WARC, 1 April 2014
LONDON: Integrate, anticipate, associate is the advice for
advertisers wishing to tap into the growing use of Twitter by UK consumers to
comment on television programmes.
New research from Twitter and Thinkbox, the commercial TV
marketing body, featured an ethnographic study of 18 households to understand
their combined TV and Twitter behaviour together with follow-up interviews and
a 1,000-strong survey testing perceptions of brands that are active on TV
and/or Twitter.
Launching the report, #TVTwitter: how advertisers get closer
to conversation, at the start of the week-long Advertising Week Europe in
London (full reports from the event will be available on Warc), Neil Mortensen,
Research and Planning Director at Thinkbox, said that "Twitter has
introduced another way of doing what comes naturally to us as humans – sharing
and conversing – and for that reason is for many people becoming an important
part of the TV experience".
Three quarters of respondents believed hashtags were
searched for on Twitter because they had been seen on TV. The report further
identified two ways in which people used Twitter hashtags around TV content.
The first was as a punchline, a creative or funny way to
sign off a tweet, and the second was as a way of categorising conversations and
finding new content associated with a show.
Users searched for a hashtag to learn more, so brands needed
to make sure they had additional content ready and waiting, the report advised.
While planning ahead and anticipating was important,
hashtags should also have a clear purpose, the report suggested, such as
driving people to a Promoted Trend to find out more information about a product
and move consumers along the purchase journey.
Depending on a brand's market and aims it might also
consider building in specific Twitter content and activity as an integral part
of a TV campaign.
And even if a brand was not actually advertising on TV it
could still benefit from association by contributing to conversations its
customers were engaged in.
The research also found that humour and celebrities were
important to people using Twitter. Around three-quarters of respondents thought
other users made sure their tweets about TV were funny so they would be
retweeted.
And 69% said they liked seeing celebrities talk about TV
shows on Twitter. Participants in the ethnographic research also said they
enjoyed the ability to interact with celebrities on Twitter.
Data sourced from Thinkbox; additional content by Warc staff
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