The Super Bowl, Multi-Channel TV and Wagon Wheels

Back in the 80s, when Wagon Wheels were the size of wheels on wagons, we emerged, blinking; bewildered, into a multi-channel world. Well, four, but trust me; it was a big deal.

With this 4^th channel came an amazing new sport: like Rugby League, but with helmets, and less northern nightclub bouncer lookalikes. Their Redskins, Dolphins, and 49ers, made our Towns, Rovers and Stanleys seem ancient. They had cheerleaders and razzmatazz.

For that first season, the weekly highlights show was compulsive viewing. Then at the end of the season, the Super Bowl (or cup final to us) arrived. Rather than edited highlights, this was aired live and exclusive at some ungodly hour, and quickly my excitement disappeared.

A game comprising of four 15-minute quarters actually lasted for as long as four hours. It was bitty and fragmented, and I’m afraid that was where my love affair with American Football ended.

The game’s stop-start nature might have put me off, but weirdly, for a country that is said to have the attention span of a goldfish with A.D.D, it doesn’t seem to bother over 100 million Americans who sit through this meandering bore-fest every single year. A truly huge (in more than one way) audience, which American advertisers pay up to $4 million just to get a commercial in front of.

We don’t really have the equivalent over here. Sure, there are upsurges in bigger budget ads around Christmas, but a company gets a couple of months usage out of those. Admittedly, there will be ‘big’ ads during Champions League and World Cup Finals, yet this audience is split across many countries and many channels so isn’t quite the same.

But imagine if we had something like the Super Bowl here? Imagine one event where we knew millions would be watching at the same time. Imagine being able to pool all of our money and talent into making ad breaks as exciting and inventive as the thing they were appearing in?

It would be like the old days – when if you missed The Young Ones or the big Christmas movie then you may as well forget the idea of being included in playground conversations that week. But what kind of event would we need?

I can imagine Waterboarding Michael Gove pulling in a big audience. Dancing On Meths, also. And, if the X Factor was condensed down from its current flabby, over-long format to a 3-hour spectacular, with live ammunition and trapdoors, then that might also be a goer.

However, sadly the days of a nation sitting down as one, to watch one specific show are long gone. Truly multi-channel TV has helped to split audiences. And with Sky+ and Tivo viewers are now finally freed from the constraints of television schedules.

Which is great for them, but not such great news for us. We don’t have the same annual open goal as our American friends, and our audiences seem to get smaller, year on year.

A bit like Wagon Wheels.

(Actual Size)

In Association With Tiredness, Irritability, And Deep-Seated Resentment.

While fast-forwarding through the ad break of a TV programme I recorded recently, I found myself using the sponsorship ident things as a marker so that I could press the ‘play’ button in time for the next bit of the show.

Personally, I think the Joop Homme ads, which are attached to The Walking Dead like relentless zombies, are the best for this as they’re the same clip of a pissed-looking pair of models, moodily smooching about while some words and pink stuff appears.

As a parent, recorded TV is pretty much all I get to watch, so most of the sponsorship surrounding these shows is wasted on me. In my head I associate Joop (which I’ve clocked is a perfume) with the frustration of a break in my entertainment, and decomposing people.

When I have been lucky enough to watch the show ‘live’ the sponsorship idents annoy me in another way. Because they’re the same film over and over again, they soon become irritating. Eventually, after the 8 millionth viewing, they move past annoying and into the realms of invisibility.

Now some would say that the fact I remember the name and nature of the product is a good thing and I can’t really argue with that, but I would have thought that the association with frustration, irritation and undead people might not be the best use of a product’s marketing budget.

I appreciate how difficult TV sponsorship can be: we’ve done our fair share over the course of our career, and in my experience they’re always tough. For one thing, fitting a message into such short time lengths is always problematic. The simplicity, charm and whit of the Doritos ones from a few years back are a rarely matched.

Doritos embraced the small budget that so often goes hand in hand with these kind of jobs, but often there’s the dilemma of either making lots of spots that look slightly cheap, or making a small number of nice-looking ads which then run the risk of boring the viewer quickly.

God knows why, but the public consistently vote that bit in Only Fools And Horses where Del Boy falls through the bar as “the funniest thing ever.” Yet even that, if it were played constantly during Coronation Street, would get on the nation’s nerves eventually.

Added to this, it seems that more and more the programme you’re asked to sponsor often bears no relation to the product you’re advertising. In the olden days, there seemed to be a desire on the part of the programmer and advertiser to find an ideal fit; either through the product, its end line, or even the shared target market.

Nowadays that feels as if that’s all gone out of the window. Nowadays you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you saw a pasta sauce linked to a show about embarrassing vaginas.

As an industry we need to try a little harder; increase budgets, avoid repetition, associate with relevant shows, and aim to keep the viewer entertained.

Either that, or do something really useful and just stick a big ‘FAST FORWARD’ or ‘PLAY’ above the logo, so I can perfect my remote control control.

Like If You... Like Liking Things?

In the olden days, the relationships we struck up with brands were simple. Actually, it wasn’t even a ‘relationship’ was it? We just bought the products and used the services we thought we wanted or needed, and that was that.

Nowadays, brands seem to have become incredibly needy. Paranoid and neurotic; forever worried that we’ll run off with a better peanut-filled chocolate bar or fragrant finger wipe, they’re constantly seeking validation: asking us to ‘Like’ them on Facebook, or setting up websites so we might better understand them. Even if all they are is a jam – a particularly tasty jam, but still just a jam nonetheless.

Having a digital presence is obviously important for many, many brands. It’s a brilliant way to speak to a huge portion of your target market and, potentially, an excellent platform to produce exciting, surprising work for agencies and creatives alike.

However, just because a brand can have a digital presence doesn’t necessarily mean it should. Digital is just another channel, and I’m not certain it’s right for everyone.

Boy does this boy like bread! He looks like he's going to warm
it in the microwave, cut a hole in it and then like it a whole lot more.

I have no idea why, but 203 people ‘Like’ Toilet Duck. Two hundred and three living, breathing, presumably sentient beings actually felt the need to share with their friends that they prefer their toilet bowl freshly scented and free from poo.

Another 136 ‘like’ Anusol. I imagine if I had a sore bottom I could conceivably like Anusol too, but I wouldn’t want to share this with friends I haven’t seen since primary school.

Maybe I’m the odd one, and the 365 likers of Vagisil are perfectly normal?

Perhaps I’m unusual for wondering why anyone would want to visit the Jammie Dodger website and discover ‘fun facts’ such as the one about Dr. Who (a pretend person) and the singer Labrinth (???) enjoying them.

Am I mad to expect a brand’s digital presence to be of some use to me? Is it ok for a brand to lazily just want to be liked without really giving me anything actually worth liking in return?

Given all the interesting/weird/funny/embarrassing things we ‘like’ everyday shouldn’t everything a brand expects us to share online be on the same level? If a brand is going to build a Facebook page it should be doing something more creative than just prompting us to, “Like if you’ve flushed your toilet in the last ten minutes!”

Ok, I’m paraphrasing, but only a little.

Call me old fashioned, but I think that the best place for a Jammie Dodger is next to my mug of coffee. I’m perfectly happy with this relationship, and so long as I continue to buy the odd packet of jam-filled biscuits, shouldn’t they?

So I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I won’t ‘Like’ brands simply because they ask me to.

It’s not them, it’s me.

Actually, that’s a lie – it is them.

They are margarine, or a safety match, or a biro, or something else I have no interest in when I’m online.