70 Years of TV Advertising - why it works & the best ads of all time - Carolyn McCall, ITV

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now, did you know that this week happens to be 70 years since the very first advert went on TV? So my next guest could not be more perfect. Dame Caroline McCool is the CEO of the nation's number one broadcaster. And we caught up to find out what impact TV advertising has had on business over this many years. And what are some of the lessons we can learn from the all-time greats of advertising that you can apply to your brand today? It's a great conversation. Here it is. This is such an honour to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

0:42Such a pleasure. And it is 70 years, which is amazing. And I know ITV, you're doing lots to mark the occasion and celebrate it. How's it feel in ITV at the moment to reach this mark? I think everyone's extremely proud, but not, you know, not for the most obvious reasons about being able to be 70 years old. You know, it's more about what has been done over the 70 years. So, I mean, there's a lot of respect for the past, for Granada, for Yorkshire, for all the amazing kind of creative forces that have made ITV today. Because so many, you know, I always say we were born in the regions, so we've never had to work hard to be in the regions.

1:20We are a regional player that has become national. So very proud of that. And I think also a lot of people are very proud of the transformation that ITV has been on, particularly in the last eight years, where, you know, we've had to work really, really hard to kind of read what's going on and then stay as much abreast of that, if not ahead of that. But it's changing so fast in our world that, you know, if you just think 10 years ago, I mean, streaming was no one was really talking about it very much. It was here, but it wasn't the way it is today. So we've had to do so much from a technology, data, advertising.

1:57Advertising has changed beyond belief. And that has kept us very much on our toes. So I think people are very proud of that. So I think people feel that we're fit for the future as much as being very happy about where we've come from. You're right about the amount of change, isn't it, with the rise of social media, technology, now with AI, there's a lot happening. We'll get into a little bit more about that. I'd love to find out and pick your brains on that. This is another year as well of change because you've become the president of the Marketing Society. I have. Which I'm delighted to hear.

2:29I'd love to know what your vision might be for the marketing industry as a whole as you become president. Well, look, I mean, Sophie Devonshire is very much the kind of driving force of the Marketing Society. And I enjoy very much working with her and with Craig, who, as you know, is chair. But they're a fantastic team. I think the key thing there is to get marketers at the center of conversations in organizations, because I think they should be consulted on virtually everything, whether it's product, whether it's communication, consumer insight. You know, they really are kind of they're where it's at, really.

3:05And so when I hear that marketers are often not consulted or they're not on boards or they're, you know, they're kind of doing a lot of the work. It's not just about the ad. Right. It's not just about the kind of coming in and saying, sign this off, you know, which in many companies that can be the case. It starts with the consumer and marketers are really at the sharp end of that. They're the ones who can see what's happening with consumers, how things are changing, working with agencies, you know, working with others. You know, it's such an amazing place to be. And so I think the Marketing Society very much wants to get that recognized, but also give marketers the confidence and the skills and the network in order for them to be able to be at the center of that.

3:53So, you know, some marketers want to be on board. Some marketers want to be CEOs. Well, I think the Marketing Society can help you do that. Some marketers just want to be brilliant at their jobs and want to continue to be marketers. That's great, too. And I think the Marketing Society does all of those things really well. It's global, so it puts you in touch with lots of different ways of marketing. So I think it's a very powerful force, actually, if harnessed well. It really is. And I think the statistics are something like less than 4 % of people on boards have got any marketing experience. Is that right?

4:24Yeah. I had a guy, Chris Burgrave, he was a CMO of AB InBev, and he did some research on this and found, I think it was 3.5 % of board members today have got any marketing experience, which is incredibly low. So the opportunity is, you know, incredible. Yeah, that is so low. I mean, I was lucky. I was brought up, really. I started my career properly at The Guardian. And we did a lot of product development in my early years. We did, you know, The Guide and Weekend Guardian when it first became magazine. And we launched a whole series of magazines with The Observer and so on. And so product development and marketing just went hand in hand.

