Appalling Super Bowl Commercials
Feb/09/2011
I thought they were just appalling, for the most part. Many of them, you could barely tell what they were about. Most of them, even if you knew what they were about, there was nothing there to make you want, or even like, the product or service. A few of them were just repulsive. A guy getting hit in the crotch with a soda can is not funny. It’s repulsive. Do even 14-year old boys find that funny, anymore?
I had already seen the VW “Force” commercial, with the kid in the Darth Vader outfit, on the web. But that was the 60-second version and I thought it was cute. (I did not think it did anything particularly positive for the VW Passant, though.) The 30-second version that they showed on the Super Bowl went by too fast to be comprehendible, I thought. Actually, it seemed to me that their “beetle” commercial, apparently for a newly-designed VW Beetle, was better. At least, it made me want to see the car.
What was up with the two homo-erotic presentations, the mock-fellatio Doritos spot and the “cram it in the boot” Mini spot? How is that supposed to work? Maybe just by being disturbing? Sure didn’t work for me.
Here we have a product -- cheese-flavored Doritos -- that is terrible for you. A high-calorie, low-nutrition, salty snack. Deadly, actually. But many people are flat-out addicted to crap like this -- as our obesity and diabetes epidemics attest. So, the commercial not only extolls how great this hideous product is, it plays upon its addictive nature, to the extent of saying, only slightly beneath the surface, “I am so addicted I will fellate you for a Dorito.” That’s just gross.
“Cram it in the boot!”? You know, I sort of liked Mini’s. I wouldn’t buy one -- but I drive a BMW and they make Mini’s, so I kind of vaguely liked Mini’s. But now, the next time I see one, I will think of “cram it in the boot” and I won’t like the damn thing anymore. But then, since I would never, ever buy one anyway, I guess I am out of the target demo, so what does it matter what I think?
One of my sons is a creative director for a New York ad agency. He has actually produced a Super Bowl commercial, in 2008. Happy to report that he is just as appalled by this year’s commercials as I am. But he tells me that he doubts that there is ever any discussion at the ad agency level about sub-text in these commercials. And I take his point: just because I read sub-text, does not mean that the writer put it there.
Let me take the liberty of quoting my son, in an email to me:
“...on the agency side, they're just trying to live up to ‘Super Bowl’, so they dip into the bag of tricks that repeatedly works: talking animals, what i'll do for a beer, babies, ball-kicks, aliens, cursing, etc. Trying to be louder than the next guy. The brief is given to tons of young teams who just want to be outrageous. To do something funny and buzz-worthy. Like the 'cram it in the boot' joke. It's mostly dumb, very little thinking about anything other than shock appeal.”
Probably true. Sad, isn’t it? Culture-destroying crap. But not really a waste of money. For the advertisers, yes, but that $3-million a spot is feeding a lot of copyrighters, producers, directors, agency execs and so on. Even buying a few BMW’s.
I had already seen the VW “Force” commercial, with the kid in the Darth Vader outfit, on the web. But that was the 60-second version and I thought it was cute. (I did not think it did anything particularly positive for the VW Passant, though.) The 30-second version that they showed on the Super Bowl went by too fast to be comprehendible, I thought. Actually, it seemed to me that their “beetle” commercial, apparently for a newly-designed VW Beetle, was better. At least, it made me want to see the car.
What was up with the two homo-erotic presentations, the mock-fellatio Doritos spot and the “cram it in the boot” Mini spot? How is that supposed to work? Maybe just by being disturbing? Sure didn’t work for me.
Here we have a product -- cheese-flavored Doritos -- that is terrible for you. A high-calorie, low-nutrition, salty snack. Deadly, actually. But many people are flat-out addicted to crap like this -- as our obesity and diabetes epidemics attest. So, the commercial not only extolls how great this hideous product is, it plays upon its addictive nature, to the extent of saying, only slightly beneath the surface, “I am so addicted I will fellate you for a Dorito.” That’s just gross.
“Cram it in the boot!”? You know, I sort of liked Mini’s. I wouldn’t buy one -- but I drive a BMW and they make Mini’s, so I kind of vaguely liked Mini’s. But now, the next time I see one, I will think of “cram it in the boot” and I won’t like the damn thing anymore. But then, since I would never, ever buy one anyway, I guess I am out of the target demo, so what does it matter what I think?
One of my sons is a creative director for a New York ad agency. He has actually produced a Super Bowl commercial, in 2008. Happy to report that he is just as appalled by this year’s commercials as I am. But he tells me that he doubts that there is ever any discussion at the ad agency level about sub-text in these commercials. And I take his point: just because I read sub-text, does not mean that the writer put it there.
Let me take the liberty of quoting my son, in an email to me:
“...on the agency side, they're just trying to live up to ‘Super Bowl’, so they dip into the bag of tricks that repeatedly works: talking animals, what i'll do for a beer, babies, ball-kicks, aliens, cursing, etc. Trying to be louder than the next guy. The brief is given to tons of young teams who just want to be outrageous. To do something funny and buzz-worthy. Like the 'cram it in the boot' joke. It's mostly dumb, very little thinking about anything other than shock appeal.”
