Front Foot Quarterly Member Profile: ITV

Kelly Williams is ITV’s Director of Commercial. In this Front Foot member profile he explains why he’s proud of the work of the industry around causes that benefit society, why television is transitioning to a more diffuse model, and why emotion is key to advertising.

Television has historically been very good at demonstrating ROI. To what do you attribute that?

Television’s advantage to make emotional connections and grab the attention of the nation is ultimately one of the key attributes of the power of television. That ability to deliver emotional connections effectively means TV can influence millions of people to think and feel differently about brands, and ultimately that’s what brand-building is all about.

For example, the work we did with Love Island over the summer… we worked with eleven different commercial partners on that show, from headline sponsors to product placements to in-store on-pack licenses, to podcast sponsors, to merchandising and licensing. The fact that we’re an integrated producer-broadcaster just puts us in a unique position to deliver ideas that integrate with shows that can create real business impact.

Mass simultaneous reach is really hard to do. I don’t think on any other medium, 10 million people sit down and watch the same thing at the same time as they are with I’m A Celebrity every night this week at the moment, so I do think that is unique to television.

ITV’s Simon Daglish told the delegates at our Media Business Course that ‘TV isn’t dying, it’s having ****ing babies’. How is ITV taking advantage of changing consumption habits?

Lots of people talk about the death of TV, or the structural decline. I think I’d say it’s in structural change; we’re transitioning. We use the phrase ‘TV isn’t going anywhere, it’s going everywhere’, because you can now watch it whenever and wherever you want, because the whole on-demand side of our business is the fastest-growing side.

On our linear channels, we offer mass simultaneous reach and that great emotional connection, in our linear business, and on ITV Hub in our online business, we now are able to offer that more targeted, addressable, data-driven products to advertisers, all in a very brand-safe, fraud-free, viewable, quality environment. That ability to offer the best of both worlds will put us in good stead for many years to come.

What do you think in 20 years down the line, we’ll be able to look back on with pride about advertising in 2018?

We often spend our time worrying about the negative things in advertising, rather than concentrating on the positives – what advertising does economically, culturally, in society, so if I look back at this year I think some of the work that’s been done by some big companies has really, really shown advertising doing good.

We’re really proud of the work we did around Project 84, which is the work that was done by the charity CALM, to prevent male suicide. We launched the Daily Mile on ITV this year. We’re about to launch a campaign with the Food Foundation around getting kids to eat more vegetables, which we’re really proud of. I look at what MediaCom are doing around mental health, and what Channel4 are doing around diversity and inclusion, and particularly disability, and what Sky are doing around plastics in the ocean and sustainability – wherever you look, there are big companies using advertising to do good.

What do you think is the value of a Front Foot membership?

It allows us as an industry to speak with one voice. You’d like to think that we are more than the sum of our parts – marketing is a multi-platform discipline and needs all voices. We’re aware that from an advertiser’s point of view it’s not just about TV, it’s not just about radio, it’s about getting that balance and having all platforms – representing all platforms. I think when we come together in advertising, we tend to agree on what the priority areas are for the industry as a whole, and that’s important.