5:02That didn't sit. It worked with editorial to create those things. and so I always I guess I grew up with marketing being quite powerful force and so I've never really ever thought any differently so when I then became a CEO at Eastjet you know for me I stayed very close to marketing because I felt that that's how I would understand how to reposition the company not just the brand. That makes complete sense doesn't it? You've been CEO of some very high profile companies and I'd love your advice on if anyone's listening and they want to make the jump into the CEO position what advice would you give to be to being a successful CEO look I think if you're going into a CEO role research research so diligence diligence research really find out what you're going into I mean I went into I had already been a CEO at the Guardian Media Group but I hadn't really been in a publicly listed company and I certainly hadn't had a 36 % shareholder ever before so I went in with my eyes wide open knowing it was going to be extremely difficult and I also didn't know how bad it was operationally but I did know it was having significant issues and that equips you better you know at least you're armed when you go in and then I think early on you know you've got to kind of set your stall out but also you've got to listen a lot and the biggest tip I think for me is don't sit in an office listening to people present to you when you're a CEO because that's what everyone wants to do they all want their time with you tell you how they're doing and what they're doing actually go out and talk to people right around the company in all the markets and listen listen listen listen and then act quickly once you know and you've given it three or four months then act quickly i remember meeting um the founder of spec savers and uh she's absolutely amazing i should think amazing absolutely delight and i remember she still takes the bus to work and I'm like why do you take the bus to work but of course she takes the bus to work because she can overhear conversations about you know problems people having ordering their glasses or and of course she starts conversations with everyone else on the bus I just thought what a brilliant way well I've got they've got a you know they people say this quite a lot and I didn't realize that it was a thing but the I just instinctively on my first flight as CEO just went up to talk to the crew and they started doing what we call the gash which is the rubbish and I just grabbed one end of the bag and I did it with them and I was just listening to them they chat chat chat they talk to the customers and passengers and as we go and and it was amazing and I and then I never stopped doing it so there was not one flight even as a normal passenger when I worked there that I didn't do the gash with the crew and I loved it because I learned a lot.

7:51Passengers really liked it because they could stop me and say oh by the way you're doing that really well or you know listen you've really got to change this that system doesn't work or whatever. So I just felt it was a fantastic learning opportunity for me and it stood me in very good stead because I would then go back and say by the way do you know we need to look at this or whatever so it's these little things sometimes that are quite transformational in an organization and in terms of listening to the customer you now oversee you know the nation's biggest commercial broadcaster and i think something people may not realize of course is that is the kind of public service element yeah because you're providing news you're covering live sport as well as bring entertainment it's a massive responsibility isn't it to kind of serve the nation in that kind of way I think, you know, it's a massive responsibility both to the viewers and to society, actually, and also to your people, because they have high expectations, actually.

8:45A lot of people work here because they have a sense of purpose. And I think they do really want to work for a purpose driven organization. And yet we are very commercial. So, you know, that being proudly creative and proudly commercial is a I use that word. And it's kind of it's so true because we are owned by shareholders, actually. And yet we're a public service broadcaster, but we're a commercial one. So we have to fund ourselves. We're all ad funded. That's where, you know, all everything we do in M &E, in media and entertainment, which is ITV channels and streaming, is funded by advertising.

9:18And that's a big thing because you've got news and regional news, which we're extremely proud of. We do regional news, I think, better than anybody because we're very much part of communities. that's very much part of the public service remit and then on the other end of the spectrum we do love ireland and i'm a celebrity and sometimes when i'm talking to people they forget how much we do on this side so a lot of the entertainment shows and reality shows fund news and they also fund things like mr bates and post office or i fought the law which is on at the moment which sheridan smith is just amazing it's incredible change the law you know double jeopardy and and And also now the hack, which has been sold to 50 countries.

