Do Business Well

When you hear the words “television commercial,” what comes to mind? A slick, high-budget produc‑tion for a luxury product? Celebrities touting a soft drink or fast food restaurant? Back-to-back special digital effects that scream high-tech? Computer animation or morphing?

You’ve probably seen these techniques used at one time or other. But techniques are all they are—different visual formats for displaying the product. They are not substitutes for ideas. Effective television advertising, like any other media form, relies on fresh concepts that persuade the consumer to buy.

An important way that television differs from other media is that it appeals to more than one of your senses at a time: to both sight and hearing. Consequently, you need to consider both when you concept television commercials. Wall-to-wall audio, for instance, will distract and detract from the visual. Talking heads—static spokespeople for a product—minimize the medium and are generally ineffective in capturing audience interest. Visuals that bombard the viewer with multiple scenes of the target audience’s lifestyle tend to sell lifestyle instead of the product. And visuals that shoehorn the product into the commercial, instead of presenting the product as hero, undervalue both the product and the viewer.

As an advertising medium, television is particularly effective for product demonstration and storytelling. It also has mind-sticking properties: often, viewers will “remember” seeing a commercial that hasn’t run in months, even years. However, with the exception of cable, television is an expensive medium, both in commercial production and in airing. A 30-second commercial airing in prime time on a highly rated network show in the United States can cost over a half million dollars (£250,000) just for air time. Additionally, television is a less targeted medium than radio, so there is likely to be non-target audience “waste.”

In television, the visual is generally the predominant element. Use Creative Aerobics as a tool to get you started.

You might decide to create a “Strip Show” where the commercial visual spends 30 seconds just peeling off the skin of the orange and removing a wedge of fruit. With a camera in an extreme close-up of the orange, your product would dominate the screen. Proper lighting would make the orange sparkle and glow, reinforcing its juiciness, and heightening its appetite appeal. The end result: a very simple commercial idea with the product as hero.

Can you latch onto an idea with the name “ball?” Tapping into CA #3, suppose you replace the ball in a pinball game with an orange. Replace the pinball machine graphics with product-related graphics; and make the pinball machine proportionately larger, since oranges are larger than pinballs. Everything about the orange becomes larger than life. And the larger the visual elements, the more impact they will have.

Or, instead of a pinball machine, you might decide the visual vehicle should be a computer game. Weigh the pros and cons—a computer game format would certainly provide a contemporary “feel” to the visual. On the other hand, the use of an actual orange in a custom pinball machine would provide a three-dimensional image. And photography of the actual product rather than a computer-generated graphic of it may prove more effective.

However, if you are doing a television campaign for the orange, you may use both. And find another game visual approach for a additional commercials (Soccer? Croquet? Billiards? Baseball? Checkers?).

Before going any further, make a list of the similarities between a pinball machine and an orange: they can both get you juiced up, they both “score” with the user, you get a lot of points for each, etc. By working with CA #3, you eliminate the possibility that you’re just shoving your product into an external scenario you’ve dreamed up. You want to make sure that your visual treatment is not only product-focused; but that it presents the product as hero.

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