Outgoing Yahoo EMEA senior vice-president and managing director Rich Riley managed to impress Nestlé head of digital and social media Pete Blackshaw, following a head-to-head battle against RTL Interactive managing director Marc Schröder and Mofilm president and co-founder Andy Baker to ‘woo’ him with their advertising solutions.
In a unique session on the second day of the Festival of Media Global, the three media owners were pitted against each other as they took part in a session entitled ‘What happens when TV isn’t the only screen?’ The aim of the game was to each take it in turns to convince Nestlé that their platform was the future of the TV advertising budget.
Yahoo emerged victorious after Riley presented Yahoo’s offering to the client. Blackshaw said he was particularly impressed with Yahoo’s TV companion service ‘Into_Now’, that creates a content and social community around TV shows, in addition to its full-page takeover option that ran in Brazil.
During his pitch, Riley said that “TV is huge and may stay huge” but “the tablet changes the game”. He continued: “Multiscreen and second screen will be big and advertisers have a huge opportunity to leverage the second screen.”
RTL Interactive’s Schröder argued the case that traditional TV wins in the digital world. He recognised that “digitisation is a challenge, but also an opportunity” to extend the reach of traditional television.
“Television is the most evolving and most social as it is often consumed with more than one person,” says Schröder. “Digitisation means more messages in more channels but it’s still about three things: objective, message and medium. It’s all about combining the strengths.”
Mofilm’s Baker pitched his case around “quality, price and speed”. He alluded to the Guardian’s ‘Three Little Pigs’ campaign, and posed the question, “Why can’t we do this with content?”
When making his final decision, Blackshaw spoke about a brand building framework where there are meaningful cross-platform synergies. “All advertising buying needs to be thoughtful of the paid, owned and earned model,” he says. “Would Nestlé pay for premium relevance? Absolutely!"
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