9:57But, you know, when we when when that was commissioned by Kevin, he did not know. And Polly, they didn't know that was going to sell at all. Mr. Bates is the same. I mean, I think, you know, they thought, well, actually, we have to make this because it's a very powerful drama about Britain. And it's a British story. And actually, you know, it had been running for 20 years. And until we brought until we showed that it did not get the traction with the government to change the law. so tv i know i work for tv and so i'm bound to say this but it's unbelievably powerful at storytelling and and i think the reason it had that impact is because it told human stories it didn't take it from this is the post office doing a terrible thing and this you know it went into these are people that are affected these are real people affected by this scandal and and the impact has been phenomenal i i remember that moment after watching mr bates when you then saw it debated in parliament and just the sort of crossover from watching entertainment to actually seeing something you know change significantly and the bit i didn't realize is that most of them are still waiting for compensation yeah you know however many years later and you think well would that have happened if it hadn't been for the drama i doubt that a lot i doubt it because honestly there were journalists brilliant journalists covering this story for 20 years you know it actually broke in a computer uh trade press actually that's where the story's on then sunday times picked it up but actually didn't this what i'm saying i think the impact is an emotional impact where people are like how could this happen to ordinary people just trying to do their jobs you know so it shows the power of tv better than most things actually it really does how do you now because some of your competitors now are global streaming giants aren't they so um something i i love watching is the tour de france and gutted that tour de france won't be free to air next year i know i'm so sorry and and think the following year i think the tour de France actually starts in the UK as well.

11:52So we've got this moment where it's coming to our doorstep. We won't be able to see it. How do you compete with sort of, you know, really big global streaming giants that are paying a lot of money? Yeah, I mean, look, it's harder and harder. I think that's why, you know, we have to make sure that every penny we have is well spent. I mean, we have rebased completely our cost base. It's been very painful. It's been very difficult. But that's part of the transformation. We've invested where we think we're really going to get the return which is itvx you know shareholders were really unhappy when we launched itvx and spent 160 million quid a year for three years but now it's just a no-brainer right i mean you can't imagine not having a strong streaming service and it's doing very very well but i think the way we've had to do it is to be very focused on what we're really good at we can't do everything so entertainment reality live sport news drama we focus on those things that's what we do and the Tour de France is unfortunately not a listed event so we really focus our energy on getting the World Cup you know getting the you know all of those big big national moments that's what we focus our attention on now it doesn't mean that we don't do you know we're doing some you know we do we do a lot on racing which is not listed horse racing we do it really well but our you know we will always focus on those listed events make sure we try and get those yeah because the streamers can't go for them and we collaborate well with BBC when we do that well the collaboration is something that I think people on the outside don't necessarily realize because one of your biggest advertisers is Sky one of the biggest Netflix you know dramas is is one that you've made isn't it so there's an incredible kind of ecosystem of entertainment it's an interesting one because actually you have to take the like Netflix buying drama from us that's from our studios business and so that's quite interesting so with Rivals for instance which is on Disney plus was a breakout show you know last year and series two is coming up now is you know people were saying to me why didn't you get it or lots of people internally were saying well why didn't we get rivals why isn't rivals on itv well bluntly we can afford that we have to be really careful about the number of how many dramas we do and if we'd have done rivals we would have probably not done two others right so it was a big blockbuster show and was probably double the price that we would normally pay for a drama that doesn't mean the dramas are not really good just means they're different kind of drama with different different kind of sets if you like so i mean and also that's what itv studios is there for itv studios is there really as a diversification of revenue for itv so that it makes money selling to other fdas around the world i mean the bbc is a good client Netflix, Amazon, Disney, you name it, everyone buys from ITV Studios.

14:43And so there's that interesting thing where we are often partners with people, and then we're also competing with them. And, you know, Google's a great example of that. You know, we're on YouTube, and, you know, because we know that we need to reach that under 25 audience. And we've really changed our strategy on that because we recognize they might not come back to ITVX, but they are watching it, and we're able to sell the advertising and yet we're competing with them for advertising. So it's a very complicated world. It is, isn't it? Fascinating. I find it absolutely fascinating how that all works.

