The Torin Douglas Interview: Keith Moor, Santander
The Torin Douglas Interview sees the journalist speak with leading advertisers to explore some of the biggest issues facing the industry. In the first of the series, Torin speaks with Santander’s Keith Moor about big data, the changing media mix and dealing with criticism over their latest ads.
The world of advertising is changing faster than at any time since I started covering it 40 years ago. So how are leading advertisers coping – and what impact is the digital revolution having on their media choices?
Now that I’ve left the BBC, I’ll be questioning them in a monthly series of interviews for MediaTel’s Newsline – starting with Keith Moor, Santander’s director of brand and communications, a member of the ISBA Council.
When I joined Campaign in 1973 as a junior reporter, only one TV channel carried advertising – ITV – and it broadcast only in the evenings. The only commercial radio station was Radio Luxembourg – LBC and Capital were about to go on the air as the UK’s first legally authorised stations.
Newspapers were in black-and-white – except for the Sunday colour supplements – and the print unions ensured that the number of pages was strictly limited. IPC – the Ministry of Magazines – dominated its world with the ‘big four’ women’s weeklies.
Those were the days of truly mass media. Advertisers could reach millions of viewers or readers with a single spot on ITV or insertion in the News of the World. These days, the online – and increasingly mobile – world is spawning different forms of mass media, forcing advertisers, broadcasters and publishers to change their ways and business models.
The Santander commercials have had their share of flak over the ‘stilted’ acting of the stars.”
In the case of Santander, that has meant halving its press budget, almost year on year for the past two or three years, in favour of online. It has also meant that its celebrity ‘ambassadors’ – currently Jenson Button, Jessica Ennis and Rory McIlroy – can be used not just in traditional television commercials but in video-on-demand content on computers, tablets and mobiles.
Keith Moor told me: “With our ambassadors we can make bespoke content for different platforms. We do a lot of stuff with social media, and staff and customer engagement, and it’s working really well. Last week we were number one in Marketing’s Adwatch – recall is very high and business is very strong.”
Yet the Santander commercials have had their share of flak over the ‘stilted’ acting of the stars, notably in the Daily Mail online, which carried the headline “Is this the worst advert of all time? Don’t bank on Ennis, McIlroy or Button forging acting careers after this.”
Moor says that wasn’t an issue and robustly defends the campaign. “What worries me is – were the ads seen, do people remember them, and do people feel positive about the brand when they’ve seen them? We’ve conducted a number of studies, as you’d expect, and what they show is that people […] see it as almost a self-deprecating view of yourself as a business, it takes away some of the corporate sheen.
“The first part of the campaign, when the criticism came in, it was designed to make them appear that way – some people got it, some people didn’t – now in the second wave, we’ve turned it round and they’ve seen how the gag works.”
Moor tells me what he means by the terms ‘online’ and ‘big data’ and what he thinks of them – and why he uses banner ads, even though he’s never clicked on one himself (apart from his own). He also reveals how his media and creative agencies get on with each other, what he thinks of trading desks and how he decides which elements of his campaigns are working – and which aren’t.
The Torin Douglas Interview is sponsored by Sky IQ – to find out how Sky IQ insight can help improve your TV advertising effectiveness and maximise your return on investment, click here.