The Television and the Internet . Two of the most important and influential inventions of the last century.  Whether you condone their influence on today’s culture or not, their ubiquitous nature cannot be denied.  Both offer tantalising opportunities for marketing departments of companies of all sizes.  According to the National Media Museum TV advertising began in Britain when, on the 22nd September 1955, Gibbs Sr advertised its toothpaste on ITV which had began broadcasting as competition to the BBC (http://bit.ly/ce3Lrh).  Things have changed slightly since then!

It is unlikely anyone could have predicted the growth in importance of a successful TV marketing campaign.  Some embed themselves into the public consciousness and others are forgotten quickly.  Here I want to assess whether high profile TV marketing campaigns have an affect on a company’s online presence by conducting a bit of social media research myself.

Racking my brain for TV adverts, the first that popped into my head was GoCompare’s.  Featuring tenor Gio Compario singing a catchy, memorable tune, the advert was stuck in my head following the previous night’s TV consumption.  This was my starting point.  I thought up some other insurance companies which have caught my attention recently.  The most obvious competitor in my head was CompareTheMarket.com’s charming meerkat adverts.  Esure’s Michael Winner adverts also popped up in my thoughts (I must have car insurance on my mind!).  I also threw Moonpig.com, the personalised card service, in there for a bit of variety.

I was interested to see if there was increased conversation about a brand when their TV campaigns were active, and also if a new TV advert would be discussed in social media.  Using Radian6 I entered the brand names of the companies to see how frequently they had been mentioned since January and got the following results:

Figure 1 - Share Of Voice in Social Media

From this top level search it would appear that Esure enjoys the lion’s share of social media coverage.  But I am interested in finding spikes in conversation, and linking these to TV marketing campaigns to assess their influence.

The chart below visualises the above information into conversation level trends over the monitoring period, through this we can analyse spikes in conversation, perhaps caused by influential adverts.

Figure 2 - Mentions in social media from January

From a first glance it is obvious there were two large spikes in social media conversation concerning two of these companies.  They are:

• Esure.com on the 11th February with 213 mentions
• CompareTheMarket.com on the 1st March with 214 mentions

Can these large spikes be attributed directly to the marketing campaigns of these companies?  In short, no and yes.

Esure.com’s spike on the 11th February was not caused by its TV adverts.  By drilling down on the spike in Radian6 I discovered that the spike is caused by the spread of news that Esure is parting company with Lloyd’s Banking Group, it’s majority shareholder.  While many mainstream news articles referenced Michael Winner’s “Calm down dear” catchphrase in their reporting, the news was not a result of the TV campaign.

CompareTheMarket’com’s spike, however, is directly attributed to their effective Aleksandr Orlov the Meerkat campaign.  The day’s social media posts relate to news that the advert, featuring the aristocratic Russian Meerkat, has been nominated for an award.  This social media conversation directly relates to the TV campaigns, and is also extremely positive in sentiment.  A word cloud of the day’s posts highlight that CompareTheMarket.com’s conversation was surrounding its marketing campaign:

Figure 3 - CompareTheMarket's March Spike Keywords

Looking at CompareTheMarket.com’s trend across January, the increase in mentions at the start of the year caught my eye.

The 4th January saw a spike in CompareTheMarket.com conversation in social media.  The day saw the release of a new advert featuring the Meerkat character.  This sparked Tweets by fans of the advert, for example

• “I actually love the CompareTheMarket.com advert. Simples!” by @paradiseisdying
• “been waiting for that comparethemarket.com advert for so long” by @haitherdalee
• “Love the new comparethemeerkat.com ad!!!” by @kaneknight
• “Cant believe I just enjoyed the latest comparethemarket.com ad with the meerkats” by @louisebinns

From this basic bit of social media research I have found that CompareTheMarket.com’s tv adverts have had an affect on their level of mentions in social media.  Esure’s dominance of the share of voice is actually down to their business dealings rather than any active tv campaign they may have running.

Unfortunately for GoCompare.com, their largest spike on the 13th January with 71 posts is linked with their TV marketing, but for the wrong reasons.  According to Tweets and Blog posts, their adverts have been voted the most annoying of 2009.  Oh dear!  They may take consolation in that at least their ads were well discussed in social media, which is more than can be said for Moonpig and Esure.com!