15:16Now, one of something you're really famous for is some big blockbuster series like I'm a Celebrity, Love Island. I had to check my notes on this, but I'm a celebrity over 20 years. I know. Aren't they amazing? I had to go and look at that again. I think Ant and Dec have done a great job of not looking like they've aged at all. They don't look like they've aged and their sense of humour is never far away. Do you know what I mean? They keep this kind of ebullience and this fantastically funny kind of way of working. I mean, they have fantastic chemistry to this day. So, yeah, honestly, I'm a Celebrity is one of our most successful shows still.

15:49It is, isn't it? Yeah. What are the secrets to having that kind of longevity of a hit running for so many years? Well, that's a really interesting question. I mean, I think you have to be careful not to do too much with it. So, you know, you can do spinoff shows. we do we do a spin-off show with I'm a Celebrity we do that with Love Island All Stars for instance you've got to be careful not to overdo that I think you you have to nurture your flagship shows and you've got to keep them fresh I mean you know it depends on who's doing them and how they're being done and you know that's what you do and also it's not easy getting a hit so once you've had a hit you want to keep it yeah it's really hard getting a hit we did this research actually last year at System 1 called Compound Creativity.

16:32And it was fascinating. I mean, it was only a three-year, I think it was a three or five-year period we looked at the data in. But we found that the more consistent a campaign was, the more people actually liked it. So familiarity breeds contentment in this case. Contentment. Yeah, exactly. You're not the reverse. Exactly. So actually, we laugh at jokes that are familiar. We have a stronger emotional bond with celebrities that we see more often. So I can see why that works. And we sort of land of this 80-20 rule that you want to keep it 80 % the same and about 20 % new so you kind of freshen it up every year but not change the reason why everyone kind of loves watching it.

17:07Well the big thing is I mean you know recurring drama is like that too so it's not just on the entertainment side you know people love seeing something like Unforgotten so where we'd get a you know we'd be worried is if we're changing the lead character in something you have to work quite hard at making sure that audiences are going to respond well to the lead character who's not the the same lead characters before. So it's complicated. It's complicated. Everything's complicated. I mean, life is in media and creativity is quite an interesting, complicated world, really. Now, we talked at the beginning about how much has changed in the last 10 years.

17:40So of the advent of streaming, we've got social media taking a lot more kind of share of ad spends. How relevant is TV advertising today compared to that? I mean, because we love to look back at the classics, don't we, from 10, 20 years ago. How relevant is it today? Look, when I joined eight years ago, I and I remember I'd been a client at EasyJet. So I was, you know, we were we were obviously buying quite a lot of advertising. But, you know, what I found when I got to EasyJet, because it's digital, you know, it was digital already and no paper, no paper tickets, etc. Was that they were spending a huge amount of money on digital, you know, whatever that was, but digital advertising at that time.

18:22That was a long time ago. That was 16 years ago when I started at EasyJet. And I just remember going, I don't understand this. The dial wasn't shifting. Like we weren't selling more seats. You know, the branding was terrible. I mean, it was like a camel go to Egypt, 30 quid. I mean, it was really, you know, quite shocking. Some of the advertising, funny, but shocking. And we brought, you know, there was no marketing director, actually, which says quite a lot. It was like a, and so I brought in Peter Duffy actually, and he, we really together and with his team and with the agency of ECCP, we revolutionized how we did marketing, including how we, so we're still doing digital, but we reapportionate, we for the first time ever we use TV.

19:07so anything they'd ever used tv before that not properly and it really really worked and so we got the emotional message across so there was it was not just transactional here's here's a camera here's a price here's a clog here's holland you know it was much more kind of come and fly with us right it's it's it's it's going to be great value but you you're going to get some fun the crew are great you know it had that emotional resonance it was very very very successful you know it was a brilliant campaign and to this day I think they do a lot of that I got here and I just thought you know as I can talk as a client rather than just as a marketer from the past and start talking about really being proactive and front foot and not being not being cowed not being overwhelmed by all this overwhelming kind of programmatic performance.

