Customized Multi-channel Marketing - hosted by L2Musings from the Front Row
Published by Ariel in the early morning on July 12th, 2006 in Marketing, Advertising.
Last night, I went to see Pirates of the Carribean with my husband and discovered that our local AMC appears to have gone from the slideshow format pre-movie ads to a video format. You’d think that this expanded format would give the advertisers a chance to make a deeper impression but I’m not certain it has worked all that well. Out of the product ads, I remembered only one easily and, after pummelling my brain, could dredge up two more. Since there was one that I specifically wanted to mention and it’s not one of the three that I can recall, I am perplexed by my mental block.
I have a much better memory of the TV miniseries that was getting plugged - Nightmares and Dreamscapes on TNT. The spot had some substance - mini-interviews - and it was more relevant to the reason I was in the theater in the first place: visual entertainment. I’m sure that these contributed to my improved retention.
So, what were the three product spots I could recall? In order:
- Fanta - a psychadelic day-glo urban rumba that made my eyes bleed at the time. Memory has mellowed the impression, though, leaving a sort of sweet aftertaste.
- Coke - a fantastic journey through the innards of a vending machine wherein small critters assemble a beverage. I wondered if the animator was a fan of Terry Gilliam’s work - it had that sort of nonsensical feel to it.
- Doritos - The Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla is sent running for the ocean by habanero spiced chips.
More interesting than the slideshow ads.
More effective? The jury is still out.
Personally I cannot stand pre-movie commercials. I'm already paying through the nose for my ticket, and now I have to sit and deal with anachronistic (thanks, Tivo!) commercials before my show. At least the slideshow style ads didn't try to force my ADD-addled brain to pay attention through motion and sound; the slow rate of slide change coupled with horrible muzak made it easy to tune out.
It's not that I can't appreciate a good video advertisement, but I think movie theaters should be spared. The theater closer to our office, Century 16 at Shoreline, has yet to adopt the video ad format and I approve of their stance. We'll see how long it lasts.
I have to admit that, while I found the new ads more interesting, I kept having the urge to tell people around me to hush -- and that's just not right. They're *ads* for goodness' sake. It's a time-honored tradition to chatter through the pre-movie ads. The problem is that since the sound now goes with the video, my instinct kept trying to convince me that people were talking over the *movie* and I kept thinking that they would keep talking through the show.
I found it disturbingly stressful.
So, currently the choice seems to be: easily tuned-out slideshow ads OR more intrusive and stress-inducing video ads.
There appear to be a number of discussions of movie ad formats (I used this search to turn up some starting points) and a lot of passion.