In 2009, eleven of the top twenty spenders on television advertising cut their spend from 2008. That includes giants such as Proctor and Gamble – still top with £118m spent on TV advertising, Unilever and Kelloggs. Interestingly, P&G and Unilever cut their TV advertising spending by over 20% last year.
It’s been well-publicised that the advertising industry has been badly affected by the recession as well as the advent of the internet and digital TV, but the number of adverts I have to tolerate in between my favourite TV programmes doesn’t seem to have decreased. So who’s spending?
The 9 companies who increased their spend on TV advertising in 2009 are the following:
- HM Government
- L’Oreal UK
- Tesco
- News Corporation
- Co-operative Group
- Wal-Mart Stores
- Aviva
- Full Circle Future
- Danone Group
Doesn’t that make for interesting reading? 3 of the 9 operate supermarkets in the UK ( in contrast, Sainsbury’s reduced their TV advertising spend this year). But one advertiser stands out from all the others – HM Government were the second-largest spender on TV advertising in 2009, with a whopping £99million; up 13% on the year before, in spite of the public deficit. And how many of those adverts can you remember I wonder?
In your business, if you’re overdrawn, would you spend thousands of pounds on an advertising campaign? Or would you find more cost-effective ways of marketing your organisation? I would question such lazy, high-cost, high-risk maketing methods at a time when we need to cut debts. Advertising is a luxury. It’s also an ‘easy’ option which falls into my ‘ego-marketing’ category – people wanting to see their projects on TV sometimes regardless of cost or return on investment. It’s not something I would advise my customers to do if they were overdrawn at the bank – and I think, as a country, we can be a lot more creative than that and get a better return for our cash?