20:04You know, calling programmatic performance, that's an adjective, right? It's not always performance, right? It's a certain kind of advertising. It has a place, but it's not the only thing you should be doing. So I feel we've really got on the front foot for TV. And I also think the pendulum has swung back a bit. I think it really has. I really do. I think performance marketing is the biggest branding kind of stunt in history, isn't it? Amazing stunt. Somehow like making everything else look like it's not performing. It's not performing. I'm like, come on, everyone. Yeah, I don't use that. We don't use that terminology here because it's, you know, everything should be performing.

20:41And that's why we put a lot of money into outcomes, into effectiveness. And, you know, TV is proven to be the most effective advertising channel. And it also has the best return on investment. So when I say it's the most effective, people say, yeah, but it's really expensive. I say, no, actually, it will give you the best return on investment. We're never going to say only use TV. I mean, some advertisers should only use TV, actually. But we would always say use it with other media. And, you know, we've done some internal research which shows very clearly that it drives web traffic by about an incremental 20%.

21:17It drives sales by about an additional 10%. And it really, really resonates for the brand. You know, that, you know, brand enhancement becomes, you know, is increased by something like 25%. So, you know, there's ample evidence. I just think if you're in an agency and you're young and you're not watching as much telly as you were and you're doing a lot of social, that is something that we have to address. we've got to make sure that young planners, young buyers, understand how powerful a medium it is. The data that absolutely hit me through the eyes was last year Ubiquiti and Lumen did this study looking at the amount of attention different platforms get and then they took the CPM and adjusted it for the attention weighted it.

22:06So I'll try and quote it correctly here but they were looking at TV typically eight pounds CPM versus social media advertising at say£2.20. Huge difference. You look at that and go, wow, TV is almost four times the price of digital. They then adjusted it for attention, actual attentive seconds. They were measuring how much of the ad was actually viewed. And then suddenly the TV went down to£1.19 and the social advertising went up to£3.20. So the exact conclusion got flipped based on measuring for attention. So as soon as you realise that, and then it takes a few seconds. And that shouldn't be surprising, should it?

22:41Given the context, how you're watching, and given, yeah, I mean, that shouldn't be surprising, but it's a great, you know, it's great ubiquity to that. Well, the kick in the data, I remember I saw Peter Field was presenting at Thinkbox last year, was he then said, well, of course, we're looking at the national population. So everyone's nodding along, going, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about Gen Z? Even for Gen Z, they were consuming more TV advertising when you adjust for attention than any other channel. even for Gen Z going back to your young bio points the funniest example because of course Gen Z you say Gen Z oh yeah it's Gen Z I was going to say Gen Z that's not right they they come in so 28 25 to 28 percent of our celebrity viewers are Gen Z right Love Island maybe 50 percent live sport huge numbers huge proportion of our audiences on football will be them so it's not like we don't get gen z z gen z we we actually get them but we don't get them at you know all the time and and that's what we have to adjust to and we took a really important strategic decision which is we're not going to create content to chase them because we felt that was putting money down a black hole because very difficult to know what kind of content they're going to come to so it was a bit that was a big content decision i think my favorite research i've ever seen on this was i think it was a three or four years ago i think you commissioned it it was like a bit like a goggle box experiment filming people watching adverts yeah and there was this funny bit where you've got this couple on the sofa and and they're joking with each other going no one watches tv ads anymore and then the just eat ad comes on comes on and the guy literally sings to his girlfriend like did somebody say and then they go on their phone and they ordered just eat and they continue going no one watches adverts anymore they're big they're big tv fans just it yeah indeed it's funny um anyway talking about uh tv advertising we've just launched this new uh report together haven't we living room legends which if anyone's watching is uh there is is on the uh i have to say on my table on the table i always forget that things can be physical these days we do these reports then suddenly these boxes arrive in the office oh we actually made but i'm glad that's physical actually i think it's brilliant because yeah because it's it really does need flicking through you do need to read a bit you do and yeah not scroll it adds doesn't it it adds something to it yeah but this i mean i remember having lunch with kate waters the amazing kate waters last year and she was saying john next year 70 years of tv advertising and the idea she came up with let's try and work out the 70 best tv ads over 70 years i'm like that is audacious right that's going to take some debate and there was some debate to get to it but there's some amazing lessons i mean firstly just recognizing how much amazing work is out there and we put it all through the system one test and the average i think was over four stars so you know fantastic absolutely almost you know top of the charts but actually that's way above isn't it it is yeah yeah yeah so so that we had a broad panel coming up with the 70 and uh so four star would put it in the top 5 % of all ads we measure.

