Content Is Advertising: Free Local Commercials, Sponsored By Another Company

from the get-yourself-a-home.-or-don't.-i-don't-care. dept

Via Adam Savage, I heard about a fun project that highlights the advertising is content, content is advertising concept in multiple ways. It's a site called ILoveLocalCommercials.com, which features two filmmakers going around the country making (free -- and awesome) TV commercials for local businesses that are nominated on the site. As mentioned, the commercials are really quite impressive, such as the "brutally honest" commercial for Cullman Liquidation ("get yourself a home, or don't, I don't care") or for Ray's Midbell Music that involves a rap about how being in the school band is cool:

The commercials are really entertaining in their own way, and have garnered hundreds of thousands of views -- again, demonstrating how good advertising is content. The guys making the videos also put up a short "behind the scenes" version of each video as well, to explain the backstory a bit more. The backstory on Cullman Liquidation is pretty entertaining as well.

But why are these guys doing this? Well, the whole thing is actually part of a promotion from another company, MicroBilt, that's trying to promote its own line of small business services. So it's paying for the whole thing -- showing how content is advertising. None of the videos are actually about MicroBilt, but in sponsoring the entire site and the whole process, it's helping to get its name out there in a fun (non-intrusive, non-annoying, non-sneaky) manner. It's not about product placement or trying to "sneak" a brand into something. Everything's totally upfront. But it's a fun project, with highly entertaining content that shows both how advertising is content and how content is advertising.

Oh yeah, and it appears that Cullman Liquidation has also picked up on the whole "looooooooooots of t-shirts" concept. On the Cullman Liquidation website, the company is selling t-shirts based on the commercial...

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Once Again: DVRs Not Killing TV, But Helping It

from the think-this-through-a-bit dept

It's becoming almost comical how often this happens: a new technology comes along for consuming/watching/listening/distributing some sort of entertainment content, and the industry freaks out. The technology is going to destroy the industry, and laws must be put in place, royalties must be paid, technology must be crippled, etc. And yet... the impending doomsday scenario never shows up. The player piano did not kill the sheet music market. The gramophone did not kill live concerts. The VCR did not kill the movie industry. And, here we are, with TV folks finally realizing that the DVR is not killing TV, but actually helping it. Basically, lots of people still watch ads, even if they're watching a time-delayed program. What's funny is that throughout the article you have execs insisting that this was a shock to everyone and no one could have predicted it. Except, of course, we wrote about the same basic thing three and a half years ago. But no one listens to us.

The article doesn't even mention the biggest benefit to DVRs -- even beyond the fact that people watching them still watch commercials: that it allows people to become more connected to certain shows, since they're less likely to ever miss an episode. That makes them more likely to watch those shows regularly (with or without the commercials). If someone can't keep up otherwise, they'll just let the show go entirely.

The other amusing finding in the article is that NBC's attempt to "DVR-proof" itself by moving Jay Leno to 10pm (on the theory that more people would watch it live when they couldn't fast forward through the ads) has totally backfired. That's because it also means that if people miss the show, they don't go back and watch it days later (who wants to watch stale jokes?) -- so fewer ads get watched in the long run (compared to a show that would be recorded and watched later). Oops. In the meantime, can we go back to those TV execs who were threatening to sue TiVo just a few years ago, and ask for an apology for wasting everyone's time?

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Mattel Now Using Song In Commercial... Which It Once Sued Over Copyright Infringement

from the change-of-heart? dept

Back in 1997, the band Aqua released a song called "Barbie Girl," that was actually somewhat critical of "Barbie doll" culture. Mattel, famous for its rather aggressive intellectual property stance, wasted little time in suing the band, claiming the song infringed on the company's rights. In 2002, everyone's favorite appeals court judge (seriously, the guy never fails to entertain) Alex Kozinski told Mattel too bad, parody songs are a part of what you get for being a cultural icon -- and included the classic line: "The parties are advised to chill."

It took seven years since that decision, but apparently Mattel had decided to heed Judge Kozinski's suggestion. Reader Sallo alerts us to the news that Mattel has actually licensed the song for a commercial -- though, they "adjusted" some of the lyrics to make it a little more pro-Barbie, rather than mocking-Barbie. Still, that's quite a jump: from suing the band for infringement to actually licensing and using the song in just a few years.

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Nigeria Demands Apology From Sony For Mentioning Nigerian Fraud In A Commercial?

from the really? dept

I have to admit that this story seems so bizarre that I'm not quite sure I believe it. A bunch of folks have been submitting the news that the Nigerian government is apparently so upset by a Sony Playstation commercial that it's demanding an apology from Sony for allegedly "portraying Nigeria as a home of fraud where its citizens hardly do genuine business." Must be quite a commercial right? The only problem is that the commercial does no such thing:

It just mentions, in passing, as a part of the joke of the commercial that "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Otherwise I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now." I don't quite see how that implies that Nigerian citizens hardly do genuine business. It just suggests that there are Nigerian scammers out there -- which is hardly something the government can credibly deny. Hell, there are popular songs in Nigeria all about fleecing dumb Americans in online scams. Honestly, the whole complaint from the Nigerian gov't seems so odd, that it feels like part of Sony's marketing campaign...

