Ms. Adverthinker

It seems like this commercial comes on every morning during MSNBC’s Morning Joe and it just makes me smile. Music can have such a huge impact on commercial likability. Enjoy.

I think the show Mad Men is absolutely ridiculous.  But, I don’t need to get into that again.  This SNL skit, however, is hilarious.

And, I am not a sports-minded person.

Remember the days when news anchors did the advertisements too?  I don’t.  But, I have seen video of it.  It seems that in our days of DVR, television shows are trying to find new ways to generate advertising revenue from those advertisers who are trying to avoid being fast-forwarded.  Jimmel Kimmel Live now has its host (Jimmy Kimmel) giving live ad-lib commercials to those who pay.  This is brilliant.  You can read more detail here.  This “new” technique is so popular that the show is almost sold out through the end of the year.  And, according to IAG Research:

“‘They are a good story for both the networks and for advertisers,’ says Rachel Mueller-Lust, executive VP of the network division. Mueller-Lust explained that IAG tracks ads shown alongside live commercials and those that aired standalone without any reference to program content. Live commercials coupled with a media buy give a huge lift to brand recall. ‘It is a very successful approach,’ Mueller-Lust said.”

My friend over at Monkey Bulb found this spot and I love it so much, I am posting it here too.

I love research: usually there is a nugget of information that is revealed and gives us an “a-ha” moment.  But I also love research because it always confirms things we instinctively know, but provides the data to support those instincts.  That is what an article in today’s WSJ does for me.  The article is all about recall of commercials watched through fast forward on a DVR.  Some key findings reported that the most successful ads:

• Concentrated the action and the brand’s logo in the middle of the screen.
• Didn’t rely on multiple scene changes, audio or text to tell the story.
• Often used familiar characters.
• Were more likely to have been seen once before live.

Duh.  But the implications are interesting:

• Advertisers may want to unveil new campaigns during live events like sports games and then re-run spots during programs likely to be recorded.
• Advertisers may want to test multiple edits of a spot to see how it performs when it is fast forwarded.

Coming off the Super Bowl surge of popularity for advertising (when commercials get higher audience than the game thanks to DVR devices), a NY Times had an article today noting the importance of the web for additional viewing of popular commercials. In fact, marketers should be thinking about ways to post all spots on the Internet on various sites:

“The ‘torture test’ for brands beyond their Super Bowl ads is how to make it easy for consumers to find the ads and engage with them, whether you put them on Web sites, on YouTube or make them easy to search for on Google,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at the Nielsen Online Strategic Services division of the Nielsen Company.

With broadcast production costs rising and media placement costs continuing to rise, it just makes sense to take the spots that have been produced for the paid media placement and use them in free media outlets that consumers actually seek out. As an advertising agency and strategic partner to our clients, we should be recommending that all produced spots are placed on the web.