Comment Re:A Wrench. (Score 1) 616
Make the commercial entertaining and I'm more likely to watch it.
Amen to that. I am often amazed at the general difference I perceive in European and US advertising. I like a larger fraction of the European TV ads just because they are amusing with much more focus on humor (and not just dumb humor like successively more people saying "Whats up?" or "wasabi" or whatever). There is also less of it so that it interrupts the programming less. As you said, you know that if you just bear with it for a commercial or two, they will be over.
Not that there aren't good US commercials as well. There have been some that I thought were great, e.g. from VW and the Gap and even those weird ones from Old Navy. However, these tend to be more "lifestyle" commercials and they are much harder (and more costly) to do well than a "cute little joke" commercial.
That may be the problem right there. With the focus on lifestyle and the need to frequently replace ads because they play so often, there is just not the money to do them really well (unless you are the likes of Nike or Coke). If there were a genre switch or a slowdown in turnover, we might be able to get commercials worth watching.
One place to look is at the commercials that play before movies. I think that they tend to be of higher quality because they know that they have a captive audience and there is a little more freedom with since they can take more than 30 seconds. I really don't mind them at all.
Amen to that. I am often amazed at the general difference I perceive in European and US advertising. I like a larger fraction of the European TV ads just because they are amusing with much more focus on humor (and not just dumb humor like successively more people saying "Whats up?" or "wasabi" or whatever). There is also less of it so that it interrupts the programming less. As you said, you know that if you just bear with it for a commercial or two, they will be over.
Not that there aren't good US commercials as well. There have been some that I thought were great, e.g. from VW and the Gap and even those weird ones from Old Navy. However, these tend to be more "lifestyle" commercials and they are much harder (and more costly) to do well than a "cute little joke" commercial.
That may be the problem right there. With the focus on lifestyle and the need to frequently replace ads because they play so often, there is just not the money to do them really well (unless you are the likes of Nike or Coke). If there were a genre switch or a slowdown in turnover, we might be able to get commercials worth watching.
One place to look is at the commercials that play before movies. I think that they tend to be of higher quality because they know that they have a captive audience and there is a little more freedom with since they can take more than 30 seconds. I really don't mind them at all.
