If It’s Good, They’ll Watch

I recently read an article that stated a fact we all know: Americans are trying to avoid advertising. We DVR shows, we station surf on the radio or subscribe to satellite  and now many Americans are avoiding websites that has overly intrusive ads. For us marketers this only means we have to try harder and harder, and get more creative, in order to reach our desired audiences. The TV show Desperate Housewives seems to have glommed onto this idea and is getting creative with its advertisers.

I was watching the show this past Sunday and started to fast forward (yes, even I do it) through a commercial break. Then I noticed list, the kind of list Santa Claus uses, with all the characters names on it. Curious as to what that was about, I rewound and watched. It was a Wal-Mart commercial with gifts for the main characters. (I did try to find the spot for this post, but it was nowhere to be found. So while I am touting Wal-Mart for being creative and creating this one-time use spot, I am disappointed in them for not posting the commercial on YouTube, or creating a cool social media campaign around it. How cool would it have been to give the characters what YOU thought they deserved from the Wal-Mart website?!) Now whether this spot stuck with me because I’m in advertising or because I was intrigued by it, I don’t know. The point is it worked. I stopped fast forwarding, rewound and watched the spot. Once it was over, guess what…I fast forwarded through the remainder of the commercials.

Recently, Sprint did a similar thing with the launch of the Palm Pre. They worked with the writers of DH to create the “Another Desperate Housewife” mini-mystery (see above video for part 1). A new spot would appear weekly with the enticing plot line of a philandering husband whose wife caught him when he received a text from his mistress. Basically it was an 8 week, :50 miniseries within a commercial break. I feel that these were even more effective than the Wal-Mart spot because there was an evolving plot line that kept viewers wanting more. And for those that missed one, the spots are also housed on abc.com (where they also served up a :30 pre-roll video from Sprint before each spot began). There were even some comments from people asking for more spots!

In both of these instances placement played a major role. The commercials were the first spot in a break, and therefore did not get lost in fast forwarding. To be effective, all elements had to be just right, and in these instances I think they hit the nail on the head.

Have there been any recent commercials that have sparked your interest?