So the big football day has come and gone. As well as all those $3 million per minute ads.
Having read that people are more attuned to the ads than the game, I watched with great interest the reaction to the latest offerings from Madison Avenue among the admittedly unscientifically selected group of guys at a game party.
Our first reaction? What was with all those ads featuring guys in their underwear???
And more salient to the marketing community, what in the heck were those ads trying to sell?
Now the group of guys gathered for the party were diverse in age (from early 20s to late 50s) and well-educated (college and graduate degrees).
Not infrequently during the ads, we looked at each other in bemusement, trying to decide what in fact some of these ads were for. That is, was the product or service they were trying to promote.
We didn’t know.
Years ago I did a project for a major U.S. corporation who spent billions per year on television. Their brand would appear to be ubiquitous.
The assignment was to show 30 second rough spots of television executions and debrief the respondents about them. The respondents were drawn from a middle-class targeted shopping mall in Connecticut.
I remember playing the ads, in which this company’s logo and name appeared exclusively on-screen for the last eight seconds of each commercial. I played each ad twice for each respondent.
The first two questions I asked were: what was this ad all about and then was company was it an ad for?
About one in four respondents could recall the name of the company. And this company was one of the largest buyers of television advertising at the time and had been so for years.
If they got such poor recall with a consumer’s full attention and after years of promoting their brand and logo, imagine the potential level of recall for ads from companies spending much less.
More to follow.
Comments welcome!
Dr. Bob
