Fitting A Story Into 30 Seconds.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Simon –

I’m with you on what you say, but the only useful purpose of a television commercial is to drive a result, whether it be purely brand recognition, sale information, web response (many tv spots have a specific web page address dedicated to tracking the results of various media). They are all looking for a result.

Using the Levi’s commercial as an example is flawed – everyone who’s not living under a rock knows what Levi’s brand is about – this commercial is merely targeted (and believe me, it is) at making people who were thinking about buying jeans already choose Levis because they wouldn’t be cool if they bought anything else. It’s going for the lemmings.

A world brand advertises in a vastly different way than most television commercials. You might want to take a look at this website – not for learning, necessarily, but to get a handle on what’s working and what’s not:

https://www.adweek.com/adfreak

I’m not throwing stones at your education, but there’s a vast psychological science behind advertising that a couple of marketing courses wouldn’t cover. I’ve worked in television advertising for almost thirty years, and I’m still learning. If the production company/producer/agency doesn’t get results with a TV ad, they don’t get a second chance.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Simon Roughan]

Yep, Joseph, thats all true too. With marketing, advertising etc everything hangs on psychology, and therefore has no absolute answers or solutions. There is no right or wrong, only what is perceived to be right or wrong.
But thanks for the link, its seems to be quite a valuable resource. You can also check out http://www.thinkbox.tv They also have lots of good tips, studies etc.
Thanks again for taking the time.

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Joseph W. bourke]

And thank you for the link, Simon. The problem with there being no scientific system for grading results (look at the joke that is Nielson ratings in this country) is that it’s always easy for the client to place the blame on the creative when it doesn’t work. Many of the spots I’ve created over the years were truly cringe-worthy, and never went on my reel, but they got results because the client aired them so often. Sometimes sheer frequency wins out over the creative concept in getting results.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com