We always like to troll the newspapers on a Monday and see what the weekend brought.
Two articles caught the eye.
The first article is about the death of the 30 second TV ad. With people buying Tivo and switching to downloading TV series from iTunes and the line there is simply no room for advertisers anymore so apparently product placement is what it’s all about.
We agree…and disagree. Yes, the 30 second spot is looking suspiciously tired in its current form, stuffed between your favourite programs but that doesn’t mean there’s no part to play. One of the places the 30 second ad has been very successful of late is online. Take for example our recent work for IFAW where we seeded a low budget TV ad onto Flickr and Vimeo. To date the ad hasn’t run on TV but it has been linked to by dozens of blogs and featured by YouTube’s monthly charity and NGO showcase. The TV ad in turn then sends people to a website and the loop is closed. In many ways we guess it is not really a TV ad as it never ran on TV and it certainly doesn’t need to be 30 seconds long but it’s still a video ad, it’s still linear and it still works. The big difference of course is a strategy like this won’t work unless your commercial is interesting enough for people to want to watch it. So perhaps it’s a case of goodbye annoying 30 second TV ad and hello interesting internet ad of any length you like it to be.
The second article that caught our eye sees Coopers Green beer getting caught up with the ACC for overclaiming their green credentials. Essentially they have gone out with green claims that are not backed up by hard evidence. Put this in contrast with Cascade Green who has had their claim of being a carbon neutral beer independently verified and you see a simple pattern emerging. Those who do their homework and get the scientists involved will keep their noses clean while those who shortcut the process could well end up in a spot of bother.
