Content Assessment Part I: If content is king, why not make it better?

The Current State of TV Ads - Hook, Line and Stinker:
Television advertising has indeed come a long way in terms of overall production value, message quality and acceptable humor. And I am aware that TV ads are the bookends that sandwich together the inevitable content created to fill the space in between. So, why are so many off the mark?

I don't need statistics in ad costs to realize that a lot of money is spent on advertising vehicles (although I have perused many) as I have been on many film and video sets in various positions and have produced and directed a few projects of my own. But, I can tell by the auto industry bail-out situation and recall incidents, that the mega-bucks for vehicle advertising could be better spent.

I realize that emotion sells products over need, but I have a hard time watching a car commercial with a shiny new vehicle hugging corners on empty, coastline highways, speeding through rough terrain in slow motion and zipping through a busy city with an over-worked, financially bruised Gen-X'er sitting up straight with a fist in the air saying: "I gotta get me one of those!"

I have an equally difficult time with great, humorous ideas that fizzle out with the reintroduction of what was once a great moment in the annals of television advertising. I can think of many examples of brilliant humor that people talk about in the coffee room at work, and when word of mouth spreads, they hit us again with what the creative teams think we want more of, until they see us rolling our eyes.

I prefer to think of audio-visual content in terms of the 'eye-roll' factor (ERF, for short). On many occasions, I have been in a movie theatre as a member of a captive audience, being forced to watch an ad, a trailer or a feature and counted how many times my eyes had rolled during the course of the presentation. Although I can't watch others roll their eyes, there is always the familiar sound of the dis-approving mouth-smack that comes from the tongue's interaction with the hard pallet - at least, that's how I make the sound.

The funny thing is, I only ever make the sound when I have maxed out my eye-rolls. When the mouth smacks run out, the head-turning groans with mouth-smack inevitably begin (I call them HTG's or HTG-MS). Of course, with a short ad, getting right to the groan is a very, very bad sign. Heaven forbid an ad exec should ever hear the phrase: "Ohhh, puh-lease!!"

Street-level metrics aside, it is clear that the modern media-watching audience is fairly savvy and won't put up with poor content without making some funny noises.

Let's go over humor for a moment. I know there are TV shows dedicated to outstanding advertising and there are even award shows for it. Plus, one can even download those 'banned' ads from the internet. The most commonly shared ads are the humorous ones and there is good reason for it - people like to share a laugh. Whether it's absurd humor, like the Barq's series, or toilet humor ads, working people need a laugh now and then and will go out of their way to spread the word of a funny new ad they've discovered.

But, what happens when an innovative, funny ad appears and is run for a while, then the brand, or somebody representing the brand, decides to give the people more of the same? They risk being accused of 'digging' for material to keep people liking that brand. It's similar to a successful feature film's sequel being directed by someone else - it may work, or it may stink because the magic isn't always there.

There is an organic chemistry between humans when they embark on an exciting project, and it is difficult to sustain over a long period of time (but, not impossible). The look and feel of a sequel may work, but something intangible is missing too often.

To be fair, sometimes the sequel is better than the original. But that's feature film, which is often more artistic in nature because of the way the story is told. TV ads don't have the same amount of time to tell the story, so they've got to hook you as soon as possible - hopefully quicker than the average person responds to the remote control. And, if they hook you with something familiar, but different, they'd better not let you down!

Any kind of digital media is subject to ERF's, HTG's or HTG-MS. Whether we are watching the newest 'cool' TV drama or standing in a grocery store produce section watching the most savvy out-of-home (OOH) network, the content creators must find ways of keeping us watching. After all, we are bombarded with thousands of messages every single day according to the latest research, not including the text messages and emails we check while in line somewhere.

And soon, ads in every mall will be custom-tailored for us with demographic face recognition software as well as creep right into our multimedia cellphone technology. So, if we are to be slapped in the face with it, shouldn't it be a humorous love tap?

BTW - I like advertising, feature films, out-of-home media and scalable cell-phone videos...I just think it could be better.

- Buck Moore