Over the last week or so, I've been watching a lot of football on Fox. And I have to say, product promotion on college sports, especially Fox sports, is out of hand. During the Fiesta Bowl for instance, I had to miss a play so Fox could finish a Nissan promo. There were at least a half a dozen gratuitous Gatorade sideline jug shots. And if I saw the another Chevy Silverado commercial during the NFL playoffs I might very well have needed to shoot myself. My favorite was Chevy actually pushing the fact their truck gets 2 mpg better gas mileage versus Ford 150. 2 MPG... can you say desperate?
As advertisers, we've lost our sense of consumer. I mean really, does anyone really want to see the same commercial 6-8 times in a three-hour span? I don't care how good it is, it ends up doing more to hurt the brand than help it. Sure the media buy results in a 95% Reach with a 5+ frequency and yes, consumers don't sit glued to their TV during a football game so they could likely miss your spot once or twice... but really. We need to step back and logic check our advertising programs. There is such a thing as too much promotion.
As advertisers, we need to figure out a better way to create conversations with our consumer. Conversations that the consumer wants to enter into and enjoys participating in with us. We need to find more natural ways to weave product and service messages into the dialog and the content without being so heavy handed.
Likely this will mean we need to find less expensive production methods or maybe completely rethink the 30 second spot to make it more realistic to expect a client to cut more spots. Or maybe we just have to create better work so that we and our clients are comfortable knowing that even if our spot only runs in the first and third quarter, the consumer WILL see it and recall it. Or maybe so darn good they go to the bathroom during the game instead of the commercial. Think it can't be done? Think Super Bowl party... well at least before last year's effort. What do you think? If you could counsel corporate America, what would you tell them to do?
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