Canadian Marketing Blog

Name that Spot!

I just saw a car commercial while watching one of my guilty pleasure shows (don't ask) and paused it before any branding revealed itself. I turned to my wife, who had seen the spot several times, and asked her who the commercial was for. She couldn't remember and neither could I. We both took a guess and we were both wrong. The logo isn't actually revealed until the end of the spot. Go figure. Here are descriptions of 5 current spots running on Canadian television (including the spot in question). See if you can name the products they're for.

1. A team of contortionists form the shape of a car.
2. A woman puts her baby to bed. An alarm goes off and the baby is now a teenager getting out of bed. In the next shot, we see him kissing his mom goodbye and leaving the house as the mother looks on lovingly.
3. A computer is pulled out of an inter-office envelope while a cool song is playing in the background. (Come on, that one’s easy.)
4. A woman is climbing on a rock wall as a grandmother repels down beside her. A microwave then drops down on a rope. The grandmother opens it, takes out the product (still hanging from the rope) and feeds the younger woman this product.
5. Two identical fish float unto a white background to a cool song.

Clearly some of the above spots are more effective and memorable than others. Some are easy to connect to their product because the product is central to the concept of the commercial. The creative doesn’t overpower the message or the product. Or the brand is so consistent across all media that the spot could only be for that product.

The key benchmark for evaluating whether a TV commercial works or not is, can you remember what the commercial was for after being entertained by it. Do you remember it the next day or a week later. If the answer is no, the spot in question wasn’t worth the money it took to produce it, or the cost of the media. It wasn’t worth a dollar. It’s that simple.

Can you post the answers somewhere? Or send them to me. It's apparent many of these spots didn't do a good job of getting their brand stuck in my head.

Automotive commercials are the ones I don't usually remember the next day because they are so loud and quite often have bad music during the commercial so I usually mute them and go for a snack , etc. I agree that the ones that don't tell you who they are till the end are a waste of money. I usually lose interest quickly. Back to my comment about the commercial being to loud, I find that most are to loud, louder than the program I'm watching , so I usually mute them. Can't they turn down the volume?

You have to admit that the first commercial on the list does a pretty good job.
"a car is just a car until it's empowered by you" - I find that one of the best message I've received within automotive. I guess we're all aware of the fact that in the end, a car it's just a peace of metal and a bad investment as well - all that until it becomes yours. I think Ford get it this time. Too bad they don't keep their brand promise (in my personal opinion)...

i agree in principle, i really do. but then i remember all the times i've been standing in front of all the brands of, let's say, shampoo, and i see a bottle i recognize, and the ad comes back to me then

or, when i'm actually looking at buying a car, and as i do the research, the stuff from the ads i've seen comes crawling back

i'm no psychologist, but i think memorable doesn't always have to mean 'can recall product without assistance' since many of our purchase point decisions are actually never done in complete isolation

so then, i think, the memorable becomes about how the message connected to my sense of values related to that product (ie. it'll make my hair shinier, this car will be safer) - to me, that's the bigger challenge, and the one that, if you get it right, will reap the highest rewards