Highlights of Screenforce Days 2021

Screenforce Days 2021 took place in mid-June: The annual highlight of the moving image industry.
What moves marketers, advertisers and agencies? What highlights can TV viewers expect in the coming months? Answers and a full program were provided over 4 days under the motto “The Magic of Total Video” – all digital due to Corona. A summary by JOM Managing Director Roland Köster.

The first two days focused on the program screenings of the TV stations.
As always, the two big marketers IP Deutschland and SevenOne Media went all out with the staging of their program highlights.
But the prime-time-ready performances naturally didn’t have the show effect for viewers at the computer screens that we’re all familiar with from the live events of recent years.

In terms of content, what was striking was the growing importance of news in the programming of the major private stations.
With new prominent faces from ARD, such as Pinar Atalay and Jan Hofer, who are moving to RTL, and Linda Zervakis, who will be on SevenOne, the news expertise of both stations is to be strengthened.

The stations will also continue to focus on successful TV shows in the entertainment, cooking & baking, decorating and crime categories – RTL in particular will have many new shows starting in the fall, in addition to its popular formats.

It is particularly important for the broadcasters to take advantage of these high-reach shows and their “follower potential” in social media, and thus to extend campaigns cross-medially.

The third day was dominated by new research and industry findings, such as the studies to better understand media genres and media usage.

For example, eye square compared the media TV, B-VoD, YouTube and Facebook with each other and came to the conclusion in their study that both the recall performance and the acceptance of advertising in the two social channels performed worse compared to the medium TV.

The AGF also brought something new from research into play and presented approaches as to how performance measurement could be carried out from TV to Video+ in the future. By the end of the year, a decision is to be made together with the WFA (World federation of advertisers) as to which model should be implemented for cross-media measurement in the moving image. There does not yet seem to be a favored approach.

The series of lectures was interspersed with general findings on reception behavior and results from the neurosciences.

But the moving image industry is also concerned with the issue of sustainability. And not only in program planning, but also in marketing.

The unanimous view: With regard to sustainability, the media industry can play a pioneering role due to its low consumption of raw materials, the high proportion of services and the high visibility of mass media (above all TV).
Specifically, green messaging (communication of environmentally friendly product features or consumer tips) and campaigns with participation in certified climate protection projects were presented (Media4Planet).

All in all, a successful digital event with a good mix of entertainment and information and the realization by all that “showing attitude” is also an important asset in the entertainment industry.