#thinkbox

[squideo]

Advert Alchemy: Thinkbox’s Trick

In this series, Squideo has examined the best ways to turn advertising content into gold. Now that we’ve broken down the eight key ingredients, it’s time to dive deep into some examples of stellar advertising. This week, the advert in question was picked by Squideo’s Video Producer, Lesley Ovington.

When asked why this Thinkbox advert had become her favourite, Lesley said: “I love the entire series with Harvey because it’s so funny. I also had a Jack Russell Terrier growing up, and these adverts always reminded me of him. The entire series is great but the first one, Every Home Needs a Harvey, remains the best.”

101 Thinkbox

Thinkbox is unlike other companies analysed in this series, as it’s a marketing body for commercial television in the United Kingdom. Since 2005, Thinkbox has existed to manage the advertising for British TV channels and help businesses marketing on these networks meet their marketing objectives.

It’s shareholders are four major UK television networks: Channel 4, ITV, Sky Media and UKTV. As the trade body for these hugely popular networks, Thinkbox has needed to think outside the box when enticing businesses to advertise. All of these channels have hugely successful shows linked to them, and the advertising produced by Thinkbox had to match the creative energy of its shareholders.

Raining Cats and Thinkbox

Made with Red Brick Road, the advertising agency behind the iconic ‘Every Little Helps’ Tesco slogan, Thinkbox aired its Every Home Needs a Harvey advert in 2010 – five years after the trade body was created and was still relatively unknown to the general public. Every Home Needs a Harvey was only their second television advert ever; the first also made by Red Brick Road. According to the agency, the brief from Thinkbox was to educate media planners and marketing directors about the power of TV advertising.

“‘Harvey’ was born – a resourceful, talented dog, who uses TV to tell stories and to persuade. His first TV outing, created by us in 2010, was voted Ad of the Year by ITV1 viewers. TV ad revenues reached a record £5bn in 2014, continuing 5 years of successive growth.”

Television has seen a lot of competition in recent years as an advertising destination, especially as more viewers move away from television to advert-free streaming platforms. Comparatively cheaper adverts can also be run on social media, with algorithms used to ensure it ends up in front of the ideal demographic for your product. As Red Brick Road proves, however, revenue can still be generated from television adverts. Businesses invested £1.2 billion GBP in television advertising in 2021, a 42% increase in spending compared to 2020. With the cost-of-living crisis forcing consumers to unsubscribe from costly streaming services, this revenue may grow further as viewers return to public networks like Channel 4 and ITV.

Thinkbox & Me

ITV1 viewers named Every Home Needs a Harvey Ad of the Year in 2010, and Red Brick Road went on to produce two additional Harvey adverts for Thinkbox between 2010 and 2014. The advert was clearly popular when it aired, but that was thirteen years ago. What was it about this advert that stuck in the memories of so many people?

Super Sell

Show don’t tell. That’s what Thinkbox accomplished by running Every Home Needs a Harvey. What better way to demonstrate the power of advertising than to create an advert about advertising. In the advert, Harvey presents a video to his potential adopters which sells the idea of choosing him amongst the line up of rescue dogs. The other dogs look cute, but the video shows everything else Harvey can offer.

To marketers watching the advert, it also showed what television marketing still had to offer. Times have changed, and mass public adverts are no longer constrained to intermission breaks, newspapers and billboards. As we explored in Advert Alchemy: The Location, modern marketers have an overwhelming choice of advertising destinations from social media to video games to eggs (that’s not a typo, CBS put adverts on eggs in 2006, go read the blog if you haven’t already). But television adverts haven’t been chased off the stage, advertisers just need to be more creative to attract attention away from phone screens.

Heavenly Harvey

The star of the advert, Harvey, was played by Sykes, a dog actor who appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Young Victoria and Doctor Who, as well as other notable films and television shows. In the year of his debut advert, he also acted in a John Smith’s Brewery advert alongside Peter Kay.

In the wake of the advert, Sykes’ Facebook page had 11,600 friends and he was getting offers to open pet shops around the country. Not bad for a rescue dog. He eventually retired in 2016 after going deaf, ending Thinkbox’s Harvey adverts in the process. Because who could follow such a good boy?

Monumental Music

Set to the 1974 song You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet by Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the audience – like Harvey’s potential adopters – are quickly hooked into watching the advert. Like Cadbury’s Gorilla advert, the choice of such a popular song cannot be underestimated in the success of this advert.

