Media & Marketing / Emmet Oliver: With Brian Kerr's Irish team out of Euro 2004, selling air time for this widely anticipated tournament was never going to be easy. But for whatever reason this country's complex relationship with England and its football team has made RTÉ's job slightly easier.
The station has been offering slots in England's games at 25 per cent above the standard price. Whether Irish fans like to admit it or not, they seem to have a strange fascination with the progress of Sven Goran Eriksson's team.
The tournament begins this Saturday evening at 5 p.m. and in the promotional literature sent to Dublin agencies, RTÉ reminds them that more than 400,000 Irish viewers watched England's first match in the last European championships against Portugal on Network 2, while 452,000 watched England play Romania in their last match in the tournament. This, of course, does not count those watching in pubs.
This year RTÉ faces cross-channel competition from BBC and ITV and domestic competition from TV3, although Irish viewers appear to enjoy watching England lose on RTÉ.
Fiona Scott of MCM Communications says interest among advertisers is relatively low given that Ireland is not involved, but she says there is significant interest in the English games and the semis and final.
Meanwhile, Dublin agency AFA O'Meara reports this week on an interesting new research product on the market in the US. The product from Montesano Marketing Research claims the average audiences would rise by 4 per cent if "out-of-home" viewing was accounted for. In Ireland "out of home" usually means the pub.
AFA points out that if this 4 per cent figure were added to RTÉ's GAA broadcasts an additional 117,320 adults could be watching ad breaks.
Sky Sports, meanwhile, will show both of Ireland's summer rugby tests against South Africa exclusively live with ex-player Paul Wallace as a commentator.
NTL, Sky in talks
The row between NTL and Sky over the showing of Irish advertisements on the NTL platform has still not been solved.
At present NTL does not show Irish advertisements on Sky Sports 1 and 2. Instead it shows British advertisements. This is understood to be causing dissatisfaction in Sky Ireland and talks are continuing Sky is believed to have told NTL it should take the "designated feed" as directed by Sky. But NTL seems to see things differently.
A Sky Ireland spokesman said yesterday: "Sky has been engaged in ongoing discussions on this issue for some time and is seeking a satisfactory resolution as soon as possible."
Talks are believed to be at an advanced stage and Sky will obviously want an agreement in place before the resumption of the Premiership season. Irish advertisers are not getting their ads on Sky Sports 1 and 2 on NTL and are consequently paying less for packages with Sky.
Five contracts
The summer is shaping up to be a busy period for the advertising and PR industries with five significant contracts out to pitch.
Fáilte Ireland is looking for an agency to provide PR, marketing and communications services for a two-year period, subject to review.
Fáilte Ireland is the national tourism development authority. It was set up under the National Tourism Development Authority Act. It brings together in one organisation the previous roles of Bord Fáilte and CERT.
One of the biggest advertising contracts is the Bus Éireann account, believed to be worth €1.7 million. This account for media buying/planning is currently held by McConnells.
Also out to tender is the FÁS advertising account (both creative and media) which is believed to be worth about €2.5 million. Several agencies have been shortlisted, among them McConnells, QMP Publicis and AFA O'Meara, which holds the account on a temporary basis at present.
Another State-owned company offering its advertising account to the industry is ESB. The electricity company is offering agencies the chance to pitch for its creative and media buying/planning account. The creative account is worth about €750,000 a year, while the media account is worth €2.2 million annually. According to advertising industry sources ESB has not been spending large sums in recent years and an increase, ahead of the opening of the electricity market, may be on the cards. McConnells again has the creative account, while Universal McCann holds the media segment.
Fuji campaign
Fuji Ireland plans to spend €2 million in a campaign to get digital camera owners to process their digital images. Since the advent of digital technology traditional processors have been concerned about the potential impact on their business.
But now Fuji at least has started to address this.
The company wants to target the 75 per cent of digital camera owners who are not currently processing their digital images. A TV campaign, developed by McCann-Erickson in Dublin, has been launched and is designed to target the digital camera owners who store digital photos on their camera and don't bother to process.
McCanns, through its consumer research programme, Pulse, investigated why digital camera owners were not processing their images.
Jane Fitzsimons, strategic planner at McCann-Erickson, said consumers usually replied with something like "I just haven't got around to it."
They also cited the fact that they really liked sharing around photos among family and friends and putting photos up on their e-mail.
The role of the advertising is to remind consumers to process their images at a Fuji store and not just leave the photos on memory cards or just stored on their PCs.
