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:

1. HM Government
2. L’Oreal UK
3. Tesco
4. News Corporation
5. Co-operative Group
6. Wal-Mart Stores
7. Aviva
8. Full Circle Future
9. 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?

I’m very sorry, but the truth is that I don’t care if one of your staff is pregnant and I care even less that you’ve moved to fancy new offices – but how many companies can resist telling us?

Every day, you probably receive the latest e-newsletter from some of your suppliers and, for some reason, they seem intent on telling you all about themselves…

• They send you a photo of their fancy building
• They boast about pregnant staff
• They tell you how their staff are doing bike rides or bungee jumps for charity
• Do you care?

Of course you don’t – you want to know about you – our main area of interest is ourselves.  So, if you’re marketing to people, please focus on what’s in it for them – not what’s in it for you.  Ditch your ego and focus on how you can help them.

The majority of people buy because they have a problem that needs solving, particularly in a business-to-business scenario.  They may be uncomfortable, or dissatisfied in some way, and they’re looking for a solution.  Their main area of interest, therefore, is how well and how fast you can solve their problem, not whether your staff are taking a prolonged vacation to cycle to Timbuktu and back.

If your products are services are the best out there, that’s all people need to know – let them speak for themselves.