Jonathan Ross - like Marmite, you either love him or hate him. Personally speaking, I'm a fan. His Friday night show is perfect 'end of the week' viewing - entertaining, amusing and great with a nice glass or two of wine.
So imagine my glee to see our client's Easter Eggs on the show this Good Friday. It came right off the back of all our amazing Siana skincare cream coverage and an LK Today review for the Aldi Easter Eggs. All in all, the Aldi team is having another fantastic month!
Aldi products have been featured on the Jonathan Ross show before. Yes, we're gloating here, but wouldn't you do the same if you got JR wearing a welding kit to promote the retailer's semi-professional DIY kit? That piece resulted in great sales upift for our client, so we're not in it to indulge egos back at the agency. Everything we do has to have a commercial benefit for all our clients.
You always know there is an element of risk when submitting products for review on these types of popular culture shows, so it is key to embrace the humorous editorial styles to gain maximum impact. With that in mind, here are our top five tips to getting on Jonathan Ross and other shows of that ilk:
1. Be aware of the show's editorial style - simple but so often forgotten! Research the TV programme's audience and make sure your pitch is tailored to fit and enhance its editorial style.
2. Make it personal - far better to call a researcher with a pitch that feels personalised to them and their show. For Aldi's Easter Eggs, our customer-designed(!) Mr and Mrs Ross eggs made the feature work.
3. Befriend your contacts - keep all leads warm within the features/forward planning departments. Being respected for always sending over strong news stories helps build great relationships. Going in cold is never a nice place to be!
4. Go for topicality - short lead media need topical stories that link neatly into the news agenda and their forward features planner. Our Easter Egg pitch, obviously, linked to the Easter weekend but it's worth noting that commercially Easter is a key peak season for our Client so there was a strong business argument to beat the big four retailers and get Aldi's Easter Egg onto the show.
5. Visual appeal wins - when you lack innovation or fail to be first to market, at its simplest, your product has to look great on screen or in print, or be a bit unusual (amusing in our case!) to make the grade and get past the final decision makers.
It's a bit too early to report on sales of the Aldi Easter Egg featured on last week's show. It did , however, deliver what we expected - a brand mention, specifies on the product and the predictable 'mickey take'...but that came after Aldi key messages at least! Which, for the beeb, is no mean feat.
Check out our talents - below are the eggs we personalised for the show. We admit we are not artists!