25:48But the important thing with that is we measure emotional response. So these ads made people feel, you know, feel happiness, feel surprise and so on. So they really worked. But I thought I'd ask you about a few of them because one of your own actually appeared in this, didn't it? I was so pleased about that when I saw it on the reel. I mean, do you know, a lot of people said when we showed the ads, we did a mashup of the 70 and played it at the big event that we had. I remember Janet Street Porter to say on Loose Women, oh my God, the best thing about that whole evening wasn't speeches. She said it was the advertising reel.

26:23And she said my favorite one was the Martian one with Smash. And she started doing all the voices. And, you know, that was really very funny. And I was really pleased to see Points of View skinhead on there. It was my first year at the Guardian. It was quite a formative time. I was in planning. And I remember them working on this ad. And I remember going to see some of the rough cuts and stuff like this BMP and it had the most profound effect actually it was like about context it was about bias prejudice it was about perspective it was really good and I have to say we I used to work in the department that you used to have to send it out on request and nearly every school would ask for it to to be able to teach people about that so no it had the most amazing effect it was great ads right incredible we talked about advertising being emotional what what advert or what campaign has created the biggest emotional response for you?

27:16Do you know, over time, I would say, I know everyone will say the John Lewis ads and the Christmas ads, and I agree with that. They're very lovely and they're very fluffy and soft and they remind you of your family and nostalgia. They're lovely. But for me, it's drink driving because it makes you cry because they often base them on true situations and stories. And if you look over the years, you know, they've been very consistent, even though obviously drink driving I think has reduced quite a lot because of that campaign it's very powerful I mean they don't hold back do you know what I mean and and it jolts you so I think that's one of the most impactful in in an emotional way because it's about families it's about friends it's about peer pressure it's about you know it's all the real things in life and and they've been consistent they've done a you know very consistent campaign over years now of course ITV you're famous for entertainment as well I just wondered something else that came out in the report was the importance of entertaining putting on the show making people laugh is there any ad that comes to mind that's really made you laugh I do you know that Cadbury's ad with the gorilla I mean I know we've got we've got the gorilla we have it we have it's got to be we love I don't know why but it's just so ridiculous and it is joyous you know it's like a it's if you like concerts and music and it just it brings you joy and that caption you know which is about joy it's just quite funny and there's probably hundreds of others right but i mean that that it's a bit of a standout ad i think yeah totally because you don't expect it from cadbury that's the other thing is when it's an unexpected correlation if you like you kind of sit up and go what's that got to do with chocolate but actually chocolate can bring you joy well that was one of our findings in the report actually is that so many of the success like the meerkats like oh i love the meerkats yes yes you're selling insurance yeah and how you know how do you end up with meerkats but that's surprise breaking the category convention is that's fantastically important i think yeah you mentioned the drink driving campaign and and uh i think impacting culture is something we've talked about any campaigns that jump out at you that have changed culture or done something for society i know this is an itv campaign so i i i apologize for that you are allowed to example yes i don't apologize really because i think it's had such an enormous impact is years ago we started talking about mental health because we do a lot of programs where we have to watch mental health so we have a lot of participants on programs where we have to look after their mental health because some of them put in you know difficult situations and so on and so we we started thinking about how do we do this and how do we do it in an itv way where we're not preachy and we're not telling people what to do.