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John McCain Settles Jackson Browne Lawsuit Over Song Use

from the giving-in dept

Last year, during the presidential campaign, singer Jackson Browne sued John McCain for using one of his songs in an ad. There were a few questionable aspects to the lawsuit. First, the ad wasn't actually from the McCain campaign. There were also some questions about whether or not this was fair use since it was ostensibly used for "political speech," but so far the court didn't seem too amenable to that. And so, McCain has settled the lawsuit and publicly apologized to Browne, who claims this wasn't a partisan issue (yeah, right), but about the rights of musicians. This actually would have been an interesting fair use battle, so it's a little disappointing that it's ended, but the argument over "musicians' rights" strikes me as a bit silly, too. McCain could have easily used the same song live at a campaign stop, assuming the venue paid a compulsory performance license. And someone in the McCain camp could have legally covered the song, paying the correct compulsory license as well -- and then potentially used that version in a commercial. Basically, all this really did was highlight how convoluted and often arbitrary copyright laws are in many cases. But, rather than learning a useful lesson on the mess that is today's copyright law, it looks like McCain has taken the easy way out.

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15 Years Of Anti-Piracy Commercials...

from the and-how's-that-worked-for-you... dept

John was the first of a few to send in a collection of 15 years worth of "anti-piracy commercials" that run at the beginning of films, put in place by the movie industry, who has only just realized that perhaps they should offer up a more positive message to customers who just paid good money to watch a movie, rather than accusing them all of being criminals. Most of these commercials are so over the top as to be hilarious. "The pirates are out to get you. Don't let them brand you with their mark. Piracy funds organized crime... piracy funds terrorism... and will destroy... your future enjoyment."

It makes you wonder if the folks making these commercials actually thought they'd be effective.

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Kraft Gets Into The Music Business

from the sponsored-music dept

We're seeing more and more consumer brands getting involved in the music business. In parts of Asia this sort of thing has become a lot more common, but we're seeing it more and more in the west as well, such as when Tag body spray started its own record label, or when Groove Armada signed with Bacardi, rather than a record label. Now, Raimund Ostrowski points us to this story about Kraft Canada, which, in an attempt to revive the Triscuits brand, had a musician in Toronto write a 30-second song for a commercial. The commission was then expanded into a full 3 minute song which is getting airplay on the radio and can even be bought at iTunes. While (understandably!) some may not like this sort of commercialization of music, it does show yet again the many other business models that can show up to help pay for the creation of music.

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Content Is Advertising; Advertising Is Content... On SNL

from the blurring-boundaries dept

If you're in any business that relies on "advertising" for revenue, you need to stop thinking of it as advertising -- and start realizing that advertising and content are the same thing. All traditional "advertising" is content -- and if you want anyone to pay attention to it, it had better be good content. At the same time, all traditional "content" is advertising -- it's just a question of what it's advertising. But as more companies recognize this, we're going to see an increasingly blurry line between advertising and content. While some purists decry this situation, they shouldn't worry so much. It will improve both the overall quality of the "content" that you see all the time in two ways: it will allow for better financing of that content and it makes sure that the formerly "bad" advertising content isn't sustainable and goes away.

Reader James Thomas sends in an example of this blurring of the lines that occurred recently with Saturday Night Live. Apparently, on the SNL the night before the Superbowl, there were three skits "MacGruber" skits (a parody of the popular classic TV show MacGyver) each of which had a totally over-the-top promotion of Pepsi. That part may seem like traditional product placement (though, oddly over the top), but the interesting part was that the next night, during the Superbowl, NBC actually showed one of those sketches during a commercial break. In other words, the sketch itself was then repurposed as "commercial" content -- thus blurring the lines completely. I'm not sure how effective this was (personally, I don't find the MacGruber skits funny at all), but it does demonstrate some of how things are changing. If you did the same thing with content that actually was enjoyable, I could see it getting a much better reaction.

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Commercials Increase Enjoyment Of TV Shows?

from the alternative-explanations dept

In a study that the television industry must absolutely love, researchers apparently found that people enjoyed a sitcom with commercials included by a significant margin over watching the same show without the commercials. Of course, before jumping to conclusions about such a study, it's worth thinking about alternative explanations other than the idea that people really like commercials. In the Freakonomics post above, they posit that sitcoms are written with these breaks in mind -- and the story arc reflects that. Taking the commercials out could make the show feel slightly disjointed. I know I've sometimes felt that way when watching DVDs of TV shows. In fact, I would imagine that a similar study comparing movies shown without commercials and those with commercials abruptly inserted might return the opposite results -- with the version with commercials greatly disliked compared to the movie without.

