Work life balance and day time TV

12 Jul 2011 | 0 Comments | Consumer Insights , Consumer Segments , Direct Response TV , Media Strategy , TV Advertising

The current wisdom for a long time has been, and still appears to be, that if you work for a living you don’t have time to watch day time TV - after all you’re working right?

While this line of thinking may seem logical, our analysis, using Roy Morgan Research, has shown that this is not the case, and that marketers may be missing a golden opportunity.

Before we explore the reasons why people who work for a living do in fact watch day time TV, let’s explore some of the differences we found from state to state across Australia.

The day time TV day really starts around 6 am with breakfast TV such as Sunrise or Today.

The insights showed that Brisbane and Adelaide residents are more likely to watch breakfast TV than their counterparts in Sydney & Melbourne. While there may well be other reasons for this, we found that a major factor was that people in Sydney and Melbourne were 30 percent more likely to have to travel 30 kilometers or more each day to work. Now when you consider the state of traffic congestion in Sydney and Melbourne, this (congestion) can mean 1 ½ hours on the road. So residents in these cities who may need to be at work by 8:30, have to leave home around 7:00 – who has time for TV let alone breakfast?
This research allows us to dig deeper to see if the type of work people did, had any impact on day time TV viewing - and the answer was that it does.

Starting with breakfast TV; while we found that most people in management and professional roles are highly unlikely to watch day time TV in general, we did find that they were 30 percent more likely to watch breakfast TV than the average person.
Breakfast TV is also the favorite for Health Care professionals, but considering the majority of them work shift work this is not a real surprise. These consumers are time poor and television provides the convenience to respond to the right brand or product offer. And in fact, they are 68% more inclined to do so than the average person – and they have money to spend.
Other white collar professionals that find time for breakfast TV are Science, Engineering  and Social Work professionals, all of whom have high disposable incomes and are 60% more inclined to respond to your brand or product offer than the average person, according to the research.

Moving on from breakfast to the more traditional day time TV and the results are still surprising, as this type of audience is not all stay at home mums and the unemployed as most marketers appear to think. Consider the fact that there are almost 4,000,000 people working part time and shift work in Australia, and you will understand why large numbers of employed people get to watch day time TV.

In fact you are likely to find more shift workers such as service workers, retail sales people, transport workers, cleaners, factory workers and hospitality industry workers watching day time TV than you are the unemployed.

While many of these shift workers may earn an average of around $41,000 per year, they are almost twice more likely to respond to a TV offer than the average person.

Day time TV also covers weekends and here the audience mix is quite different, with a high engagement by “white collar” professionals such as education professionals, managers, IT professionals and small business owners. This group generally has high disposable incomes and is almost 30% more likely to respond to a TV offer than the average person. You just need the right offer to interest them.

It seems to be that many marketers look at day time TV as just the 30% part of their 70 / 30 Peak / Off Peak buy and a way to reduce their overall television cost per TARP delivery. They see day time TV as just talking to grocery buyers.

Marketers seem to have ignored the fact that almost 30% of the Australian workforce work part time or shift work, and day time TV is the primary viewing option for them.

These marketers are therefore missing a golden opportunity to engage with valuable consumers such as nurses and other employed shift workers who may not get a chance to watch TV in the evening, because that’s when they work.

Look around, who do you see when you go to the restaurant in the evening, or check into a hotel, or the airport or even the hospital? High value consumers who don’t get to watch TV when you do. But they do watch day time TV and they have money to spend and they embrace the convenience of responding to a TV offer.