A Rubber Door » advertising

Dodge Charger Commercial Doesn’t Speak to Women – So?

Spencer — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:09:33 +0000

During the Super Bowl, Chrysler ran a commercial for their mid-age crisis auto, the Dodge Charger. Now I’m not a man that has ever needed a car to express my maleness, but some men do – this commercial was targeted towards them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbiPlIWRAw

This commercial was designed to not be ignored. It’s creative execution is done in a way that makes it stand out. It cuts through the clutter and targets the one type of guy – we’ll call him PW for short. This commercial was destined to offend – and it has. Some women have gone online to express their dissatisfaction with and ad that doesn’t address them. On one blog posting a about the Dodge commercial, I saw the following comment:

I don’t care what car you’re selling, you’re still selling to women.

And then there’s this parody ad:

I think that for too long there’s been the assumption that men abdicate all decision to the women in their life. I’m sure some men do. But what about men that have backbones; or men that don’t like women in that way; or men that have a relationship where they consult on decisions with their partner? Why does every product need to be sold to women?

Women have earned the right to vent at this male dominated society – and I understand where the parody is coming from, but not every message is meant for every person. As a black person, I tend to skip over ads for tanning salons – I assume they’re not meant for me.

Advertising has swung to target women so decidedly, that advertisers don’t know how to speak to men. The only way they know how to is to insult women, show T&A, or feature scatological humor.

All this commercial does is target men in one of the few ways the advertiser knows how to. If the ad doesn’t ad doesn’t speak to you, I say you ignore it.

What do you think?

I’m not cool enough to be a Mac

Spencer — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:35:40 +0000

Finally Microsoft is running an effective ad campaign. If you haven’t seen it, Lauren (cute redhead too) is given $1,000 to buy a computer. She wants it to have a large monitor and a comfortable keyboard. First she heads to an Apple store and immediately leaves when she realizes that Apple has one computer in that price range – the Macbook with a 13″ screen. She then heads over the Best Buy where she finds an number of machines that fit her price range and leaves with an HP that costs $699.

In this economy…

I have to say that this commercial is smart. If you need to buy a computer, absolutely price is a concern, and considering nothing else, it’s an area that Macs can’t compete in. Of course there are other issues. I’m currently writing this post on my wife’s Sony Vaio laptop which is just a year and a half old. I would have preferred to buy a Mac for her, but a month prior to getting married, the price of a Mac was prohibitive. She needed a computer to get things done, so I got her this computer for $600. It has gotten things done, but there is the “you get what you pay for” issue. Most of the time we’ve owned this machine, this computer has been a pain to use. Vista was horrible. The amount of call trialware on the computer was appalling. Over the year Microsoft has made Vista better, and I’ve done things to make the computer bearable. Honestly most people don’t care that much. They don’t expect much out of their computer which makes a Windows machine perfect for them.

Apple need to do a better job at the low end of the price spectrum. There is absolutely no reason Apple shouldn’t be able to provide a Macbook with a 15″ monitor for under $1,000. As people begin to pay more attention to their budget and bottom line, the extra dollars may be too much for their wallet. Apple needs to be more inclusive.

Hilarious Geico commercial

Spencer — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:07:58 +0000

This may be my favorite commercial. Thank god for YouTube for keeping things like this alive. The kid in these Geico Mike Wallace commercials is so dead on. Hope he has a career.

Most disingenuous thank you ever: Best Buy

Spencer — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:13:13 +0000

I got this yesterday morning from Best Buy. I’m a loyal customer, but they’re abusing my email address.

Alan Cumming?

Spencer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:54:57 +0000

I don’t know if Alan Cumming is being funny here (really expensive joke). Anyway the commercial is funny; intentionally or not.

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Cumming The Fragrance

New JCPenney Commercial (and song)

Spencer — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 05:02:01 +0000

Update (2/26/09) – Follow the link for info on the music from the JCPenney Commercials played during the the 2009 Oscars.

Update: Here’s the music to a second American Living commercial

Update: Click the following link for more info on the JC Penney American Living commercial (played during the 2008 Oscars)

Update: Click the following link for more info on the 2007 Holiday JCPenney Holiday commercials

Update: Click the following link if you’re looking for the Music Box commercial that is currently running.

Last night during the Oscars JCPenney introduced a new ad campaign that included a great song by a band called Forever Thursday (which may just be Aussie singer Melanie Horsnell – not sure). Sounds a lot like something Fiona Apple or Regina Spektor would do. You can check it out at her Myspace page:

Update: Now it’s on iTunes

Forever Thursday

Update: Forever Thursday is a company that creates music and film for advertising. You can listen to the song at the link above.

You can see the JCPenney commercial here.

The campaign signifies a slick new direction for JCPenney. A lot like Target in look and feel. It looks like they commissioned their own music – the look isn’t as distinct as the Target campaign, but based on sound alone, it may make a mark. Smart move for them.

I Hate My WB – Worst Commercial EVER!

Spencer — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:25:10 +0000

I just had to watch the Phillies throw away a sure win by leaving the bases loaded in the 7th and 8th inning and then friggin’ Arthur Rhodes giving up a game winning home run in the 9th.

To add insult to injury, they then run the worst commercial ever to close out the game. They run this awful WB Mason commercial about 3 times again.

Looks like WB Mason was so embarrased by this shite of a commercial, they had YouTube pull it. I’m wondering if we can have them do the same with the actual commercial.

