 The Big Mac Observer? By Michael Willard |
The business of advertising is changing. That's why Sony almost got away with putting Spiderman ads on America's baseball bases, a sacrilege for purists like the Willard boys who grew up on sandlot games called pepper and shagging flies.
What can be next? Perhaps Mel Gibson strategically placing a Swatch-brand wristwatch on the lead man in the Biblical crucifixion? Perhaps changing the name of The Ukrainian Observer to The Big Mac Observer?
Maybe parliament could be commercially branded? The Coca-Cola Rada has a ring to it. It wasn't that long ago that a jewelry company commissioned a novel by a well-known author, the result being a mystery: “The Bulgari Connection”.
Product placement, writ tall, large and obscenely obvious, is the trend. Advertising, rarely sublime, these days often shouts with the enthusiasm of a carnival barker. The more audiences tune out, the more in-your-face advertising becomes.
This has led to some rather juvenile executions, and scatological mini-jokes often seem to dominate. The emphasis often tends not to be either on product or on message, but on communicating a punch line.
Creative shops lose perspective in their passion to be creative, when the object also should be to move the audience to action.
This phenomenon is due, in large part, to an effort to break through television's advertising clutter and also the anticipated demise - over time - of the 30-second spot. Media soothsayers predict TV advertising will eventually go the way of the Spotted Owl. Major networks see a 50 percent decline in commercial viewership in 10 years.
It is a fact that those commercial-zapping recorders (PVR's) that are becoming prominent in the West will eventually make their way East, and that the Ukrainian viewer will take a rebellious delight in deleting the messages we ad people have lovingly produced.
All this is not bad. It should force advertisers to be more creative, to invent new ways of message delivery, and not to just scream, or plaster product names on every square meter of available space. Can laser ads reflected off clouds be far away?
More targeted advertising will become the norm, as well as commercials that ask something of you, such as solving a puzzle or riddle. The commercials will have, in essence, to be better than the programming. Not a difficult task, some might say.
The Holy Grail of advertisers will be to find the visual equivalent to the television. Obviously, personal computers will play a role, given the fact that messages can be targeted to everyone's tastes and desires.
However, we're not there yet. Pop-up ads are maddening and banners, research suggests, are rather weak in drawing power.
Product placement must be strategic, and have a reason for being. It must communicate with impact quickly, and with nanosecond brevity. It is not sufficient that it be merely one product among many that crops up during a 120-minute movie.
It must have relevance to the scenario. The James Bond movies have been effective at this, particularly with BMW and the Ericsson mobile phone. The mere glimpse of Cameron Diaz reaching for a bar of Irish Spring in the shower is not sufficient.
A year ago, the long-branded Winston Cup NASCAR auto race series bit the dust. It became less relevant because tobacco advertising was no longer allowed on television, where most fans saw their sport and worshiped their favorite drivers.
After time, many people lost the connection between Winston Cup and the product. Today it is called the Nextel Series, named after a communications company, and without the limitations of tobacco advertising.
Trends in advertising are challenging creative shops to look back to the future, back to yesteryear when advertisers owned the entire TV program, branding them the Texaco Star Theater, the Philco Television Playhouse or the Alcoa Hour.
One wonders if there will one day be a return to the serial sign by the roadway, as Burma Shave used in the 1940s and '50s in America, or to the colorfully painted barn roofs which proclaimed "See Rock City" and gave the number of miles to the tourist site.
With new trends come new responsibilities for advertising agencies and advertisers. Billboard clutter can be just as annoying as television commercial clutter.
One remembers the first dazzling visit to London's Piccadilly Circus and the magical neon cityscape of Hong Kong from a ship in the harbor. Times Square in New York and even Kyiv's Independence Square, actually improved by flickering lights.
But that's not always the case.
Sometimes we advertisers act with reckless abandon, such as with attempting to contaminate America's favorite pastime, baseball. In that case, the outrage caused the baseball commissioner to back down, and ban Spiderman from the bases.
Then there is what was once-beautiful Park Alley, a main, tree-lined thoroughfare coming into Kyiv. Once beautiful, now it is a monument to tastelessness. It seems someone felt it necessary to dot the landscape with city light billboards.
|
More in the section:
The Man With 4,392 Pet Peeves
Bowling For Bush Or, Dining On Jellybeans
Read also previous issue' articles:
Expats: Why Are We Here?
The Luckiest Man Alive
Being Vladimir Putin
The Age of Unreason?
Yes, I Give a Damn
News:
The Rush to Judgment
|
| |
CONTACT US |
|
|
|
