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Take a look at this classic VW spot from 1969. It is a minute long, was very successful, and surprisingly, doesn't even mention the client's name until the end of the spot.
Many marketing types today believe you have to state the client or product's name in the first 10 seconds of every spot and then trumpet it at least every 10 seconds thereafter. But customers won't remember your name if they don't remember your commercial. You have to give them a reason to remember. Either a compelling stiuation or a relavent marketable truth, or ideally, both.
This VW commercial does both. It creates a compelling and entertaining situation, causing people to hang on to the end of the spot where the marketable truth is revealed as well as the name of the product that can deliver on that promise.
Take a look. Who knew (advertising) history could be so fun.
They say confession is good for the soul. So here goes:
As a somewhat Mad Men type guy myself, a CD/writer type who worked at a major agency on accounts including BP, Red Roof Inns, Bennigans, Steak and Ale, Mazda, Kroger, Meijer, etc. and now at a smaller agency where I am a partner working on local and regional accounts (sound familiar?), I love watching Mad Men becuase it echos (if somewhat distantly) the real world of advertising.
Now here's the confession part: I DVR-ed the 2-hour season premier of "Mad Men" and purposly started watching 20 minutes late so that I could zip past the commercials. I must be "Mad!!!" Here I am, a guy who makes his living and his career off of commercials, watching a show about people who make commercials, and I didn't watch the commercials!
Ah, there, I feel better. Now I did pay attention closely as I zipped past the commercials and noted that there wasn't a single one that I hadn't seen before (I watch a lot of TV). But the bigger point is this -- when a TV commercial is crammed into a 4-minute commercial break, even a pro-commercial person like myself has a hard time staying tuned in, let alone the multitude of folks who could give a crap.
My solution is to have fewer commercials per break. The human mind can only store so many messages at a time, anyway. So have fewer commercials, charge more to air them (clients will scream at first, until they understand that there is more of a chance people will actually watch them), and make Mad Men and Mad Women TV viewers a little less mad!
The theory being, that you wait six months and the stock would have appreciated and provided a profit of close to 30% of the price of an entry level iPad. Well, we missed that mark six months later by about 8%. BUT...if you had hung onto those two shares until today (roughly one month short of two years), the shares would have appreciated a whopping 144%. Which means your original investment of $484 (2x$242) would now be worth $1184 (at current stock price of $592). Which means you could sell one of your shares, buy an entry level iPad 3 (or add $7 from your pocket and get a 32GB iPad3), and still have one share of Apple left to appreciate further! Or wait three more months and pocket another quick $5.30 from the just-announced new quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share!
Either way, it supports a wise piece of advice I heard about investing a few years ago. When faced with a great item, you can choose to buy the product or buy (a piece of) the company. If you have a little bit of time, it's often better to buy the company!
Hey, someone at Nissan reads our Atomic Ideas blog....well maybe not. Either way,they finally are advertising "marketable truths" - ie , things they can say about their products that are true and should appeal to their target markets. Take a look.
It's a far cry from their "Fantasy" of a snowbaording pickup that does things no mass produced vehicle can, or ever will, do. Or their out-and-out lie of a spot (called that becuase they purposely tried to make it look as if it were a real news event-- so much so that some people believed it) which had a jet liner with a stuck nose gear land by placing it in the bed of a Nissan pickup that zooms out onto the tarmack.
But credit where credit is due. This spot gives consumers with a couple dozen grand in their pockets some real reasons to buy a Nissan. Whereas their previous pickup spots gave these same people a reason to say "hey, look at that" but no real reason to part with their dough.
Nissan is at it again. First they had a spot where their pickup races onto the tarmac to help a jet land by letting it put it's semi-extended front landing gear in the bed of the truck. Clearly fake, what does that say about the pickup? Since it's fantasy, NOTHING! I could just as easily (with a special effects budget and matting software) have my daughter's 2001 Chrysler Neon with a bent fender and 126,000 miles on it, race out and save the jet by putting it's landing gear on the roof. Both say the same for the Nissan pickup -- Nothing! Okay, you might remember the Nissan name. But once you think about the fact that they have no real benefits to talk about (which is why they present a fake scenario that no pickup could live up to) you're not going to seriously consider buying it. And isn't the whole reason advertising exists, is to try and put your product or service on top of someone's consideration list?
AND NOW...they come up with a snowboarding pickup. At least this time they try to avoid looking like they are LYING to us or trying to FAKE US OUT by clearly disclaiming it as FANTASY. So again, why should I buy the Nissan pickup??? Just because someone at their ad agency had a wet dream about depicting the vehicle like it was a snowboard and doing impossibly fake flips and jumps over snow covered hills? Substitute a Ford F-150, a Dodge Ram, or a rickshaw as the featured vehicle and the commercial would work equally as well, ie. not at all!
While you're at it, Nissan, if you're going to live in a fantasy world, why not just give your truck lazers, afterburners, and submarine qualities in your commercials, too? No real truck has those, either.
At least when I walk away from an F-150 commerical I remember a benefit or two, like Eco-boost. Or with Dodge Ram, towing capability. But with a Nissan Pickup commercial, other than the dubious entertainment value of "gee, I'd like to see a truck do that", there is no resaon to buy one, because, "gee, NO truck bound by the laws of physics can do that."
Sure a TV spot has to be attention getting, entertaining and likeable, but once the spot is over, if you want people to buy what you're advertising, it needs to have a marketable truth. In today's economy, it's not enough to have someone remember your product or service's name, they need to have a reason to part with their hard earned money to purchase it.
Sure it's a little early, but let's face it, how many of you would actually be reading this ON Thanksgiving? So here's something for you to gobble, gobble up before the big day! Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Atomic Ideas!
I saw this new Honda Odyssey TV spot the other day. I asked my colleague Greg what it meant and what just happened there. He said they were imitating the Ozzie Osbourne song, “Crazy Train.” Really? Why? Smarter thinking?
Usually when you imitate or parody a popular song in a TV spot you hope that it’s… well… popular and recognizable. Honda struck out on this one. It’s surprising because Honda has always been very solid in their concepts and cleverness over the years.
I like Honda. I’ve owned many over the years and currently drive one. But I have to ask, whom were they targeting in this spot? The worldwide fan base of Ozzie Osbourne? No offense intended, but just how big could that be? Is this a song tune people have stuck in their heads throughout the day? Or maybe Honda just wanted to tie in the song’s title with Honda’s unique mini-van attributes – a weak tongue-in-cheek connection. The visual production value is good - it’s the audio that stumped me. I did not understand what was going on until Greg told me it was an Ozzie Osbourne tune, (Hmm... how did he know that!)
By the way, I later discovered there’s a 90 second version on the web that features a lot more of the Ozzie song performed by all of the Honda’s eight passengers. But it’s the thirty second TV spot that’s the measure for successful selling. One shouldn’t have to rely on the rarely aired :90 to substantiate or fill in the blanks of the :30 concept. However, it’s still not clear what Honda is trying to say here. The new Honda Odyssey is a crazy train?
This is one of those spots where you wonder how it was presented to the client. Was it acted out? Did they go so far as to test it as an animatic? And, who said, “Go for it” on the client side? - An Ozzie fan?
The spot wraps up with the line, “Smarter Thinking from Honda.” I’m sure there was smarter thinking for the new Odyssey vehicle, I’m not so sure there was for the commercial.
On my Steeb-O-Meter (a rating system for evaluating projects on film, video, music, television and print on a scale of 1 - 63), I’m giving this spot a 26.
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