Another potential explanation could just be the way we view watching sitcoms -- where we've been somewhat conditioned for those regular breaks. We're used to them, and being able to do something during them (go to the bathroom, get a snack, talk to a significant other/kids/parents), and taking them out so that the entire show goes straight messes with our own expectations. If that latter idea is correct, then it would suggest that having people watch a show where they could fast forward via DVR through the commercials should still be quite enjoyable, because they still get the break and still can do those "other" things during the breaks rather than actually watching the commercials. In other words, it may be that people like the breaks, not the commercials.

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Was The Mad Men Twitter Takedown Part Of An Advertising Strategy?

from the reverse-streisand? dept

We've talked about the concept of a reverse Streisand Effect, where a company purposely pretends to be outraged and demands to take something down in order to generate more attention for it, and now there's some evidence suggesting that last week's DMCA takedown notices for the "fake" Mad Men Twitter accounts may have been part of AMC's own marketing strategy. Buried at the bottom of a NY Times article about what happened, there's a hint that the whole thing was planned out, as following a request from the Times reporter, Brian Stelter, to one of the "fake" users for an interview, that character "referred all questions to Deep Focus, a Web marketing agency that works for AMC."

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Mock Outrage Over An Ad You Paid For? Reverse Streisand Effect

from the oh-come-on dept

As the concept of The Streisand Effect has become more and more well known, the question I'm most frequently asked is whether or not a company stupidly demanding something be taken down is really being done by someone that understands the likely result and is just using the resulting "attention" to their advantage -- that is, are they pulling a "reverse Streisand Effect." It's often pretty difficult to sort out these cases from the real Streisand Effect, and when in doubt, it's often best to just assume the simplest explanation that the company really was acting stupidly.

However, in this latest case, I'm really not sure -- and am starting to suspect a Reverse Streisand Effect by J.C. Penney to promote a new viral video. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that J.C. Penney is pissed off at its ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi for "leaking" a "fake" ad that "appears to be endorsing teen sex." The ad involves a young boy and girl practicing getting dressed as quickly as possible before the boy goes over to the girl's house to hang out in the basement, while the girl's mother is upstairs. Supposedly J.C. Penney "instructed Saatchi to take any action it can to have the ad removed from the Internet."

Uh huh. And now, suddenly, that ad is all over the internets. The whole thing smacks of mock outrage with a demand to takedown content knowing that it will only spread far and wide. So what do people think? Is this a Reverse Streisand Effect or is J.C. Penney just clueless?

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Another Way To Get Around TiVo Users Fast Forwarding: Really Interrupt Your Shows With Ads

from the ugh dept

Reader DEF writes in to point us to an interesting catch from Jason Kottke. At least some broadcasters seem to have taken things to the next level in trying to get people to watch ads without fast forwarding through them with a DVR: they literally have an overlay ad "pause" the TV show. You pretty much have to watch it to understand it, so here it is:

These overlay ads have become quite common, but having one (even jokingly) pause the action in the show that you're watching certainly seems like overkill, which is going to annoy a lot more viewers than it convinces to watch the show being advertised.

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Live Commercials Work Because They're Entertaining

from the advertising-is-content dept

One of the points we've been making for years is that advertising is content. That is, as people have more and more media options, advertisers can no longer assume they have a captive audience who will watch ads because they have nothing better to do. Rather, advertisers have to make their ads entertaining, so that people will want to watch them. The latest example of this is a New York Times article about how TV networks are bringing back the live commercial. For example, Jimmy Kimmel has been doing amusing live pitches for Nikon, Pontiac, and Quiznos on his late night show, and Jay Leno hosted a silly American Gladiators segment on his show to sell Klondike bars. Hollywood executives have a bad habit of viewing commercials as the spinach viewers have to eat in order to get the content they're actually interested in. But these examples illustrate that commercials don't have to be boring. With a little ingenuity, and funny pitchmen like Kimmel and Leno, commercials can be made interesting enough that consumers are actually interested in watching them. Part of the reason people hate commercials is that they're so repetitive, but live pitches can help break up the monotony by performing the pitch differently every time. And once commercials are actually interesting, the TiVo "problem" goes away, because even most consumers who have PVRs with commercial-skipping functions won't use them because they're actually interested in watching the commercials.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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ABC Still Excited About DVRs That Disable Fast Forward

from the bad,-bad-ideas dept

A few months ago, we wrote about how ABC was excitedly testing a new DVR technology that would prevent people from fast forwarding through commercials on their DVR. If this seems dumb and destined to fail, that's because it's dumb and destined to fail. You don't compete with things like a fully functional DVR that has features people want by creating a crappy DVR that doesn't have the features people want. That story got plenty of attention -- which should have made its way back to ABC. But, if it did, the company is ignoring it. As reader Joey writes in to let us know, at ABC's recent "upfronts" where it pitches its latest efforts to advertisers, it's still excitedly pushing the idea of the fast-forward-disabled DVR (in the update at 4:34). The NY Times reporter claimed it was "a fancy way to combat DVR use." Except, that it's not. It's a dumb way to combat DVR use because all it will do is anger a bunch of people and get them to go out and buy a DVR that doesn't do that sort of thing.