Probably true. Sad, isn’t it? Culture-destroying crap. But not really a waste of money. For the advertisers, yes, but that $3-million a spot is feeding a lot of copyrighters, producers, directors, agency execs and so on. Even buying a few BMW’s.
DVR Commercial-skipping
Jan/20/2011
A TV advertiser on the West Coast contacted me recently, much concerned about what she called “DVR commercial-skipping”. She said she had researched the subject, trying to find out how much it affected the viewing of TV commercials, but was surprised to find very little about it. This was my reply:
“With regard to DVR commercial-skipping, I think there are so many other factors that affect the viewing or non-viewing of commercials now that this one has probably faded into the background noise. I think the fragmentation of TV, i.e. the proliferation of channels, has a lot more to do with it. Also, the fact that today, we are all jaded by being bombarded with a thousand, if not more, ads a day, coming from all directions, many of which are just flat lies and most of which are at least somewhat misleading. So, I think we just tune out 99% of them to whatever extent we can. On the other hand, if we are already interested in buying something and an ad appears that relates to that particular thing, I think we may perk up our ears for that one.
For example, there are a jillion car commercials on TV, radio, in the newspaper, billboards, the web, everywhere. As long as we are happy with our car and not planning to buy a new one, we pay little attention to them. But if we are contemplating buying a new car and have researched (or whatever we do) enough to have an idea that maybe we like that new BMW 128i, then when a commercial comes on about it, we probably watch. If a local commercial from our nearby BMW dealer comes on, advertising a big rebate on new 128i's, we perk up again.
So, as I said before, I concentrate on trying to reach people who are already in the market for whatever my client is selling. I just want to sway them to take action now instead of waiting and take it with my client, not someone else. And I try to make my commercials so that the subject matter is obvious even at 3X fast-forward. And straightforward and clear in the offer so that nobody wonders what the commercial is about. I doubt that anyone has ever asked, after watching a Gary Davis Media commercial, "What was that about?" (But I wife and I ask each other that question all the time, when we watch national commercials on TV.)
That's the best I can do. If it gets to a point that TV commercials don't work anymore, then, well, time for me to retire. Happily, at least for the clients I usually work with, TV still delivers.”
“With regard to DVR commercial-skipping, I think there are so many other factors that affect the viewing or non-viewing of commercials now that this one has probably faded into the background noise. I think the fragmentation of TV, i.e. the proliferation of channels, has a lot more to do with it. Also, the fact that today, we are all jaded by being bombarded with a thousand, if not more, ads a day, coming from all directions, many of which are just flat lies and most of which are at least somewhat misleading. So, I think we just tune out 99% of them to whatever extent we can. On the other hand, if we are already interested in buying something and an ad appears that relates to that particular thing, I think we may perk up our ears for that one.
For example, there are a jillion car commercials on TV, radio, in the newspaper, billboards, the web, everywhere. As long as we are happy with our car and not planning to buy a new one, we pay little attention to them. But if we are contemplating buying a new car and have researched (or whatever we do) enough to have an idea that maybe we like that new BMW 128i, then when a commercial comes on about it, we probably watch. If a local commercial from our nearby BMW dealer comes on, advertising a big rebate on new 128i's, we perk up again.
So, as I said before, I concentrate on trying to reach people who are already in the market for whatever my client is selling. I just want to sway them to take action now instead of waiting and take it with my client, not someone else. And I try to make my commercials so that the subject matter is obvious even at 3X fast-forward. And straightforward and clear in the offer so that nobody wonders what the commercial is about. I doubt that anyone has ever asked, after watching a Gary Davis Media commercial, "What was that about?" (But I wife and I ask each other that question all the time, when we watch national commercials on TV.)
That's the best I can do. If it gets to a point that TV commercials don't work anymore, then, well, time for me to retire. Happily, at least for the clients I usually work with, TV still delivers.”
Truth-telling makes me less "credible"?
Dec/24/2010
I got an email the other day from, apparently, a salesperson at a TV station. He took offense at my saying that some TV salespeople were incompetent and/or dishonest, so that a new client should be careful. He said this observation destroyed my “credibility”. He opined that if he were a prospective new client of mine and he saw that I was demeaning other people in my business, he would not want to work with me.
I just could not find any way to make that make any sense at all to me. I asked him, via a return email if, by his reasoning, this meant that a criminal who denounced his fellow criminals would have less credibility than one who lied to cover up for them. I got no reply to that.
But we did exchange a couple more emails which ended with this person just telling me that my world view and his were obviously incompatible. With which I can only agree.
Is this a philosophy of putting loyalty over truth? Let’s leave aside why one would necessarily be “loyal” to others -- to the point of covering up their faults -- just because they work in a branch of your own industry. Let’s consider the results we are likely to get from taking this approach: encouraging and abetting dishonesty and incompetence as well as leading people astray and into the grasp of crooks, liars and incompetents. Isn’t that one of the things we criticize about our government in Washington, that politicians stick up for their fellow party or administration members out of loyalty rather than telling the truth to protect the people from them? When cops cover up the illegal acts of other cops don’t we condemn that? Isn’t this an evil?
