WHO SAID THAT YOU HAVE TO GIVE THE AUDIENCE WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE? THESE ADS ARE A GREAT SAMPLE OF CONTRAST THAT SELLS… BASED ON THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION, SATIRICAL HUMOR OR JUST A PLAIN CELEBRATION OF NOT BEING THE MOST POPULAR CHOICE. THREE DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO A COMMON THEME.
Client: Southern Comfort
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy
Being authentic might not always make others comfortable
- Why do we like it? It is defying, retro, “in your face” and, of course, the camera filter to get the “Kodakcolor” 70s effect.
- What did we learn from it? Being yourself has its merits, even if that means wearing Speedos!
Client: Tap King
Agency: BMF Sydney
Being romantic about… beer?!
- Why do we like it? As an accident in slow motion… It makes you uncomfortable, but you cannot stop looking.
- What did we learn from it? A new aspect to the long celebration of love between a man and a beer.
Client: Volkswagen
Agency: Try/Apt, Oslo, Norway
Taking the fun out of driving… bumping cars!
- Why do we like it? It is imaginative, creative, and developed a bit slowly but with great taste. Many subtle details that you might not notice at first sight.
- What did we learn from it? The approach is perfect for the demo. Those that put safety over fun when driving a car.
Client: Fifth Harmony
Album Cover… Two right feet!
Even Snickers has made fun of these graphic design errors in a great ad poking fun at Photoshop edits and associating with their campaign “You are not yourself when you are hungry”
:30 SEC. OR :15 SEC. ADS
WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT?
On TV and Radio, time is money. The length of the ad versus the price to pay for it has been analyzed under many different lights so, today, I want to get you the synopsis of the “state-of-the-art” of the most useful of these studies and some conclusions from the vast range of perspectives.
UNDERSTANDING THE PATH THAT BROUGHT US HERE
The first TV ad in the U.S. was only :10 secs. long, a Bulova spot that ran in 1941.
While :60 sec. and longer ads were standard in the 50s,
the following two decades favored :30 sec. spots to minimize commercial breaks and maximize revenue and variety of advertising. It was a winning formula for all, consumers and the industry.
While radio’s :60s were more resilient, TV evolved mostly into :30s, then even :15s. The 80s saw the absolute consolidation of this trend.
Since then, many have sung the praises of :15s, and favored this format more and more, arguing that the evolving trend of mass media consumers’ span of attention make this length more user friendly and effective.
In addition, 15s are:
- less expensive than :30s. Most media around the world charges 60 to 80% of a :30 sec. price for a :15 sec.
- more rational in execution (it forces creativity to concentrate on the core of the message)
- less expensive to produce (in general numbers)
- more shared than :30 sec. spots by consumers (more viral, in the original sense of the word)
From the creative side, new analysis tools have contributed to analysts believing they can “squeeze” the juice out of a :15 to be more efficient than a :30. Experts say these can be:
- 80% as effective in recall and likability as a :30 (Journal of Advertising Research, March 2010). Mord and Gilson 1985, Gay 1985 and Bogart and Lehman 1983 reduce the number to 50-80%
- as effective for branding performance as a :30 (Fabian doubts that statement in a 1986 study)
- achieving a better price per second ratio versus persuasion
New analysis are using EEG (Electroencephalography), pupil dilation, and target of sight measurements per 0.25/sec. to maximize the effectiveness of the messaging and visual imagery. Using this analysis, some experts have the goal to trigger neurological responses of awareness, recall, persuasion and likability in a :15 sec. spot that reach to 80 to 90% of the effectiveness of a :30 sec. spot.
The main technique to “compress” the spot is identifying moments of the :30 sec. spot where the measured effect in the audience is more dramatic and concentrate those moments into a :15 sec. getting rid of everything else. It is called “neuro-compression”
An interesting similar trend to maximize the effectiveness of the ad length, with a different approach, has taken place in Europe.
ANOTHER APPROACH TO MAXIMIZE RECALL
The different formula was adopted around 7-8 years ago by many advertisers. Studies showed a higher effectiveness when running a :20 or :30, followed by a :07 or :10 one or two spots later. The double impact allegedly increased the awareness and recall, accessing brain areas identified with a longer term, more resilient, memory. While it became very popular years ago, currently less than 25% advertisers use it, over all.
Incidentally, in the U.K., :10 sec. spots became really popular in the last decade, as noticed by a Newstead and Romaniuk study in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2009.
OPINION AND EXAMPLES
My personal opinion? Compressing a :30 into a :15 is like compressing 10 months of dating into a wild night of non-stop romance to then get married the next morning… results can be exhilarating for a while, but usually do not greatly stand the test of time. My goal is to get the best effectiveness for my clients, and in pursuance of that achievement, experience has shown to me that a :15 sec. can hardly substitute a :30, but it can very effectively complement it. Here are 4 considerations and pieces of advice to take into account when considering :15s:
1.- If you can double effectiveness of the :15 sec., you should probably be doing that with your :30 sec, to make it as effective as a :60 (a +:30 sec. of effectiveness increase versus a +:15 sec.)
2.- I mostly recommend :15 sec. spots to my clients as great frequency builders in tandem with :30 sec. spots when the consumer brand and product benefits awareness level is high and when the persuasion needed gets a dramatic boost with frequency over the consolidation of rational or emotional selling points.
Here are some great examples:
A :15 sec. version of a :30 that can increase frequency and recall once the brand message has been established:
Huh Mongolian Grill and Barbecue:
Both versions of a Dominos Pizza ad:
:30
:15
3.- :15 secs. create additional clutter, an effect to be considered (Ray and Webb, in their 1986 study), as you do not want to be a :15 sec. in a break that includes 20 others. If you run, in the other hand, a :30 surrounded by many :15s, your recall and general effectiveness will boost significantly.
4.-:15 that work well without the companionship of :30s are rare exceptions. One of my favorite exceptions is when a :15 acts as a trigger of internal brain processes to make you “complete the ad selling process” through:
triggering the audience’s internal buying process to “complete” the spot. These make the audience “sell the product to themselves”
working as a reminder for a “ready-to-purchase” niche that, as in the example above, just needs a gentle push:
The debate will continue long after you read these lines, and the audience media-consuming habits evolve, so things are in constant motion and results might change in the future. As of this point, respected specialists sustain that neuro analysis is not as effective to predict success in ads before going to market as these are, for example, to predict best selling songs. In addition, experts maintain that these studies have not been done with the adequate seriousness and meticulous approach to guarantee accurate results.
Here is an example of, what experts consider a rather frivolous but funny usage of neurological analysis to prove a point, by Porsche:
I would like to ask you to extract your own conclusions (I am sure you are already ahead on that) and suggest three questions to help you form your opinion:
- Which ads that you have seen in this page do you remember better an in which order?
- Are those :30s or :15s?
- Aside from the Ad, which brands in those Ads do you remember the best? The :10s? The :15s? The :30s?
I hope this helps you and you have enjoyed it!
Javier