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Google Seeks Patent For Required Commercial Viewing

from the pissing-off-viewers? dept

theodp writes "I don't want my GTV. Excerpts from a newly-published Google patent application for Targeted Video Advertising: [1] 'Users may be allowed to skip particular commercials, but required to watch or accept a set number of commercials in order to watch a program. The required number may be, for example, a set integer, such as 11 commercials.' [2] 'The system...may also require the user to fully watch at least four promotions before the program will continue.' [3] 'The profile includes some demographic information of the user, such as income, age, and gender. This information may be obtained when the user registers for the video service.' [4] 'A commercial with the interactive format is an advertisement that requires user interaction to be completed (e.g., a survey).' Yikes."

This is only at the application stage, but it's difficult to see this getting anywhere. There are already interstitial advertising systems online that do exactly what appears to be described in this patent. But, even more to the point, in the past when companies have patented concepts such as preventing people from skipping over commercials, the backlash has been pretty loud.

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Dear ABC, You Don't Compete With TiVo By Making A Product Worse

from the just-a-suggestion dept

About a year and a half ago, an executive at Disney-owned ABC-TV talked about how the network was experimenting with ways to block people from fast forwarding through commercials. The exec in question even claimed that commercial-skipping wasn't even a very important feature for most DVR-owners. Despite the widespread criticism of this statement, it appears that ABC is now preparing to test that theory. In association with cable company Cox, it's testing a new video-on-demand feature that won't let viewers fast forward through commercials. We'll be the first to say it: this is dumb. While it may make a few more people watch commercials, it won't make them happy about it. And, given just how many other options there are these days, the end result might be that people just choose not to watch such ABC programming at all, let alone the commercials.

Yet various ABC executives seem to think that by offering this product, they can stop people from buying DVRs. Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group, claims: "You don't need TiVo if you have fast-forward-disabled video on demand. It gives you the same opportunity to catch up to your favorite shows." Not quite. First of all, you're limited to shows on ABC. Second, who knows if the additional features are as useful. Finally, one of the nice things about TiVo (oh, right!) is that it lets you watch a 30-minute show in 22-minutes, since you can skip the commercials (whoops). So, yes, many people will still want a TiVo because ABC is forcing the fast forward option to be disabled.

Then there's Ray Cole, who owns some ABC affiliates. He says: "As network and affiliates, we both have an interest in slowing down the explosive growth of DVRs. This is about combating DVRs. As we developed this at every stage, there was an agreement that however we put this together, disabling the fast-forward function was key." I'm curious as to how Mr. Cole thinks offering a product that does much less and deliberately takes away a key feature will "slow down" the "explosive growth of DVRs." You don't compete by offering a worse product. You compete by offering a better product. Taking away one of the key selling points of a product is not exactly a major selling point.

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Time Warner Cable To Enable Time Shifting... But Without A Fast Forward Feature

from the why-are-you-in-such-a-rush? dept

Back in 2003, Time Warner began work on what it hoped would be a TiVo-killer. It would be a centralized system that would allow people to time shift TV shows like they would with a local DVR, but all the processing and storage would be at Time Warner itself. Of course, even when this plan was first announced, many were skeptical. Other divisions within Time Warner wouldn't be happy about aiding and abetting consumers potentially skipping commercials. In fact, pressure from others eventually forced Time Warner to drastically scale back the plans and release a much simpler service that would let some users "start over" if they happened to pick up a show after it had started. There was no fast forwarding and no commercial skipping. You could just "start over." Of course, perhaps they were just doing that to avoid the inevitable lawsuit. A few years later, Cablevision decided that it would offer a centralized DVR and was quickly sued for doing so. Amazingly, Cablevision lost that case (though, there's still an appeals process).

Time Warner, then, is obviously being careful as it expands it's "start over" service. It only took the company three years to morph the start over service into the "look back" service, that will basically let you watch any show that was broadcast earlier in the day. Of course, it only goes back one day, and you can't fast forward through the commercials. Apparently, there are still TV execs out there who think that commercial skipping isn't a key feature of DVRs. Rather than trying to prevent popular features, wouldn't these companies be better off coming up with creative ideas that don't involve pissing off customers?

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