Siri knows your name. Rami Mohsen/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Yesterday, whilst using an on-demand service to catch up with one of the recent political debates, I was caught off guard by a ‘personalised’ TV advert. This was not something I’d seen before. The advert for Ronseal Fence Life began by saying my name. As far as I could tell it was only personalised insofar as it opened by addressing me directly, it wasn’t, for instance, personalised enough to know that I don’t own a fence.
It turns out that Channel 4, the channel I was watching at the time, introduced what it calls “the world’s first audio personalised TV ads” on the 25th of April this year. Developed by the media company Innovid, the three partners for this launch were Fosters, 20th Century Fox and Ronseal. Quoted in the press release, James Smith, Ronseal’s Marketing Director, suggested that “this new technology provides us with the ideal platform to get personal so we can motivate people to finally get on with their DIY”.
A bit of motivation is always welcome. It would seem though that the change in the adverts is more directly connected to the possibilities for capturing our attention. David Amodio, Channel 4’s ‘Digital and Creative Leader’, indicated in the same press statement that “the most attention grabbing word for anyone to hear is without doubt one’s own name, so to be able to offer advertisers the chance to speak directly to our millions of viewers is not just unique, but an immensely powerful marketing tool”.
