on Nov 11th, 2008Mediacorp and Singapore Press Holdings at War?
I’ve never seen a negative advertisement campaign on our local media before - until now. Channel 5 played an advertisement to boast Mediacorp’s viewership as compared to Singapore Press Holdings.
I assume it’s a tactic to show advertisers how advertising on Mediacorp is better than Singapore Press Holdings, but I find this ad completely dumb. There could be some underlying vendetta between Mediacorp and SPH that I wasn’t aware of, but we only have ONE main T.V. program Channel 5, Channel 8 and Channel U - under Mediacorp and we only have ONE main print media Straits Times, Lian He Zhao Bao, Lian He Wan Bao - under Singapore Press Holdings. I don’t see how the two should be in any competition at all seeing that they respectively dominate in their own markets.
I rarely watch local TV, so I’m not sure how long have these negative advertisements on Straits TImes and various newspapers under Singapore Press Holdings have been running. For those that have not seen the ads, it runs something like this:
Chart shows Channel 5 viewership as compared to Straits Times readership.
Chart shows Channel 8 viewership, then Channel U viewship as compared to Lian He Zhao Bao viewship.
With a voice actor declaring how Mediacorp is the best place to advertise to reach more target audience.
Although Mediacorp might have surveys and facts to purport this claim, there is no reason to air this on prime air-time to show the public these figures - unless they are trying to give their viewers a perception that Mediacorp is more suprerior than Singapore Press Holdings.
This kind of cheap negative ad campaign stunt reminds me of the recent US Presidential race where Mc Cain ran many negative ads on Obama. Except, in this case, Mediacorp is the fore runner and it’s plain silly to slam your opponent if they aren’t even competing in your primary domain! Not to mention, for our local Singapore elections, it is illegal to publish negative ads against other parties!
So, can someone explain to me why I find Mediacorp’s latest advertising stint so distasteful? I tried to google to see if anyone could shed some light behind the silly ads, but all I could find was another old war between Mediacorp and SPH dated back May 2002. Could the recent financial turmoil affected Mediacorp’s advertising profits and they have no choice but to resort to this?
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I didn’t see the commercial, but from what you’ve written, I agree with you that it is distasteful. Singapore has only 1 television station and it’s a huge monopoly. Perhaps they are trying to urge people to go for television ads as opposed to print ads, but I don’t see the point in telling the normal viewers that. They should reach out to businesses instead.
Hi, i agree totally and i think its not just distasteful but out of point. I blogged about it on monday
http://melvinmuse.blogspot.com/2008/11/mediacorp-is-missing-point.html
Do give it a read and see if you agree with me.
melvin