Seems to me is it. My philosophy in this website is to just tell the truth as I see it. Now, I may be wrong. No doubt, I am wrong some of the time, about all kinds of things. That’s the nature of being human. But I at least try to tell the truth and I don’t stick up for people just because they are in the ad business.
And, by the way, while I do devote a page to what I call “unhelpful” TV salespeople, I also devote another page to the good ones, the “helpful” salespeople out there.
I just could not find any way to make that make any sense at all to me. I asked him, via a return email if, by his reasoning, this meant that a criminal who denounced his fellow criminals would have less credibility than one who lied to cover up for them. I got no reply to that.
But we did exchange a couple more emails which ended with this person just telling me that my world view and his were obviously incompatible. With which I can only agree.
Is this a philosophy of putting loyalty over truth? Let’s leave aside why one would necessarily be “loyal” to others -- to the point of covering up their faults -- just because they work in a branch of your own industry. Let’s consider the results we are likely to get from taking this approach: encouraging and abetting dishonesty and incompetence as well as leading people astray and into the grasp of crooks, liars and incompetents. Isn’t that one of the things we criticize about our government in Washington, that politicians stick up for their fellow party or administration members out of loyalty rather than telling the truth to protect the people from them? When cops cover up the illegal acts of other cops don’t we condemn that? Isn’t this an evil?
Seems to me is it. My philosophy in this website is to just tell the truth as I see it. Now, I may be wrong. No doubt, I am wrong some of the time, about all kinds of things. That’s the nature of being human. But I at least try to tell the truth and I don’t stick up for people just because they are in the ad business.
And, by the way, while I do devote a page to what I call “unhelpful” TV salespeople, I also devote another page to the good ones, the “helpful” salespeople out there.
Contracts are Cancelable
Oct/28/2010
Once in a while, I get an email from someone who is advertising on a local TV station somewhere and they tell me that they have a “contract that runs until...” such and such a date. Usually, these people believe that they are tied down to the TV station contract, even if their advertising is not working.
Almost always, that’s not the case. Unless you sign a special, unusual, contract with a TV station, your contract is cancelable with two weeks advance notice. That’s the standard in the trade.
Now, since there is no telling what all that fine print on the back of the TV station contract actually says, it is a good idea to clear this with your station rep before you sign anything or hand over any money. But know that most TV station advertisers A. never actually even sign those contracts and B. only advertise as long as the contracts are cancelable with two weeks notice.
Of course, your rep will tell you that you absolutely have to run for the whole length of your contract in order to get results. You have to wait for all those “impressions” to do their magical work. But if you are doing “immediate response” advertising and your offer is something that viewers really want, you won’t have to wait long for phone calls. If you go a week or two or three without getting any calls, well, something is seriously wrong. Unless you make a dramatic change (probably in your offer) you are unlikely to ever get any and continuing to pay the TV station to keep running that offer is just a waste. (For you, of course, not for them.)
Almost always, that’s not the case. Unless you sign a special, unusual, contract with a TV station, your contract is cancelable with two weeks advance notice. That’s the standard in the trade.
Now, since there is no telling what all that fine print on the back of the TV station contract actually says, it is a good idea to clear this with your station rep before you sign anything or hand over any money. But know that most TV station advertisers A. never actually even sign those contracts and B. only advertise as long as the contracts are cancelable with two weeks notice.
Of course, your rep will tell you that you absolutely have to run for the whole length of your contract in order to get results. You have to wait for all those “impressions” to do their magical work. But if you are doing “immediate response” advertising and your offer is something that viewers really want, you won’t have to wait long for phone calls. If you go a week or two or three without getting any calls, well, something is seriously wrong. Unless you make a dramatic change (probably in your offer) you are unlikely to ever get any and continuing to pay the TV station to keep running that offer is just a waste. (For you, of course, not for them.)
Slogans Create the Opposite Effect?
Sep/20/2010
In general, I am a hater of slogans. Sometimes, my clients and prospective clients will suggest slogans to me that they would like to use in their advertising and my reaction is usually negative. I just think that most advertising slogans scream, “This is a big fat lie!” even in the rare instances when they are true. Most of them don’t actually mean anything at all, if you really think about them.
Well, now, this morning, here’s an article by Alex Mindlin in the Business Section of the New York Times, “Refusing the Take Slogans at Face Value”. In a University of Miami study to be published next year in The Journal of Consumer Research, exposure to advertising slogans caused study subjects to do the exact opposite of what the slogans were telling them to do!
The researchers say that what we are seeing here is an unconscious attempt to “correct” for slogans that we believe are “just there to persuade us”.
Well, now, this morning, here’s an article by Alex Mindlin in the Business Section of the New York Times, “Refusing the Take Slogans at Face Value”. In a University of Miami study to be published next year in The Journal of Consumer Research, exposure to advertising slogans caused study subjects to do the exact opposite of what the slogans were telling them to do!
The researchers say that what we are seeing here is an unconscious attempt to “correct” for slogans that we believe are “just there to persuade us”.