29:57And we came up with Britain Get Talking. And it is so powerful, partly because all our talent got behind it. So all our on-screen personalities and characters got behind it. And they broke the fourth wall, so they went direct to the audience, which is very unusual. And so you had Anton Deck or you had Holly or you had Susanna. You had just this range of them and O 'Leary. I mean, name them, anybody. They all got behind it. It was quite extraordinary. and it had such an enormous impact on people which was just talk you know really you know we had a lot of experience with calm before that which is the campaign against living miserably about suicide so we really got behind it and it's had enormous impact so there's millions of conversations now which we track being had about you know just talk talk to somebody talk to your mum talk to your friend talk to talk to people talk to your teacher whatever it might be and that has been hugely impactful and we've sustained it so it's something that we don't see as going away it's something that we will continue to do that's wonderful that is i mean one i know you also had a hand in latterly which is one of my all-time favorites is the vinnie jones yeah british heart foundation i mean so clever is that you know using i mean him playing the hard man kind of like doing it doing a cpr to staying alive is brilliant and i was chatting to nils leonard about this and he was saying there were people on a 999 call actually doing CPR, you know, actually repeating, staying alive.

31:24Yeah. And I think when I had Vicky Maguire on the podcast maybe a year or so ago, and she said they've actually measured the number of lives saved because of that campaign. Yeah, it's so fantastic, isn't it? No, it was, I remember them talking to me about that going on air and saying it's one of the best things they've ever seen. So you're right, that's been hugely impactful. Well, building on the British Heart Foundation, One of the things that really struck me, I think it was a couple of years ago when Christian Erickson had the cardiac arrest in Euros, was I think within about 72 hours, you would air an ad responding to that, telling people what they should do in that situation.

32:00Huge impact. You assume it takes, I mean, back in the day when I used to buy, you know, TV, it was like at least 12 weeks. Yes, exactly. But you turn that around in three weeks. So I think that's kind of changing a perception, isn't it, about long lead times and stuff like that. So I think the agency started, she's phoned our team. they got it on and they actually even got it on before the Denmark Belgium game so maximum impact and obviously for you know for a very good cause so incredible very very very very very powerful and one of the other things that came through the book which actually links to the work we did last year compound creativity it's the importance of repeating a good idea yeah I just wondered what are the campaigns that stand out to you that have stood the test of time that that get better and better over the years well I mean we love tea don't we we do We're both drinking our tea.

32:46York City is a great example of that. Great, great end line, you know, very consistent. Repeat, repeat. I think Tesco is brilliant. Every little helps. I think they've, you know, they've gone back to that tagline when it has really mattered. I think that's a very effective example of that. Warburton's, McCain's, you know, there's lots of advertisers that, you know, that know what they're doing and they know that it works. and then they know, you know, that, you know, a lot of people find it very hard to do an end line. An end line, I think, is one of the most difficult things you can come up with.

33:19And I say that as a former client. I think if you get one and you know it works and it resonates with your consumer base, then repeat it. 100%. Yeah, repetition is your friend in this case, isn't it? Maybe the last point that came out as well, which is, I think, a tougher nut to crack this one, is romancing the product. But it's very easy to fall in the trap of I must tell everybody everything there is to know about what I'm selling. But there's been a few examples of brands that have like creatively found ways of kind of communicating their products. Yeah. So which is your favorite one? Well, my favorite is Ron Seal.

33:53I mean, I know this is old. It does what it says on the tin. You don't forget that line, do you? You know, you'd still say it today. And they paint the door, don't they? 30 years later. It's incredible. It does what it says on the tin. So I don't know whether this is romancing Jude or whether this is romancing Adidas, but that Hey Jude ad, which was long and beautifully crafted, beautifully filmed. And it really made you go all tingly before the World Cup or the Euros, actually, not the World Cup. It was the Euros last year. I think that is a good example of romancing the product. I think that ticked a lot of those boxes and the emotion was in there.

