Commercials have taken center stage, as of late, due to the recent Super Bowl game and all the hype and hoopla that surrounds ads shown during the game. For some Super-Bowl watchers, the football score is less important than the half-time show and commercials. During normal cable and network broadcasts, commercials are the time when bathrooms are visited, dogs are let out for potty breaks, wet laundry is tossed into dryers, and dirty dishes are thrown into dishwashers. Yes, we love to hate commercials. They can elicit laughter or boredom, bordering on disdain. During political campaigns commercials even make us angry, especially when the 'spots' begin long before the actual election.
What makes a good commercial? Well, that depends on your point of view of just about everything. What is humorous to one will make another person upset and vice versa. From the Madison Avenue perspective, an effective commercial is one that results in the viewer remembering the name of the product, although some commercials remain memorable long after the brand name slips from the memory. Some of the Super Bowl commercials that have currently have tongues a-twitter involve chimpanzees, Detroit, Doritos, Pugs, race car drivers, beer and mountainous foreign countries. This is the fodder of water-cooler conversations, coffee break tete-a-tetes and lunchroom dialogues.
One current ad for a tax-preparation company involves a giant, pink stuffed bunny being bumped repeatedly against a building set to be razed. Of course, it is difficult to tell what is real in any visual media because special effects have far out-paced the eye's ability to discern reality from digitizing. I doubt that any company actually went to the effort and subsequent cost to buy a giant, pink stuffed bunny but, nevertheless, I find the commercial highly annoying and always make it a point to ignore the commercial. However, what am I doing? Writing about the commercial. In some part of my sub-conscious, it has me hooked and, therefore, Madison Avenue has been partially successful. While I am not certain I remember the name of the tax-preparation company, I do remember the stupid commercial.
Oops, I just revealed my bias by using the word stupid. I could say I find the commercial stupidly irritating or irritatingly stupid. Either way, you get my drift. I much prefer seeing chimpanzees imitate irritatingly stupid drivers or those magnificent draft horses strutting their stuff. My hit is your miss but we talk about them both.
Once again, Madison Avenue "got us at hello".
Ancora imparo
