Posts Tagged ‘commercial’

Must Viral Videos Start with a :30?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Last week the folks at our office were passing around links to the commercial above from Old Spice. It’s another manly ad from the brand’s agency, Wieden+Kennedy, and it certainly earned lots of LOLs in our office space. I personally found it amusing but very rushed. Many of the words are said so quickly that I missed them and had to go back. I wondered why the pace was so quick, until I began to recall sitting in an editing suite reviewing commercials with my then-agency when I used to be a brand manager at P&G. It came together for me when I looked down at the total time of the video on the corner of the screen and saw :30. Yep, this was a TV commercial also uploaded to YouTube.

Now, let me begin by saying that I don’t have an incredibly strong opinion on this case. Regular readers know that I usually come down hard one way or the other in these blog posts. But in this situation I have more of a working theory to air—and I’m not soft-pedaling just because Old Spice is a brand from one of our big clients, Procter & Gamble, and one of my long-time friends works on the brand.

My working theory is that starting with the 30-second ad is no longer the right way to do branded video. Note first that I am talking “branded video” instead of “commercials.” I think a lot of smart marketers and agencies are starting to reset how they think about “sight, sound, and motion” and are defining their success by whether or not people are choosing to view and share their marketing, rather than the number of impressions that can be bought.

My point is this: In a world in which it is more important for people to choose to engage with video, you can work without the confines of a 30-second box. One of the best early examples is BMW films, which became a DVD series. Other examples range from Will It Blend to the recent Coca-Cola Happiness Factory that I blogged about a few days ago. In these cases the focus is on creating video that people enjoy viewing. With this freedom, filmmakers can go to two minutes and far beyond. Remember, 30 seconds is no magical measure of the ideal consumer attention span—but rather a number that worked for TV networks to slam in multiple messages between content breaks.

So it feels to me that Old Spice and its agency started with the 30-second hole to fill and fought to push its funny content into the box, rather than making the most fun video possible, posting that online, and then, perhaps, placing an edited version onto the TV screen. Then again, people have chosen to view the Old Spice video on YouTube about 1.5 million times (and counting). I might be wrong. What do you think?

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Posted in Organizational Behavior, video | 3 Comments »

Pedigree Takes a Step Back

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Ever think about getting an unusual pet like a bison, a boar, an ostrich, or a rhino? See what happens to the pet owners in our Super Bowl ad, and then you’ll know why you should get a dog.”

And so, with those words in a press release, the Pedigree brand stepped back from its successful move to meaningful marketing and back to the traditional advertiser’s home sweet home of humorous and meaningless television commercials. Oh, how the Super Bowl ad fest and desperate advertising agencies continue to pull brands away from what counts in people’s lives today.

A few months ago, I lauded the Pedigree brand in this space for its brilliant move to champion the cause of dogs in need of adoption. The brand’s emotional, heart-tugging print ads showed cute dogs behind fences, waiting for people to bring them into their lives. Pedigree stayed true to its new cause by putting out full-page ads to ask President Obama to adopt a shelter dog as First Pet. Brilliant.

The campaign raised millions for the cause, and raised national awareness for this issue. The result was both a significant increase in dog adoptions, and a significant increase in the brand’s sales. I even praised Pedigree’s advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day for donating a $100,000 advertising award prize to the cause.

I started to worry, though, a few months ago when I heard that Pedigree would be buying a Super Bowl ad in this year’s game. It smacked of waste for a business that seemed to have gotten the right new marketing religion. While wary, my hope was that the brand would bring another heart-wrenching call for dog adoptions, using its emotional connection to bring another needed message to millions of viewers.

Alas, we have the actual Pedigree ad, which was posted days ahead of time by the brand on YouTube and other sites. Here it is again in case you didn’t see it or forgot about it:

This ad misses the mark mainly because it has nothing to do with the core proposition of the Pedigree product (quality nutrition for dogs), nor what it claims as its cause-related purpose as a brand (to put unwanted dogs in loving homes). Instead, Pedigree and its agency have gone for the traditional, clever, 30-second diversion. This ad could have been done for any other brand in the category-well, for any brand that has no differentiated positioning. It’s also a big step back from its previous TV campaign, “Dogs Rule” (thanks Advergirl).

