A couple of days ago, I watched a commercial which I had seen several times. This commercial always gets my attention because it starts with a little girl sitting alone on a school bus. She is the last rider of the day. The bus driver asks her questions.
“How was school today?”
“All right,” the little girl replies.
“Do you like your teacher?”
“Yeah.”
At this point, the first time I saw the commercial I wondered just why the bus driver was quizzing the little girl. After the next question, I understood.
“Did you miss your mommy?”
The little girl gets out of her seat, scurries down the aisle, jumps into the bus driver’s lap, and wraps her arms around the driver‘s neck. “Yeah, I missed you, Mom.”
No matter how many times I have seen this commercial, I feel a swell of emotion during that scene.
Then I wonder, “Whose commercial is this, anyway?”
I tend to think that it is for a kid’s treat or food, something that Mom might give a child after school. Usually, I am so caught up in the emotion from the little girl hugging the bus driver that I forget to notice what business name is listed at the end of the commercial.
When I watched the commercial the other day, I made an effort mentally to register the business. As the little girl and her mom walked away from the buses hand-in-hand, the voiceover said, “For life’s important moments, Marshfield Clinic.”
Since I am suspicious that I am an unusual consumer of advertising, I turned to my roommate. “Did you just watch that commercial?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“Who was it for?”
She gave me a perplexed look. “I don’t know. Some food company?”
“No,” I replied. “Marshfield Clinic.”
She was astonished. “Really? I never would have guessed that.”
This is a wonderfully-written, well-acted, attention-getting commercial that is woefully ineffective.
Why? First, it does not deliver a message, unless you maintain that the closeness of the mother and daughter is a message. Second, this commercial does not make any reference to Marshfield Clinic until the end of the commercial, which is not enough. Third, nothing in the commercial has anything to do with healthcare. A consumer’s mind must make many flips and somersaults to connect what is shown in this commercial with Marshfield Clinic. Who was sick and got well, the child or the mother? How sick was she? How recently did she recover? No one will think this far. Viewers will mentally turn off the commercial because Marshfield Clinic’s connection to it does not make sense.
As evidenced by me and my roommate, the viewer not connecting the commercial with the business is the most devastating result to Marshfield Clinic. I am certain that we are not alone nor unusual in our responses.
While creating an attention-getting commercial is important, sacrificing effective communication to achieve attention makes the marketing effort a waste of time and money. Your message is more important than creativity. Make certain that your message is clear and that your business is easily connected to your message.
That is effective communication.
1 comment:
On the contrary, you just proved that it is a very effective commercial. Advertising is first about getting your attention, second about being memorable enough to stick in your mind. It not only stuck in yours (and as you proved, others minds), but it generated enough interest for you to search out who made the commercial even though you didn't notice it the first time. Most advertising works by repetition and grouping. Even if you didn't have enough "curiosity" to check on the name that you missed, it would have stuck in your mind and other commercials from Marshfield Clinic would have triggered and joined in your memory. It's only my opinion of course, but using that approach makes it a very memorable and effective commercial, giving you that internal "warm and fuzzy" feeling that would come to mind even if you were on the way to another healthcare provider which inevitably would make you question whether they could provide the same comparable feeling. :)
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