry creative awards, handed out at a glitzy ceremony late last week.
To give you a flavour, winners include the Grazia editor Jane Brunton, the actress Billie Piper, the artist/film-maker Luke Fowler, the fashion designer Gareth Pugh and the director Edgar Right. All very impressive, and fitting company for the winner in the advertising category: London's hottest advertising creative, Juan Cabral.
The creative director at Fallon, Cabral has hit a phenomenal streak over the past couple of years. Sony Bravia's Balls, Paint, the current (utterly brilliant) Gorilla ad for Cadbury...his touch is magic. Look out for his latest (and last) in the Sony Bravia series, due to break later this month: colourful plasticine bunnies bouncing round New York. Rumoured to be fab. Odds on.
Anyway, the cool, quiet and intense Argentinian has made Fallon the hottest agency in town and he's not even 30 yet.
The only sad thing, for adland, is that the shortlist for this particular category in the Hospital awards was, erm, short. In fact, Cabral had no serious competition. Which might explain why the current state of British advertising is below its usually excellent par. We need more Cabrals. Please.
Claire Beale is the editor of Campaign magazine
Beale's best in show SKY (WCRS)
Here's a gauntlet. Just as ITV reviews its advertising account, hires a commercial swinging dick, puts its best foot forward for an uplifting 2008, rival Sky is on a marketing roll.
Remember the beautiful ad for Sky Movies a couple of months back? The Sao Paulo cityscape with no billboards and the Pure Imagination soundtrack from Willy Wonka. Lovely stuff.
Now Sky's agency, WCRS, has got stuck into one of Sky's corporate obsessions: the environment. Yeah, yeah, everyone's at it, but to be fair to Sky, green has been a company mantra since the arrival of James Murdoch as boss.
Warm, caring, humanitarian. Not words you'd usually associate with Sky and its mega News Corp owner. So this one must have been a tricky brief. WCRS's ad scores perfectly. Directed by Richard Bazley, beautifully animated like an early Felix cartoon and with a superb, thumping soundtrack of "Jeremiah was a bullfrog". It might remind you a bit of Honda's "hate something, change something" ad. Or the old Kia-Ora ads (if you're old enough).
I'm not entirely sure the ad's designed to do anything more than give you a bit of a glow about the Sky brand and let you know that it's a carbon neutral company. But green is a marketing battle ground, and Sky's salvo is delightful.
(c) 2007 Independent, The; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
