Thursday, March 7, 2013

Judging Commercials

I watch far too much TV... which means I watch far too many commercials. So much so that I tend to tune them out. And since the point of commercials is to convince you to spend money on their product, that means that a vast majority of commercials fail in their mission.

To me, a great commercial should do three things:

  1. Be memorable
  2. Be positive towards them
  3. Associate the commercial with the product

Far too many commercials fail in the third task. For instance, watch the commercial below:


Then wait 30 minutes...  Go ahead, I'll stay here...

Now, that commercial hits (1) and (2)- it's memorable, it's funny, you like it.

But do you remember what product they are pitching? Hell, do you remember what COMPANY they are pitching?

Maybe you do. But I'll bet most people won't. They'll remember the funny Viking commercials ("The spiked heels are WORKING!"), but forget that those Vikings are selling Spark Cards and working for Capitol One

Then there are commercials that stick with you, but for all the wrong reasons:




OK- most people remember these commercials, and most people can associate them with Apple.
But for a large part of the audience- myself included- they found 'Apple' to be smug, and had much more empathy to 'PC'. The result was a backlash- I'll bet Microsoft LOVED these commercials.

In my mind, the best commercials out there today are:



Memorable, funny, clever, associated with the product- I don't even drink beer and I've tried Dos Equis. Very successful.

But, to my mind, the greatest commercial of all time- even 40+ years later...

... hell, I'll hold off the video and just say one thing.

"Hey Mikey! He Likes It!"




Everyone who took part in that commercial should get a royalty check from Kellogg's until the end of time.

1 comment:

  1. Psst, hun...Life is put out by Quaker Oats, not Kellogg's...

    ReplyDelete