Meanwhile, with its move to a fairly obvious commercial cliche, the brand lost the chance to leverage the emotional pull of the brand and pet ownership. Imagine what could have been done if the brand and agency chose to pump up “man’s best friend” emotional bonding, rather than following the well-worn humor path? What if the brand made news by saying that it would skip advertising in the Super Bowl, and instead donate the equivalent of the cost of a spot ($3 million) to its pet adoption fund. In this time of economic and social responsibility, I guarantee this would have garnered more meaningful PR coverage. I guess they were afraid that love would not win first place in the USA Today ad contest, nor win in Cannes this summer. Pity.

The blame for this goes to both the brand and agency, and I’m surprised by neither. After some momentum in turning the brand around-through meaningful marketing, I might add-they got greedy. I guess both are just too mired in the historic measure of marketing success. I hope this is just a minor sidetrack in the evolving Pedigree story. Time will tell.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning | 3 Comments »

Motrin Feels the Pain

Monday, November 17th, 2008

(Updated link from Seth Godin – adds to this theme of this post, in that TV is a broadcast, push medium)

If you’re an avid marketing blog reader and writer like me, you probably logged on this morning and were surprised to read about the debacle for the Motrin brand around its new 45-second commercial.  Many people are offering advice and lessons, but let me be the first to say this and other inevitable controversies will destroy the TV commercial marketing model.

In case you haven’t heard the buzz, here’s a summary of the Motrin issue: Its new ad (above) attempts to connect with moms by talking about how some people “wear their babies” in things like wraps and Baby Bjorns (my wife’s choice for our kids, btw). The ad is an attempt by Motrin to convince mothers that the brand “feels their pain.” But a certain, very vocal set of moms is inflicting pain on the brand. They find the language of the ad offensive, and they have started a “Twitter Storm” of sharing their anger with friends and followers. The brand has since taken down its entire website, and is sending a letter to some angry customers.

Many important mom and marketing bloggers have hit on key lessons. For example, Dave Knox makes the great point that brands must continually monitor what people are saying about their brand. And Karoli wonders why the brand didn’t test this ad in some focus groups that have… um… moms with babies. Adam Kmiec counters that the brand team lacks courage.

But I think the “meta lesson” here is that this shows how hard it is to win with interruptive commercials. Let me first say that I’ve been there. Working on the Tide brand at P&G, I made a few ads that pissed people off. We ran a campaign called “Family Ties” with commercials that showcased family challenges, and how Tide could help solve problems and increase bonds. A lot of people loved the ads, but we always got our fair share of angry letters. People complained when we portrayed an interracial couple, and again when we featured a 40-something new mom. With each occasion we huddled as a team to consider our reaction and whether to pull the plug or not. We survived each scare, but this was back in the late ’90s, before the modern media world arrived…

Today, both general consumer groups and special interests have powerful tools at their disposal. Blogs, discussion boards, and Twitter are now used to spread and incite anger quickly. Search results keep the mistakes top-of-mind for years.

And while the pressure from consumers increases, the need to be noticed is forcing advertisers to take more risks. Brands are buying edgy creative that catches attention above the other 3,000 ads we see each day. And while they might connect with their majority target market, they end up inciting the vocal minority groups (who never asked to have the ad shoved in their faces).

The result is inevitable: GM is blasted for showing a robot that commits suicide. Snickers pulls its ad in which two guys accidentally kiss, and another with Mr. T firing candy at an effeminate jogger. State Farm pulled an ad that humiliated people who bike to work. There is even an organization called Fathers and Husbands that regularly protests ads that make fun of white male men.

What should the GMs, Snickers, State Farms, Motrins, and every other mass marketer of the world do about this constant, growing risk of angering an ever-more-vocal percentage of the population? It’s simple: Stop working to create the perfect 30-second story to interrupt them, and start figuring out ways to add value to their lives.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning | 8 Comments »