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The Pitfalls of Stock Art

Spencer — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:15:50 +0000

Maybe the following link is just funny for marketing types like myself- but I’m going to gamble that others will find it funny too. It’s about a woman that gets seen a lot because she’s a stock-art model. If you’re not familiar with stock-art, basically you can buy images to use in advertising, websites, etc. The problem is if you can buy the image, so can others.

The woman in question hawks bags, dating sites, beauty tips, etc. I’ve personally seen her on a advertising weight-loss and Dominos Pizza.

My friend Grace even found her on a site she did the copy for.

The message here is take caution when using stock-art images.

Here’s the link – read all 3 pages, there’s a twist in the story at the end.

An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story

Generic Snakes on a Plane title

Spencer — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:05:36 +0000

(All the good titles are gone – Snakes on a Blog, taken. Twists on the title are so April.)

Kristen and I saw the much hyped Snakes on a Plane Saturday night. Expecting huge crowds, we stopped by the theater early to grab tickets, so imagine my surprise when we arrive and the show is not even close to a sellout. The entertainment media is already calling the movie a flop – only taking in $15.2 million dollars – about have the cost to make the movie.

A lot of the stories are claiming that this is an indictment of the blogosphere, buzz marketing, and internet marketing in general. My take is this – New Line Cinema made a mistake in relying soley on the internet and word of mouth marketing to market this movie – yes it’s cheaper, but if they wanted really huge numbers, it would have helped to build on the buzz with a wider broadcast campaign.

That said, this movie is a success because they were able to viably launch a movie without a huge media spend – that really hadn’t been done before. This movie doesn’t even get made without the internet. Media stories stating that SOAP isn’t successful are in part self-serving because they’re the ones that have lost out on ad dollars.

On to the movie – if for some reason you’re expecting this to be an Oscar level film you’ll be dissappointed. SOAP is a summer escapism – think Speed with less IQ. Lot’s of Samuel L., snakes, and laugh out loud lines (intentional and unintentional). Not a good movie, but it lives up to my expectations, and I’m fine with that. If you can’t laugh at yourself, and have an inability to do something totally silly – don’t go.

Using YouTube as a marketing vehicle

Spencer — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 02:45:18 +0000

I apologize to my regular readers, but I’m about to talk shop for the first time here.

My regular readers know I love YouTube – just browsing through the site allows you to find some great homemade gems but what I love even more is the ability to find video you’ve seen broadcast in a few keystrokes. Whether it’s some of the post-Katrina videos, music videos, or homemade digital videos- YouTube is a great tool and a great example of (web clichÃ© alert) Web 2.0 – consumer generated and wholly interactive.

The phenomenon that is Snakes on a Plane! is partly due to the involvement of bloggers and videocasters. Before the movie was even finished, users were posting home made movie trailers on their blogs and on YouTube creating enough momentum and word of mouth that television advertising has been as important to the promotion.
YouTube presents a perfect opportunity for marketers to provide people with entertainment while marketing their products. It’s funny to think of commercials as entertainment, but sometimes commercials can be more entertaining than the shows they’re shown in. The following clips are great examples of entertaining spots available on YouTube:

Dunkin Donuts Karate Commercial

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Dunkin Donuts Smoothie Commercial (Karate!)

Geico Little Richard Commercial

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Little Richard for Geico

Each of these videos has been watched tens of thousands of times on YouTube alone. This doesn’t include views on Yahoo!, Google, and Myspace. These are people actively searching for your products. Even better – because of the viral nature of sites like YouTube – these videos find their way onto blogs (just like I did here), in emails, and newsletters – and the best part: all of this exposure is free.

One of my favorite uses of digital video online is the Jack Links Beef Jerky campaign Messin’ with Bigfoot. All the video is available on their site including internet only versions, but the videos are also available on YouTube. The following video has been watched almost 25,000 times on YouTube alone – and that doesn’t count the 8 other Jack Links commercials that are available on the site.

Jack Links Messin’ with Sasquatch (shaving cream)

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Ok – specific recommendations

First and foremost – make sure you get usage rights for all talent to allow you to use the commercials on the Internet. Believe it or not, these rights are not always included, and it can be both painful and expensive to get the rights after the fact.
If your commercial is the least bit entertaining then upload it to YouTube, Google Videos, and Yahoo Video. It’s free! Note – don’t throw up every commercial. For instance, I have yet to see a pharmaceutical commercial that I’d search out – and I work in pharmaceutical marketing.
If you have the ability, create Internet only versions of your commercials that are different from the television versions.
Make sure you ask your ad agency to provide you with web-ready commercial. Most likely to be in Apple’s Quicktime format (.MOV) or Microsoft’s Windows Media format (.WMV).
Make it easy to find the videos – link to them from your site; post them on blogs; bid on keywords on Google and Yahoo!. You’d be surprised how many people want to watch commercials.
Watch for comments on the videos – but don’t get too concerned about negatives unless they start to affect you brand’s image. Some negative comments are to be expected – rare is the subject that everyone likes.
Be creative. NBC’s The Office involved YouTube in a promotion – which asked users to submit their own commercials on YouTube, and then using the commercials on their network to promote the show. Of course this probably cost a few dollars.

One more thing – if a user posts your commercial without your consent, don’t get worked up about it. this means someone is interested in seeing your commercial and thought it was entertaining enough to share with others. If the video quality is poor, then send the user a better copy. It’s free advertising – and it’s better when the video is recommended by an impartial source.

Disclaimer: It’s not my aim to ruin YouTube with commercial content. I just realized how many times I said to my fiancÃ©e have you see X commercial, and then found it on YouTube to show it to her. YouTube has the right to remove videos that are being posted for commercial purposes, so be judicious (and maybe use a different name to post).