Don’t you just love it…

when things work?

Reality TV show idea

A guy yells at other people, and viewers watch...carumba.

Each new reality TV show may be worse than the one before. However, I think I can race to the very bottom with this idea for a show:

Lock 10 real people in a room for a really long period of time where the only entertainment is a very large TV that loops endlessly with reality TV shows. Whoever goes insane first is the winner, as that person is clearly the least brain dead.

What’s the prize? I dunno. Maybe a counseling session on Dr. Phil’s show. No, wait, that would make the winner go right off the edge again.

Keeping it real, even when it’s fantasy.

Point of view is so important to getting your message heard.

A TV commercial for an EA Sports’ Fight Night Round 4 video boxing game uses POV highly effectively. In the virtual ring: Muhammad Ali vs. Mike Tyson. (Wow, ya got me good with that match-up.) Who WOULD win that fight? Would Ali dance and sting his way to victory? Or, would Tyson brutalize his opponent with relentless pile-driving blows?

The commercial’s format intersperses “interviews” of famous people like fighter Oscar De La Hoya and musician Wyclef Jean with very brief glimpses of the super-realistic game characters ready to rumble. However, the famous folks don’t talk at all about playing a video game, they instead talk as if the Ali-Tyson match is actual, here and now, and they are experiencing the fight for real. There’s no “would have,” or “if” language; it’s all present tense and experiential. That’s very smart. Because that’s the gamers’ mentality — with controller in hand, gamers live inside the fantasy and experience it is as real.

I don’t know the agency creatives who made the spot, but they clearly understood the audience for this game and did a fine job getting inside the head of the person who will buy it. And that’s the essence of effective advertising.

Bass guitars

I’m a bass player who also builds instruments on occasion.  Here’s a new bass of mine that’s nearing completion. Just needs pickups and electronics. Any other ad types out there who play or build?

Entertainment value

Do you have to cram benefits into your ad message, or can you stoke some love and attention for your business by being generous in the entertainment value department? I first saw this viral commercial over on Adchick’s blog and had to post it here. It’s a spot for a furniture store that demonstrates the latter tactic that’s on YouTube and maybe runs on local TV, although I don’t know for sure.

Buzzing by Billboards

In terms of traditional mass media, I think billboards along commuter routes are smart.  Aren’t the roads about the last place where you can find a steady stream of folks whose eyes are somewhat paying attention to what’s in front of them — not counting the absorbed cell phone gabbers.

I know in some parts of the country billboards litter the roadside. But here in the Providence-Boston area the board count is quite reasonable, giving a good message a decent chance of making an impression.

Advertisers have to resist the temptation to load ‘er up. Although for a publicity stunt I once pitched a board that consisted of HUNDREDS of words. The idea was that people’s curiosity would be piqued so much by the massive blob of type that they couldn’t sleep until they found out what the massive blob of type said. Soon, some crack investigative reporter would get to the bottom of it and run a story that told all, including a cleverly embedded, irresistible advertising message… Freakin’ genius I’m telling you… quickly shot down  by the guy on the other side of the table.

One that I’m proud of had one word. It ran for about 1 1/2 years and helped drive $40 million in legitimate mortgage business for a single-location credit union (no sub-prime stuff for these great folks) that was also a late-comer to the competitive mortgage business. Luckily they didn’t say no.

The board itself became  a house under construction of sorts with real wood roof framing and a 9-foot fiberglass construction man.  The thing generated buzz, got media coverage and was even the subject of a high school physics lesson — something about calculating weight and mass or something…

Not the best picture, but since this board was right along the highway in Fall River, MA, I took it from the relative safety of a parking lot where the cell-phone gabbers were less likely to swerve onto the shoulder and wipe me out.

Thought for today

It’s not that miraculous things ever happen, it’s that ordinary things contain the miraculous at every moment.

Hey… babies!

If you’re in the business of pre-stressed steel I-beams, maybe cute won’t work for you.

Or maybe it could… at least with my wife. She pays rapt attention to any TV commercial that breaks out the cute — particularly human-type babies and youngsters.

Some advertising simply goes for the emotional jugular. The old Welch’s Grape Juice spots come to mind. Others mix cute with adult language that, to me at least, is very entertaining and engaging and more effective than just face-value adorable. The E-Trade spots come to mind.

“Hit ‘ch up later, babe” the baby says to his girlfriend on the phone. Ha!

He “underestimated the creepiness” of a clown he hired. Ha!

Great entertainment that brings us to the implied point that buying stocks with E-Trade is so easy that… a baby could do it.

This kind of point, of course, is made all the time, and may be one of the archetypal creative foundations. The E-Trade spots go well beyond this familiar form for their fresh approach and under-played humor.

Hey, if anyone has any ideas for using babies or puppies for a prestressed steel I-beams client pitch, let me know. I think we could sell it.  My wife would watch.

Brand building — brand diluting in DC

What if you say one thing, and do another? Or, work hard at building a brand, and then do something to negate the hard work?

I couldn’t help but see President Obama doing this to Brand Obama recently when he agreed to let 7,991 earmarks, worth about $5.5 billion of taxpayers’ money go along for the ride in the $410 billion omnibus budget bill. (Individual politicians love taking from the big pot into which all taxpayers have dropped their hard-earned cash to dole out juicy chunks to their own friends and constituents.)

What about Obama’s campaign pledges to change business as usual? What about his pledge for fiscal responsibility and to go “line by line” to surgically remove the pork spending that is sneaked, without debate, into worthy bills?

What if Nike started saying “Just Do It… Sometimes?” What if the FedEx brand was built on “When it quite often has to be there overnight, except on Tuesdays.”

A brand is more than an image, or a tagline; it’s what people instinctively feel in their gut about your product or service — because of what you say you are and, more importantly, because of the experience you provide to your peeps. It’s perception to a point; but reality and performance in the long run. Brand loyalty is built on meeting (and exceeding) expectations. But loyalties can be shaken. Loyalties turn if the brand does not live up to its promises.

Maybe President Obama should sit down with a good branding agency for a refresher meeting to remind him of what he so ably built during his campaign.

He might think more carefully before diluting his brand with a few deft strokes of the pen again.

Chasing ideas

How do writers and art directors capture the big idea?

The really big one has its own terms. It comes when it will.  Try too much in the pursuit, and the idea vanishes.

Often the best approach is to cast obliquely. Just start writing. Let the process of writing suck you in. Just keep writing. Then just keep writing some more.

The idea is attracted to the energy. The energy that writing creates is really alive and calls out to the idea.  The idea, still invisible, swims closer, fascinated.

Imperceptibly, the idea swims very close and leaps into existence onto and into the very words calling it. The words become the idea and the idea gives shape to the words.

Relax your furrowed brow. Start by starting.