Canadian Marketing Blog

A tale of two Dads and the 20-minute work-out.

I have a question for you. Is it possible for a television ad to overstay its welcome? An excellent example is a long running television spot for Rogers Home Phone. Have you seen it?

"Hey, it's me. Dad. Ever notice that one day you're just hearing about something. And then everybody's talking about it..?"

This commercial has been running, it seems, forever. And not just every day or so. And not just several times a night. I'm talking about several times during the same show. Or even several times during the same commercial pod.

Thats what got me wondering...does overplaying a commercial (especially one lacking in originality or creativity) start to hurt the brand? Does bad advertising make a loyal customer want to switch? I don't think so. But can it turn off potential new customers? And how many GRPs are too many?

On the other hand, no campaign in recent memory has saturated the market more than the Koodo no-frills cell phone campaign -- the one inspired by the old 80's 20-minute workout television show. It feels like it's been running for months on television and outdoor. Yet I don't find myself getting sick of it. In fact, the longer it runs, the more I enjoy it. It's always fun to watch, there are several different executions and they're all well directed.

It's also interesting to note how consistent the campaign is for Koodo versus most of the Rogers work where you find wild shifts in tone between spots.

The best Rogers spot is the one for Personal TV where the young son can't sleep. The Dad lets him watch the hockey game with him and rewinds it to show him a great goal. A sensitive spot. Well done. And a nice, real moment captured. But it's a world away from the smug Dad in the Home Phone commercial.

So I'll end with a few questions for you: What commercials are you sick of? Do you think less of a brand when the advertising turns you off? What commercial can you not get enough of? And where were you when the 20-minute work out was at its peak.

1. The Toyota ad featuring an absurd and grating song: "Mambo #5."

2. Yes. In the Toyota case above, their marketing -- and their brand -- feels ridiculously out of touch when they use a terrible decade-old one-hit wonder. Why not just break out the Milli Vanilli?

3. Almost any VW ad.

4. I was in the third grade.

"Hellooo, I'm Russell Oliver. I'm the Cashman, I'll give you money for your old gold. Oh yyyeeaaahhhh!"

Can't stand the rap version.

Nausea anyone? In the case of Pepto Bismol, the question is not whether the ad campaign has overstayed its welcome, but whether it's dismal from the get-go. I find it effectively creates a need for the product. An exemplar, in fact, in both creating and satisfying a need simultaneously.

Koodo, i think, also triggers upset stomach in its allusion to 20-minute workout show. If it's effective at all, it's because it's perversely enjoyable. Juxtapose sweat and pain with its converse and you get Koodo service differentiation. It's anachronistic, too; cell phones in the '80s? We were just weaning off rotary dial.

Adore the Special K commercial for the high fibre snack bars. Who would have knew some people (all of them in the ad) would find fibre so shockingly tasteful.

Lousy ads are an indicator of a company's thought and judgement in the ad planning process. If it performs poorly here, it makes me question the company's performance in product design and development planning.

When the 20-minute workout aired, I was reaching for the remote! Good exercise.

They have started to cut to 15 sec ads for autotrader.ca in between batters during Blue Jay broadcasts on Sportsnet... this is just wrong!