34:31Cultural moment as well. That was when Hey Jude was becoming the adopted by England fans, wasn't it? Yeah, everyone started singing it. Everyone was singing it. It's a cultural moment. Yeah, so that's good. For me, that was a very, very beautiful ad. Yeah. And I mean, you have to say one of our jobs is to inspire advertisers to do what we've just been discussing. You know, all of these things make good advertising. And sadly, not enough advertising is to that kind of standard. It doesn't have to be expensive, but humour works, repetition works, romancing product does. You know, there's all these things come together and you don't have to use all of those ingredients.

35:12You just have to use some of them. You can make great advertising. Well, this is another surprising thing I've discovered working with you guys at ITV is how many small and medium sized businesses can afford to do TV advertising? I mean, particularly regionally as well. Yeah, they can now. Which is quite a surprise. And that's because of ITVX, right? So that's the route in, I think, for a lot of advertisers. And then I think actually we're doing quite a lot of Gen AI, you know, which we test and we trial and we research and all of that. But it does make it easier for SMEs to come in. So it's a good reason.

35:43Really good point, actually, because we've been working together on making sure that Gen AI created adverts, hit the standard by testing on System 1 to make sure it delivers the same standards as everything else. Yeah, there you go. Maybe to finish up on then, what is the future of TV advertising? We're celebrating 70 years. what are the big innovations that are going to keep TV relevant to the next 70? Look, I think they're going to be continuing innovations. I mean, who thought of pause ads? You know, I mean, I had to really get them to explain to me what exactly are you doing with that? But it's working, you know.

36:13Just explain it because I thought that's absolute genius. And why did no one think of this before? That's quite clever. This is so clever. So a pause ad is when, you know, lots of people pause in the middle to go and do something or to chat or whatever, to take a phone call. It's you can advertise. so instead of it just being frozen shot you put an ad on it so British Airways are doing that now with us so they've taken over all of Paul's ads fantastic so then when you turn around you think oh I must book my next holiday because I fancy going you know it's clever and another good example of innovation is it's not quite pure advertising but we closed ITVB and we're going to put we're going to enhance ITV2 as a result of ITVB which we did but then some genius internally worked with the commercial team and said why don't we try doing itv quiz which will get a lot of advertising we'll get a sponsor people love quizzes we've launched that so we we didn't close b we actually made it itv quiz it's doing three times better than itvb was doing it's doing really well and that's a kind of really clever innovation which is okay you might not need that you know you might be able to to move some of that content away but what can we do with a channel so i think innovation will just take lots of different forms i think for itv though given digital switchover will not be for some time we will always be able to offer these mass audiences which you know are rare and i think we're the only ones commercially that can do it and we do it at scale and the combination therefore of doing mass simultaneous reach as well as doing very highly personalized and targeted advertising and increasingly personalized as we go forward with all the data we have is a really fantastic usb and then i would add to that that you know we've talked about some of the creative partnerships you know we have deep relationships with many many advertisers you can't do it with all advertisers but you can do it with many advertisers and we do ad-funded entertainment as we call it ad-funded programming but we do a lot with M &S we've done that with Flutter we've done a program called Champions and it works brilliantly for them so you know all that very where you get deep we do with Boots with Love Island you know we put their products in the villa but we also have merchandise in store so there's a whole merchandising opportunity I mean I think we do that better than anyone else really and we can do all of those things so we offer a manifold really i suppose of opportunity for clients and agencies great carolyn thank you so much it's been great to talk about and uh been been so much fun working on this fun actually together and really enjoyed it and thank you for all your wisdom advice thank you for inviting me on at such an important time for absolute pleasure thank you for doing this pleasure thank you very much for listening or watching uncensored cmo i hope you enjoyed that.