The song peaked at number 2 in the UK singles charts the year of its release, beaten to the top by a Christmas song (Lonely This Christmas, Mud), which surprised the band who had been reluctant to release the song. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet was introduced to a new generation in the mid-2000s thanks to one of Thinkbox’s shareholders: ITV. The network used the song for several years during its coverage of Formula One grand prix races, which reignited sales of this insanely catchy single thirty years after its release.

Content Worth Gold

What do you think? What made Thinkbox’s Every Home Needs a Harvey advert so successful? Watch the full advert below and let us know in the comments.

[healthysclf]

i am staring at the all of the blogs i have either made or saved urls for and realizing i miiiiight need to take a proper break from tumblr

[jennyforeigner]

Apparently my let peeve is people who see a full suit of armour with mail and say "oh yeah. That's a 17th century opera singer." Come on now.

[capthcwzer]

things are not well in the old thinkbox so i think a hiatus is in order, both here and on lee

[krisispiss]

FRIEND I know I gushed about it earlier today, but I'm gonna repeat it loudly and publicly- You're a downright delight to talk to, your characters are so vibrant and fun, and I deeply treasure all the fun interactions we have- I'm sorry the ol' thinkbox is being rough to ya today, In my heart, I'm squeezin' ya as tight as I can to help <3

Thank you fey, you're always so sweet and I love talking to you, even if I am bad at keeping up a conversation 😭 I always super appreciate your kind words 💜

[fanaticartisan]

whats with one's own brain being like a thing that has to be figured out ?

like "okay, what is going to make you happy? what is bothering you right now? where does this thing you are thinking come from?"

why am i a separate entity from my own thinkbox

[yourlocalmissingtexture]

Adapting to social situations is great and all (sorta lying), but man do I hate when I get sucked into the realm of falsely imposed one dimensional caricatures.

It’s a people pleasing tactic, I know it is. Kinda works like a defense mechanism when I feel like I’m at social risk (usually “oh god they’re going to leave me”), and I wish I knew how to shut it off. Being in that mindset always makes me anxious. Like, am I going to be this way forever? (No.) Just an archetype? (No.) Uh oh, I feel this way outside of this context, I really am Just Like This now, aren’t I? (No, I’m not.) I thought I used to have more facets of myself. (I still do). Suppose it’s an internalization (is that the right usage of that word here?) of the fear of being misunderstood, modified into the fear of becoming someone I’m not.

Will have to do some digging around in the ole thinkbox and see if I can’t figure out wtf the deal is and hopefully find a way to disengage it. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a symptom of something just based on how distinct it feels, but what it would be a symptom of I’m not sure.

[jackiehicks]

Fandom List Update!!!

the first of its kind!!

so i’m making the executive decision to add my babysitter’s a vampire to the fandom list!!! if you have requests for any mbav characters please please send them in!! i’ve got one in the thinkbox right now too but i have a few more to get out of my asks first.

not to worry, there’s plenty more wyatt to come! got some more spyder in the works too, and if you’re a stranger things fan you may want to watch this space…

[scribblescrabbleboss]

shitty post about silly fandubs

My Snapcube Real-Time Fandub (TM) headcanon is that Dr. Eggman has had 2(?) SRTFDCU (Snapcube Real-Time Fandub Cinematic Universe) canon wives and his first wife was Tails' mother.

That's why he says "I miss my wife, Tails. I miss her a lot," and "Tails, I know who your mother is," to him because his first wife is/was Tails' mother. Obviously, she died or left Dr. Eggman some short time after Tails' birth due to the expressed sadness and desperation in his voice in each respective scene. His second wife is the one who cheats on him with Team Dark and Knuckles.

Thank you for listening to my nonsense. I came up with this with my very own thinkbox

[hollyoaksloversx]

Do you know how Hollyoaks is performing in the ratings at the moment?

The ratings for the show are still pretty poor at the moment. Last week, all episodes on Channel 4 were somewhere below 297,000 viewers. On E4, the highest rated episode had 322,000 viewers and the lowest 239,000 viewers.

I'm not sure if those figures take into account those who're watching on All4. I don't think they do and the 'timeshift' on Thinkbox refers to those recording it, but I'd be really interested to hear how the show's performing there now. Last figures I saw said it had about 50,000 viewers an episode on All4, but that was a few years ago now, so obviously before they started the online premiers.

[professor-mystic]

(@wingsofachampion) Hiya! Are you a Pokemon, too? -Tropius

Nope. If I were pokeballs would work on me. And people try, I usually take a few to the ol' thinkbox when I go out. Not human either though. Critter I guess?

[vanderlindepounder]

fighting my demons from rdo oc posting i have an angry 27 year old on the ol' thinkbox

[eradicatetehnormal]

Thinkbox Chris's KH content is actually fucking awful, but I can't stop watching it.

