Future of TV Advertisements

An in-prompt-to survey was conducted to see where people watch their TV shows often and it wasn’t surprising to see that half of the respondents view it via YouTube or through torrents. In an age where there is an increasing trend of people spending more time online than watching in their television sets, where will TV Ads be? It will and has to evolve.

Ironically, with the on-the-go lifestyle of viewers, they are planning to make TV ads longer – ten to fifteen minute short films or even into feature films. The logic here is that they will shift from the “will the audience love it?” to the “will they actually look for it [online]?” That’s a fresh way of looking at it since advertisers now have to target a lasting effect that is minimal or even subliminal to its branding and more on the message which will then fuel the recall of the brand. In this sense, it’s more challenging and demands more creativity on the part of the advertisers to really stand out among the millions of brands out there.

It took a notch higher with the suggestion of TV advertisement series. A good local example of this is the Surf mini series where Lumen is shown facing the everyday challenges of being a housewife and mother in the face of her mother-in-law, of course with the help of Surf. But did this generate enough impact on society? Another good example is the Smooth E advertisement series in Thailand that was run for a whole month with different scenes each week.

This generated enough awareness because at the end of the third week, virtually everyone inThailand was talking about Smooth E and their speculations on what will happen to the characters.

TV Ads can be also in the form of documentaries which touches more on the emotional appeal. The message of Adidas – brotherhood – was broadcasted well when they got this famous NBA player who went to the suburbs and interacted with adolescent basketball players. Brotherhood was highlighted when he gave them sports attire, taught them some basketball techniques and fed them to an expensive restaurant, basically treating them as his equals.

The documentary on Coke was very appealing because it showed the oldest living man in Spain meeting and giving his message about life to the youngest baby in Spain. I guess the message of Coke there was to just enjoy life to the fullest (even though that was the time when the global financial crisis hit Europe hard.)

I’ve seen a lot of advertisements in the form of games and it’s very effective since once a consumer enjoys the game, he’ll stick to it and always look for it so brand recall is definitely sure to follow. A local example for this, and something which I find really weird, is the game of Mar Roxas racing his “padyak” against obstacles like corruption, poverty…

The Samsung example used shows a series of situations where one has to decide on which option to follow. The good thing about this is that everything is incorporated on YouTube so you just have to click the links on which option you choose: Follow Your Instinct or “something else”. The main message of Samsung is to always follow your instincts since all the good consequences are achieved there.

TV ads in the form of events got me really excited because creativity was at its maximum just to get the people involved. To illustrate my point, T-Mobile was able to make everyone in a train station dance with only a series of people leading the steps. They were so synchronized that people started taking videos of the dance and posted them on YouTube (which I think is the main point of the exhibition – involving their consumers in the process, life is for sharing.)

Honda had a bold idea to spell their brand while sky diving. It was televised live and I’m certain that it got a lot of attention and applause. I think they're the first brand to actually do a live advertisement where a lot of people are tuned at their homes.

Marc Ecko had this brilliant idea of vandalizing the Air Force One (at Bush’s time). It showed a video of a guy breaching all the securities and spraying graffiti that says “Still Free.” It got the attention of CNN, Fox News and other national press. It would have been better if the act were real, but it’s message was clear that Ecko is for the rebels of society.

Finally, technology was utilized well when TV ads can now be presented in Interactive TV. It’s difficult to explain because I was mind boggled with the how much you can manipulate every element in the Philips Carousel advertisement – you can explore the physical landscape in any angle and they said that you can also view the background story for every character.

Overall, it was a very interesting talk. He effortlessly glided through the different forms and exhibited lasting examples. What the advertising sector suggests is a very good innovation because there’s virtually zero cost to post an ad online and people will start looking for you, not the other way around. “There’s only one thing sure with the evolution of TV Ads, it won’t look like a TV Ad.”

(The speaker yesterday was Mr. JJ Henson, some guy from Nescafe. He's the reason why they have such great tv ads.)