We’re based in Gateshead and have been making TV adverts for more than twenty years, and a great deal of that work has been for businesses in the North East, so this is a guide to advertising on television in our own part of the country. Most of what we’ve written elsewhere about TV applies wherever you are, but the North East has some advantages of its own, and the first of them is the way the television map happens to be drawn.
The North East has an ITV region to itself
For most businesses, ITV is bought region by region, and the North East is one of those regions. In the trade it still goes by the name of the station that first served it, Tyne Tees, which first went on air in January 1959 and these days has its newsroom in Gateshead, as it happens. The region runs from Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish border down through Northumberland, Tyneside, Wearside, County Durham and Teesside, and on into the northern part of North Yorkshire.
That’s very close to what most people here would call the North East anyway, which isn’t true of every region. The boundaries were set by how far the transmitters reached, and some regions take in several counties that have little to do with one another. For a business here, it means you can be on ITV across the North East and nowhere else, in the same breaks of the same programmes as the national brands, without paying for viewers in Manchester or London who are never going to walk through your door. Nothing on screen tells the viewer which adverts were bought for one region and which for the whole country, so a firm from Gateshead or Stockton is seen in exactly the same company as the supermarkets and the car makers.
The regions next door are sold separately, with Carlisle and much of Cumbria in one called Border, and Leeds, York and Hull in Yorkshire, so if you have branches over that way they can be added to the plan. We’ve explained how the whole map fits together in our guide to advertising on ITV in your region.
Why a budget goes further here
The price of airtime varies from region to region, depending on how many people are watching and how many businesses want to advertise to them. London is the most expensive, and regions like ours cost a lot less for each viewer you reach, so the same budget buys more airtime here than it would in the capital. The price moves with the time of year as well, which is a subject we’ve covered separately.
What the extra airtime gives you is repetition, which is most of what makes regional advertising work. An advert that’s seen once is easily forgotten, and the businesses that become household names around here are nearly always the ones whose adverts people have seen week after week, until theirs is the first name that comes to mind when the conservatory needs replacing or the car is due for a change. Being known across the whole region is the prize, and it’s the one that Mel Gess, Sales & Marketing Director at Enhance Conservatories, picked out when talking about their advert: “The TV ad has exceeded all our expectations. The message is perfect and, in a short time, we have become recognised as a major player in the North East home improvement marketplace.”
ITV isn’t the only channel you can buy for the region, although it’s the one whose map fits it most neatly. Channel 4 sells its live channels in six much larger areas, and ours falls inside one called the North, which takes in far more of the country than Tyne Tees does. There’s more about that in how to advertise on Channel 4.
When the whole region is more than you need
Plenty of businesses here do draw their customers from the whole of the North East, or would if more people knew about them, and for those the region is the natural thing to buy. Others never will, because it’s a long way from Berwick to Whitby, and very few people are going to drive from one end of the region to the other for a new bathroom.
If that’s your position, there are ways of narrowing things down. AdSmart from Sky, and the broadcasters’ streaming services such as ITVX, let you choose the households that see your advert by postcode, so a dealership in Sunderland or a showroom in Hexham can advertise to the homes within reach and leave out the rest. You pay more for each household that way, and you only reach the homes that have those services, so it does a different job from the region, and plenty of local campaigns end up using some of each. There’s a full explanation in local TV advertising by postcode, and a separate guide to AdSmart from Sky.
People here like to buy from people here
Whichever way the airtime is bought, the advert itself is where a North East business has an edge. It’s hard to put a number on this, but anyone who does business in the region knows there’s a strong sense of place here, and that people respond to businesses that are recognisably from it. That gives a local advertiser something a national brand can’t copy, because familiar places, familiar voices and a bit of local character all help an advert to land.
Two of the adverts we’ve worked on show the different forms that can take. Windows Plus Roofs, whose agency was WriteSound, put a well-known North East actor in front of their brand, on screen and as the voiceover, and he went on to become known across the region as the face of the business. A famous face is only one way of doing it, and when we filmed for George Bolam Foods, working with the agency Dickinson Media, it was the staff who were cast as the stars, which felt right for a business that’s so well known locally.
None of this has to be laid on thick, because an advert doesn’t need the Tyne Bridge in every shot to prove where it comes from. It only has to feel as though it’s from round here, and a voice, a street or a face that people recognise will usually manage that without any help.
Who we’ve worked with
Our North East clients have included South Shields Marine School, whose advert won Best Commercial at the Royal Television Society Awards, as well as South Tyneside College, Winn Solicitors, Tyneside Home Improvements, Boldon Bathrooms, Haven Point in South Shields and Queen Alexandra Sixth Form. Some of those came to us directly and others through their advertising agencies, and each advert’s page says who was involved.
We work with businesses all over the UK as well, but being on the doorstep does make things easier, because we know the locations, we know the crews, and we can be with you in person without anybody getting on a train. Metrocentre’s Christmas commercial, which we produced for their agency, AL Marketing, with less than two weeks to get ready, shows how close to home a production can stay. The first day was filmed at Metrocentre itself, and the house for the final scenes, which had to be found at very short notice, was in Northumberland, about 35 minutes away.
How to get started
Tell us about your business and where your customers come from, and we’ll show you what a campaign in the region could look like. You can ask for a free storyboard to see the idea before you commit to anything, or get in touch and talk it through with us first. Our media buying partners can then put real figures on the airtime, whether that’s the whole of the North East or only the postcodes around your front door.
Keep reading.
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