Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Why Innovation Isn't Beneficial.

A feature of digital television in the UK is the programme summary that fills the top 20% of the screen when you switch to a new channel. It remains for many seconds and, given that one has often arrived there via an EPG, it becomes very interruptive.

Does the instruction manual indicate how to disable this televisual equivalent of Microsoft's Clippy? No. Is it possible to turn it off? Who knows! And all because someone thinks that all viewers are the same and will view their "innovation" in a positive light.

A benefit is a benefit only if the user determines it to be. It can quickly become an annoyance if they don't. Marketers must remember that.

3 Comments:

Blogger RB said...

I am slightly suprised that the sponsor logo/message has not sneaked onto the top of the screen too! The likes of the Channel 4 and other channels are already an annoyance.

Especially the Red Button!

How much more pervasive nonsense must we viewers be subjected to? I am already turning away from being a semi-regular TV viewer to a very, very selective watcher.

David Attenborough, Ugly Betty and Apprentice are all I watch nowadays. I know of many others who are turning off their TV sets.

Time the actual programme segments you view versus the advertising breaks. It is not good.

3:33 AM, May 24, 2007  
Blogger john dodds said...

especially Channel 5

3:41 AM, May 24, 2007  
Blogger RB said...

Channel 5 resembles American TV where you get the programme intro then a commercial break or word form the sponsor repeated every 3 minutes or so.

It isn't that bad but you get the point.

I don't know if TV in America has improved or become worse. I do know that Channel 5 has inherited American TV's habit of a constant need to go for a commercial break and is the pits!

God bless technology that allows me to record shows and skip the commercials.

Mind you, PG Tips and Tetley's will be fuming because the commercial break was brew up time weren't it chuck?! And without the break, fewer tea bags will be used.

Oh dear what a marketeing conumdrum!

4:33 AM, May 25, 2007  

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