This week on TV Talk with Jo Kinsella, Jo sits down with Bill McCabe, President & CEO at Eicoff. The duo discuss what agencies like Eicoff should be doing to keep up with the changing media landscape, and how TV is evolving to encompass so much more than just linear.
The Changing Role of TV
“TV has changed, a lot—particularly from a technology standpoint. But what I think gets overlooked sometimes is the impact of digital on the TV industry,” states Bill.
He says the biggest impact of digital on TV is that it has made the “marketing people” much more accountable. There are now CMOs who “grew up buying keywords and they understand ROI and accountability, and they demand that from everything.”
New Brands in the Bucket
Prior to COVID-19, Eicoff has seen new DTC brands (that don’t rely on face-to-face interactions) join the agency. Bill states that what Eicoff does is provide these digital-only companies with a safe “steppingstone” into the offline world. When it comes to success stories, Bill states that the fastest growing verticals are Financial Tech, Healthcare and eCommerce.
Jo mentions that any businesses that were fundamentally brick and mortar pre-pandemic are now coming online and learning from DTC companies during the COVID crisis. Coming out of the pandemic, both Jo and Bill expect to see huge changes in the client relationship, as well as how agencies do business (especially as meetings and deals continue to happen virtually).
The Most Overlooked Aspect of a Successful TV Campaign
Eicoff looks at four pillars: the consumer, the creative message, the data (that drives both creative and consumer) and the media.
“I think media and data and technology will become more like commodities,” says Bill. “I think what gets lost in the conversation is the impact of creative.”
Bill says they spend a lot of the time focusing on the last five seconds of the creative message and really try to figure out what action they want the consumer to take (i.e. what the feeling is that you want them to have when they go online or go in-store, and then how you connect the dots from when they see the ad to why and how they act on it).
Check out the full TV Talk episode here. TV Talk with Jo Kinsella is also available via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts.
