the thought

In recent months I had been frequenting the office buildings located downtown and I noticed something very interesting. Most of them are now equipped with little LCD TV screens, constantly alternating between the current temperature, sports scores, word of the day, and interesting facts or news stories. The latter is what eventually led to my social curiosity about these networks.

At first it was a novelty to me, something I would glance at when I was in the elevator alone. I quickly began to notice that as passengers boarded the elevator often the first people on would immediately move to the side with the TV. Whether conscious or not it often looked as though there was a mad dash to be the lucky few close enough to see the screen. I even began to notice people craning their necks to be able to keep up with the quickly rotating information.

I thought with my being so consciously aware of this phenomena I would be immune to it myself, however I quickly learned otherwise. After just a few weeks I started spouting out the words of the day, and using a lot of the fun little facts in my conversations. It wasn’t long before someone finally asked me “wow! Where did you hear about that?” to which I of course responded “the elevator told me”.

It was in that moment, when I received the skeptical look from my friend that I realized how truly crazy that actually sounded, even though it was the truth. This got me thinking about the fact that every time I stepped on the elevator, I heard the others around me cut their conversations short, so they could all zone out into the all too captivating screen and I wondered, has word of mouth been replaced with word of elevator? Will there be a day in the not too far off future when one would no longer receive a skeptic look for a statement like “the elevator told me”? And how much farther will this go?

How long until the day our microwaves and refrigerators are telling us what we should and shouldn’t eat, or asking how our day was? I’m all for creative marketing, but should it replace word of mouth…and human contact?

Let me know your opinion at Ciara.Foremski@thayermedia.com

10:29 AM | Permalink

I was watching a couple of reruns the other night on TBS and saw that they are currently doing some Co-op advertising with Coors Light. Unfortunately for both, I doubt that the spots benefit either party to the extent that they could.

The ads intend to feature stand-up comedians making humorous jokes involving Coors’ new bottled beer label that turns blue when it’s an “optimum temperature” (that’s cold for the lay person) and then end with TBS’s tagline, “very funny.” The idea is great, but the major problem: the jokes aren’t funny. I won’t subject you to too many examples, but one bit is a guy talking about how he doesn’t want to eat or drink anything until it turns blue and he knows it’s “ready”, like his egg salad. Not laughing? Me either, it’s not funny.

The pseudo comedians seem to be more concerned with avoiding any derogatory statements about the brand or the brand’s new label than actually being funny. With a campaign like this, Coors and TBS either need to go big or stay home. Coors is clearly unwilling to take a real punch with any of the funnies delivered, leaving viewers with weak lines and nothing memorable. TBS, it would seem, just wanted to generate some revenue and toss their tag line out there at the end, despite the lack of “very funny” content.
sonic image

08:39 AM | Permalink

Living in Minneapolis for the past four years, I would periodically see television commercials with two people enjoying Sonic’s fast food and drink fare in their car or having random product-related conversations in the drive-through. I really liked the spots (I still do), but having never seen a Sonic with my own eyes, I would think to myself…where are these Sonic restaurants located and what is the angle of having everyone in their car, all the time?

After years of curiosity and asking whoever I was watching television with when the spot aired if they had ever seen a Sonic and getting “no” or “not around here” for an answer, I finally saw one. I was on vacation in Idaho heading off to ski the local mountain and out of nowhere there it was. I politely insisted that my buddy turn the rental car around and take me there. Low and behold, Sonic is a drive up. I finally understood why the people were always in their car.

Once back in MN I saw the commercial again and got it. I was so pleased. This didn’t last though, because I got to thinking like a media planner and began wondering: why on earth would Sonic run television spots when there aren’t any locations in MN? Was it media genius? Were they trying to get people like me to start asking around about their establishment? Or was it poor media planning?

I looked them up online and found that there was in fact Sonic in MN. One to be exact, and it was in St. Paul, about 25-30 miles away from where I would see their commercial. So, to answer my own question…in all of the years I saw the spots and asked my fellow viewers, no one seemed to care about the Sonic commercials, or the lack of Sonics. I’m leaning toward poor media planning rather than genius.

07:57 PM | Permalink