[jamiewrandall]

(2021) Entertainment after isolation: a sudden shift or acceleration of the inevitable?

I wrote this article in 2021 as a piece of A-Level English Language coursework, it reflects on and evaluates the state of entertainment media after and during the pandemic.

Everybody was affected by COVID 19 and the subsequent lockdowns. The restrictions put in place resulted in many things we took for granted changing, amongst these being the way we consume media.

Audiences fulfil many needs by interacting with entertainment mediums however the pandemic changed our priorities. The social impact of a hit show has been amplified far beyond the water cooler, expanding across the internet, but in a world without social events and workplace chat Tweets counted more. An example of this social importance during lockdown can be seen with Marvel Studios first TV escapade, Wandavision, which for all its viewers spawned an inescapable current of rumours and debate which a lot of people seemingly felt the need to be a part of hence Wandavision being 2021’s most pirated show.

It’s been easy to spot trends in a society deprived of anything non covid related to talk about, we’ve seen some surprise viral hit; you must remember watching Tiger King or at least seeing Tik Tok’s take on the Netflix show. It’s not a shock to see outlandish content entertaining people especially with the phenomenon of ‘News Blues’ hitting hard as people tune into weekly broadcasts and controversy.

Through all of this what happens to cinema? The new Spiderman proved that audiences are still willing to venture into the frightening wild as long as you have enough fanfare around a product however if you’re not pushing an action epic it will be a struggle, with the reopening of cinemas in August 2021 only seeing 50% of pre pandemic profits. The return of the entertainment industry as we remember it won't happen, rather an evolved form will take its place.

Television can continue to prosper

COVID restrictions were in force and headlines reported news of disease and social unrest but shows like It’s a Sin and Line of Duty still garnered high viewership even with stories focussing on health and corruption, topics you’d assume had been saturated by current affairs. However, with the suspense carried by episodic dramas and social discourse generated it begins to make sense why people would be interested, and having relatable topics isn’t a bad thing. It’s not only hard-hitting dramas delivering quality entertainment. As identified by the Thinkbox the ‘doing shows’ show of the past have gone through a renaissance with hits like The Repair Shop and Clarkson's Farm taking the instructional, informative style but infusing drama and emotion whilst maintaining some reality. Even with the heralded demise of broadcast television it’s clear people will continue to tune in given that your show has the social impact, relevance, and gravitas to interest viewers. Niche products do still have a place when they can connect more with viewers.

2. Viral Viewing and Cultural Relevance

Not everyone will consume your product based on supposed quality alone, especially when a trip to the cinema could be risky, or its exclusive to a new SVOD service, this requires any release to have some ‘hype’ and with all the spare time people have had to tweet about and meme things we’ve seen even more devoted fandoms and viral successes. This is why unique iconography and memorable musical motifs are even more important when trying to create mainstream content and the mockery of your product not necessarily being a bad thing. Social media trends allowed some releases to transcend their target audiences notably with Squid Game’s popularity on Tik Tok leading it to reach primary school playgrounds despite its 15 rating.

3. Social Connections in the digital world

 As everyone’s day-to-day lives adapted, so that they could be conducted from home, the take up and development of various online platforms was greatly accelerated and it’s no surprise to see companies desperately leveraging this market with new communications features and the elusive but vague promise of “The Metaverse”. These changes are easier to observe in the videogame industry where convergence of social events, general discourse, and entertainment has already taken place inside huge online experiences like Fortnite and Roblox where concerts and even businesses are taking place within them. It's no longer just enough to offer entertainment, audiences will be expecting more of an expansive social experience that fulfils all their needs. As this way of socialising becomes more common, we can hope for enhanced awareness as to the effects and dangers that could come from this future. Though all the events proceeding the news of lockdown in March 2020 have been controversial we all can agree that the restrictions on our lives have irreversibly accelerated some inevitable changes in the media industry and primed us for a future where we become an active audience in all forms of entertainment we interact with. As we move towards this, we can continue to look back on how TV, film and videogames changed and attempted new things as they tried to figure out entertainment after isolation.

[petnews2day]

McDonald’s raises eyebrows and scoops TV creativity award

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/vLUKB

McDonald’s raises eyebrows and scoops TV creativity award

A simple idea brilliantly realised has won McDonald’s the latest Thinkboxes award for TV creativity with “Raise your arches” – a hero spot in a wider campaign that instead of featuring restaurants or food relies on quirky humour and the power of suggestion. “The ambition for the campaign was to drive brand love by elevating […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/vLUKB #PetCharitiesNews