BBC Two Rebrand and Onwards

is that sourced and referenced?

It kind of sort of does really.

Even if it were true that audiences are now somewhat jaded by blanket advertising and shows stripped across the schedules, that simply wasn't the case when Eldorado launched.

I can understand why *you* might have found it a turn off, but you really don't speak for either the majority, or even a significant minority.

Did you also have the knives out for the "marketing men" [sic] when Albion Market launched in a blaze of glory?

Another example of a programme with a good pedigree which was let down by poor writing and performances.

Millions/billions are spent on advertising because there is something of a science to it. It is a results led industry.

You are by no means farting in the wind alone here Simon. There will be a certain percentage of consumers who are suspicious of anything pushed towards them.

Its just that the ad men aren't particularly concerned by your feelings as the majority do respond to advertising.


Fact of life.

*Blows kisses*

Don't ever change Simon. It's good to have a nemesis. We both know where we are with each other.

Methinks this thread is going incredibly OT.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Master_Padlock.jpg

Well of course, because it's me that's saying it...


Why, though, is it so unreasonable to suggest that people may have become jaded by blanket advertising BECAUSE of Eldorado? It seems reasonable that having seen what became of that one programme, viewers are suspicious as to the motives behind intensive pre-launches.

It is most likely that Eldorado's main reason for failure, aside from being naff, was "wrong idea, wrong time". It's the Europhobic theory again - Tony Hollands' original idea for a soap about British ex-pats was hijacked by the BBC who added European families and turned it into a lesson in continental relations. Something most people did not want in 1992. And of course, the right-wing, BBC-hating tabloids rounded on the Beeb for misappropriating £10m of licence payers' money into what they saw as a trashy soap and convinced the sheep that read them not to give it a chance.


Albion Market would certainly have benefitted from a lower-key approach, as would Families which followed it (and ended up meeting a similar fate). If there is such a science to advertising it's almost as if broadcasters can "sense" which of their high-risk ventures may not cut the mustard. Eldorado was equally let down by poor writing and performances - the fact is, if the programme hasn't got adequate creative talent in the first place, no amount of marketing will alter peoples' perceptions of it.


Fact of life only in as far as people respond to advertising. That response not always the desired one, however, hence the never-ending debates about ECPs and the like.


Thanks Jonathan - indeed this thread has reached the end of its natural life and if allowed to continue will only degenerate into a two-hander with myself and Mr Scott.

Who asked you?

We debating the effectiveness of advertising and branding. If you find this discussion too rich for you then clear off out of it.



Well which is it? You're shifting the goalposts in your argument. You seemed adament that blanket ads were the reason for the failure and now you're saying something different.

Please respond.

Why? So you can prolong the agony? I'm fed up with your increasingly surly manner and attacks which are every bit as bile-ridden as what you accuse me of. Sorry Gavin, I don't wanna play no more. Mods, it's over to you.

And I apologise to jrothwell for your outburst.

It's not coincidence. However, nor does it mean anything in the slightest. Know why?

If they DIDN'T get big pre-launch publicity then they AREN'T HIGH-PROFILE! Be it failures or successes.

It's like... someone growing red cabbages & green cabbages in a garden. The green cabbages get lovingly tended to, the red cabbages getting left alone. 60% of the red cabbages curl up and die, 20% of the green cabbages do. And then the gardener concludes that green plants are more prone to failure than red ones!

You're staring at the 20% of green cabbages that fail (high-profile shows) and the 40% of red cabbages that succeed (shows launched without fanfare) and damning the rest.

Interesting analogy. It all comes down to what percentages proportionate to the amount of fanfare given are considered good enough to be classed as successes. Or, how much less low profile does a programme become each time its respective trail is shown?

At what number of trails does a programme cross the line and become high profile? I'm actually guessing the answer to that is not based solely on the number of times a trail is played, but how frequently it occurs against other trails running in the same period.

If one programme gets undue prominence in the run-up, you lose a balance of promotion across a channel's schedule, and this begins to give the (worrying) impression that marketing only really have faith in 1 or 2 programmes within a particular week, because every other potential trail is falling by the wayside. To pick out a recent BBC2 example, it felt to me like Maxwell was trailed for an eternity.

We are currently experiencing the same uneven balance across BBC2's promotion, due to the excessive playout of The Restaurant trail. This one is particularly loathsome given that it is promoting is a copycat reality cookery show (and one featuring a chef who'd vowed never to get involved with such a project - he soon changed his mind when the cheque book was waved in front of his nose!)

Could it be this promo is getting so much airtime because of its production values, and/or the cost involved in its production? How ironic when the show it is selling is a derivative one. That would not explain why Maxwell was trailed so much, though at least that was a more traditional clip-based trail.

What programme is this copying?

Think it sounds quite good myself, looking forward to it

Try Hell's Kitchen with couples. Amusingly there is a small little web ad-style box promotion for this to be found at the bottom of the BBC Cult section pages at least, where the programme name has been fluffed - it reads 'The Restauant'. Looks like basic proofreading is so last year.


And to continue the subject of BBC2 cookery programmes:
What the heck have they done to Ready Steady Cook lately?

They seem to have introduced an odd new red & green neon squares system above the audience, to indicate the voting results - at the expense of now having the audience side, in fact anything that is not the kitchen, plunged into dominant jet blackness. This is presumably to enhance the illumination, but the result makes everything look decidedly more bleak - and the music has been re-jigged for the hell of it too. IMO, not very good.

Anyway, I thought black was out and white was in, hence the coincidental surnames of the two chefs in charge of The Restaurant and the new Hell's Kitchen respectively...