Say you’re watching your favorite show, and it’s time for a commercial. But before the commercial is played, you see, “We Will Return To Our Show In 30 Seconds.” What would you do?
Would you sit thru the commercial? Would you fast forward if the show had been recorded? Would you see if you could find a snack in half a minute?
TV execs are hoping you’ll just sit and watch.
This season, there will be some new techniques for commercial breaks, all of them designed to get you to watch, or engage you. Some shows will only show one 30 second spot at a time. Some shows will be using the actors in character, so that maybe you won’t notice they’ve gone to a commercial.
Well, of course, none of this is new.
Forty years ago and more, actors from TV shows were making pitches in character for hundreds of products…everyone from Dick Van Dyke to the Flintstones.
Actually, network execs have been saying for sometime that they’re worried about folks flashing forward on their DVRs. Hmmm. Let’s think about that for a minute. Which TV spots would you NOT want to fast forward thru? Isn’t there one particular time of year when TV commercials actually make headlines?
That January Football Game.
Why?
Why are THOSE spots watched, and talked about, and remembered, and discussed, and replayed?
Could be that they’re just a tad bit more creative than the norm? Could it be that here are a group of advertisers who understand that the way to engage the audience is to also entertain them?
Why does that happen just in January?
Ok, there are actually some pretty good spots the rest of the year.. I like PC vs Mac, the E*Trade baby, and IKEA. But just like radio, TV spots don’t have to be funny. They just have to be memorable. They just have to show their benefit to the consumer.
Make it relevant, and they will watch.
Folks will watch “TV’s Funniest Commercials Part 8?, but they will remember Mean Joe Green and the kid with the Coke bottle because it touched them. And that’s going to sell a whole lot more product than Smiling Bob could ever dream of.
–That’s a wrap.