MacGrubber!
Hey, advertising types, worried about the eroding marketing share of network television, exacerbated by the use of DVRs to skip advertising? Maybe you could try making advertising that people actually would want to watch?
The rest of this series can be found here, it's actually surprisingly long. Last week's Saturday Night Live featured a new MacGrubber ad (featuring members of SNL's cast) mixed into nearly every commercial break. This solves a lot of the problems people have with advertising:
1) They're old: From my (admittedly limited and non-scientific) research, I don't think people have anything intrinsically against advertising. I think we all know a couple people who just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. But no one does that any other time of the year. Why? Because Super Bowl ads are frequently premieres. They also typically have higher production values, and more focus on being entertainment (especially humor). What people dislike is having their time wasted. No one wants to watch the same thing thirty times a day, every day, for months. Ad campaigns like the MacGrubber campaign keep things fresh with new material.
2) They're boring: Before this, there have only been three basic archetypes of Pepsi ads in my lifetime: The sexy pop pitchman(the Spears / Timberlake model), "funny" pitchman (the Bob Dole model), or the feel-good nostalgia ad (the "people bonding over Pepsi" model). Whatever else you can say about the MacGrubber campaign, it is unexpectedly bold of Pepsi in that the drink starts off seeming almost superfluous to the ad campaign. And when it does factor in to the story of the ad, the Pepsi gets everybody killed. Not exactly the traditional advertising model of portraying the product in an unrelentingly positive light. But I'm so fucking bored of everything for sale being pitched to me as Jesus Christ reborn in a consumer product. I think the subtext of this ad is that products are just products, and it's ridiculous to expect a can of Pepsi to always save the day. Aside from how nice a change of pace it is to see an ad that doesn't insult my intelligence, this makes the ad campaign memorable, and is also scoring Pepsi free viral advertising.
Obviously, there are limits to this line of advertising. Every ad that runs during SNL can't feature the cast, or they'd have no time to make the actual show. But you know what? One "unique" ad per break (and even then, not every break) was enough to get me to start paying attention during the entire break. I didn't want to risk missing it. Also, I'm sure not every TV show will have cast members willing to do ads like this; the format lends itself more to comedians than "serious" actors. Perhaps doing these sort of ads will become a standard duty of the show's comedic relief. Still, this is the best counter-TiVo idea I've seen yet.
The rest of this series can be found here, it's actually surprisingly long. Last week's Saturday Night Live featured a new MacGrubber ad (featuring members of SNL's cast) mixed into nearly every commercial break. This solves a lot of the problems people have with advertising:
1) They're old: From my (admittedly limited and non-scientific) research, I don't think people have anything intrinsically against advertising. I think we all know a couple people who just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. But no one does that any other time of the year. Why? Because Super Bowl ads are frequently premieres. They also typically have higher production values, and more focus on being entertainment (especially humor). What people dislike is having their time wasted. No one wants to watch the same thing thirty times a day, every day, for months. Ad campaigns like the MacGrubber campaign keep things fresh with new material.
2) They're boring: Before this, there have only been three basic archetypes of Pepsi ads in my lifetime: The sexy pop pitchman(the Spears / Timberlake model), "funny" pitchman (the Bob Dole model), or the feel-good nostalgia ad (the "people bonding over Pepsi" model). Whatever else you can say about the MacGrubber campaign, it is unexpectedly bold of Pepsi in that the drink starts off seeming almost superfluous to the ad campaign. And when it does factor in to the story of the ad, the Pepsi gets everybody killed. Not exactly the traditional advertising model of portraying the product in an unrelentingly positive light. But I'm so fucking bored of everything for sale being pitched to me as Jesus Christ reborn in a consumer product. I think the subtext of this ad is that products are just products, and it's ridiculous to expect a can of Pepsi to always save the day. Aside from how nice a change of pace it is to see an ad that doesn't insult my intelligence, this makes the ad campaign memorable, and is also scoring Pepsi free viral advertising.
Obviously, there are limits to this line of advertising. Every ad that runs during SNL can't feature the cast, or they'd have no time to make the actual show. But you know what? One "unique" ad per break (and even then, not every break) was enough to get me to start paying attention during the entire break. I didn't want to risk missing it. Also, I'm sure not every TV show will have cast members willing to do ads like this; the format lends itself more to comedians than "serious" actors. Perhaps doing these sort of ads will become a standard duty of the show's comedic relief. Still, this is the best counter-TiVo idea I've seen yet.