8 posts tagged “media”
I've already written about the pioneering television work of comedian Ernie Kovacs. Below are two commercials he created for Dutch Masters cigars as part of his network show.
Keep in mind, these commercials are live. Everything, including the interesting camera angles (can you see how they did the shot between the cowboy's legs?), the fun special effects, even the on-screen graphics, were done in front of a live studio and national television audience. I mention the studio audience because Kovacs was forced to have one by the network. While other shows in the fifties were performed primarily for the studio audience (assuming the home audience and the studio audience were the same), Kovacs pushed the medium. His show was meant to be viewed through a television set. Many of his unusual effects and pioneering skits would have made no sense to the studio audience. He hated having a studio audience. Kovacs even went so far as to print "ADMIT ONE PASSING STRANGER" on his studio audience tickets.
In an era where TiVo and DVR and other technologies allow us to easily skip through the commercials, networks and advertisers can learn something from this early pioneer. Be relevant (Kovacs loved cigars and his audience knew it). Be interesting (Kovacs put the same desire for groundbreaking work into his ads as he did the rest of the show). Be entertaining (the products played a role, but the main purpose of the skit was always to entertain). Be transparent (Kovacs wasn't hiding the fact that his skits were ads).
Can't a show like Saturday Night Live do this today?
The average consumer is hit with approximately 5,000 commercial messages a day. Thankfully for you, many of those messages slide by without even registering on your radar. Advertising award show judges are not so lucky. I've been a judge myself. Believe me, it's painful. You're in a room with approximately 5,000 ads. And you're supposed to pay attention to every single one. After ad #2,000 or so, you pretty much stop reading the copy and just look for pretty pictures.
And how do you judge, really? You don't know what the client is trying to do. You don't know anything about the product. You don't even know if the campaign worked. Talk about subjective.
So why not give it a shot yourself. Here are three very good ads. All three feature excellent concepts, attention-grabbing layouts, and extraordinary art direction. Well, at least I think so. But it's in your hands now.
Pick the one Best in Show winner. Leave a comment and tell me why.
Glassex ad via Ads of the World. UNICEF ad via Dark Roasted Blend. Wendy's ad via Ad Goodness.
I absolutely knew Katie Couric would fail as anchor of CBS Evening News. Not because she is a woman. Not because she is incompetent. But because of two brands.
Here's what I mean.
Couric was (is?) an extremely popular television superstar. She was beloved by millions of viewers as co-host of the popular Today show. Ratings for NBC were great with her in front of the camera.
The Katie Couric brand is well-known to anyone who even casually watched her show. Perky. Smiley. Energetic. Funny. Likable. And yes, while she could get serious now and again for the occasional interview, the Katie Couric brand was really about bubbly effervescence. She was the likable neighbor next door. She excelled at the morning show format in a way few others have or perhaps will.
But the the CBS evening news is not a morning show.
Like the Katie Couric brand, the CBS News brand is equally well-known to anyone who has watched television. This is a proud, hard-core broadcast news network. Despite some well-publicized hits at the end of Dan Rather's reign, CBS has always been a true bastion of solid reporting and professional journalism.
But Katie Couric is not a journalist.
Quite simply, Katie Couric fans have no interest in seeing a serious and stiff Katie Couric every night. And CBS News fans want to see a crusty old journalist reading the news, not a celebrity.
Predictably, ratings for CBS Evening News with Katie Couric have been below awful.
Stretching and evolving a brand is one thing. Assuming anyone will care or follow along is entirely another. Step out of your brand at your own risk.
CBS executives should have know better.
That's how New York Times columnist Jack Gould explained the wacky, twisted, and sometimes psychedelic world of Ernie Kovacs. A true pioneer, Kovacs saw television as a technology to be exploited for laughs. While other comedians simply took their old vaudeville sketches into the studio, Kovacs explored the vast possibilities of this new medium. He created elaborate sets for gags that lasted but a few seconds. He tilted backgrounds and cameras to create gravity defying visuals. Books sang, water flew upwards, and visuals and sounds were combined like never before (he even won an Emmy for a full show with no dialogue whatsoever). In Kovacs' world, there were no rules. Take the above clip, for instance. Three minutes of show-closing credits. The boring made visually interesting. And many of those fun techniques (live television, by the way) still feel fresh today. Sadly, Kovacs died in a car crash 45 years ago. If you're a creative professional (or aspire to be one), do yourself a favor and check out this original, creative master. And learn from his inventive, carefree methods. Sometimes the fun is in trying.
