Ad Vantage
People often ask why someone doesn't invent a device to automatically skip commercials- especially after seeing the same ad for the sixth or seventh time that evening. This is based on the misconception that we, the viewing audience, are the customers for the TV industry. In fact it's the advertisers who are the customers; we are the product being rented to them. The advertisers pay depending on how many (and what age) pairs of eyeballs are expected for a given show.
The networks like being paid to show the ads, which is why the amount of ads is steadily increasing. You've noticed how classic old shows are cut to pieces for syndication; even twenty years ago we used to get more show per hour. Now we get more reminders that we smell bad and that deep-fried grease is a better alternative to anything we can cook at home.
It doesn't help that so many ads are just irritating. In ad school they actually teach that irritating is a good thing, since it helps their product to stick in our mind. The people who made the "Head-On" ad must have been freebasing their caffeine the day they learned that in ad school. Just wait until these folk market a hemorrhoid cream.
Many ads are just surreal. Certainly the short-attention-span cuts of less than a second help to obscure the sponsors' wares (And when you fast-forward these ads on tape, the effect is like a subliminal cut). By now I've lost count of how many times I've seen ads that just strived to completely hide the product they were ostensibly selling. "They showed her ass a lot, so they might have been selling jeans... or a weight-loss pill. Or a car."
There are uses for ads, however, besides just paying for our favorite shows. It's almost impossible to go through an entire commercial break without seeing at least one character so magnificently rock-stupid that you can't help but to hold your own IQ in a somewhat higher regard. Some of these commercial characters make sitcom fathers look like geniuses in comparison.
My personal favorite is the insurance ad where we see a crane pulling the moron's car out of the lake. Cut to Mr. "I Saved Big Money By Performing My Own Lobotomy At Home!" saying "The map was a big disappointment."
Riiiiiiiiiight The map shows a road, the windshield shows a BIG HONKING LAKE... I can see how he might have trouble figuring out which to believe. It really makes me want to sign up with that company, and have my rates go up when this idiot mistakes a crease on his road map for a bridge across the Grand Canyon.
The networks like being paid to show the ads, which is why the amount of ads is steadily increasing. You've noticed how classic old shows are cut to pieces for syndication; even twenty years ago we used to get more show per hour. Now we get more reminders that we smell bad and that deep-fried grease is a better alternative to anything we can cook at home.
It doesn't help that so many ads are just irritating. In ad school they actually teach that irritating is a good thing, since it helps their product to stick in our mind. The people who made the "Head-On" ad must have been freebasing their caffeine the day they learned that in ad school. Just wait until these folk market a hemorrhoid cream.
Many ads are just surreal. Certainly the short-attention-span cuts of less than a second help to obscure the sponsors' wares (And when you fast-forward these ads on tape, the effect is like a subliminal cut). By now I've lost count of how many times I've seen ads that just strived to completely hide the product they were ostensibly selling. "They showed her ass a lot, so they might have been selling jeans... or a weight-loss pill. Or a car."
There are uses for ads, however, besides just paying for our favorite shows. It's almost impossible to go through an entire commercial break without seeing at least one character so magnificently rock-stupid that you can't help but to hold your own IQ in a somewhat higher regard. Some of these commercial characters make sitcom fathers look like geniuses in comparison.
My personal favorite is the insurance ad where we see a crane pulling the moron's car out of the lake. Cut to Mr. "I Saved Big Money By Performing My Own Lobotomy At Home!" saying "The map was a big disappointment."
Riiiiiiiiiight The map shows a road, the windshield shows a BIG HONKING LAKE... I can see how he might have trouble figuring out which to believe. It really makes me want to sign up with that company, and have my rates go up when this idiot mistakes a crease on his road map for a bridge across the Grand Canyon.
I think a big problem with a lot of ads is that they go for recognition rather than recall. People can remember this really unusual ad, but most of them couldn't tell you what the ad was actually for.
Passionate Apathy
In the advertising texts they seemed to equate "irritation" with "memorable." My instructors tended to be rather skeptical about that. If your memories of tha ad are bad, then that may well not increase your desire to buy the product.
The 'recognition' factor is indeed independent of anyone remembering the product- if it was ever even clearly shown in the ad. For the most part I don't even try to figure out what most ads are hawking, just let the sound and images wash over me... it saves a lot of money on hallucinogens!!