My Two Favorite Holiday Commercials

This year my two favorite holiday commercials feature a magical reindeer and a choked-up grandma.  One is a very well-acted commercial with a father attempting to ignite the holiday spirit in his disinterested son.  In desperation, he drives his son into the country.  “Your mom and I thought you might like this,” he offers as the commercial opens.  “My dad brought me out here when…”

Noticing the ear buds in his son‘s ears, he stops.  “Anyway…”

They arrive at their destination and walk through the trees to a clearing where an older man with a beard is putting down hay for several reindeer.  One large reindeer runs up to the boy, stops, snorts, looks the boy in the eye, turns suddenly, and leaps high into the fog.   As the music “I get a trace magic” cues up, the boy exclaims, “Dad, did you see that?” 

His dad, who had already turned and was walking away, smiles.  Excited, the boy runs after him.  “Dad!  Dad!  Wait up!”

The Kohls logo comes on screen as they interact.  If you haven’t seen it, go here now.

My other favorite commercial begins with a young woman pulling out a 45 vinyl record labeled Voice-o-Graph.  She plays it and hears her grandmother saying to her grandfather who was in the service at the time, “My darling Raymond, though you can’t be here for the holidays, we’ll always be together in my heart.” 

Then her grandmother sings, “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

Using her Mac, the granddaughter works on creating a duet to that song with her grandmother.  Christmas morning, she leaves a cell phone on the kitchen table with a note “Press play.”  Her grandmother finds this, sits down, puts in the ear buds, and presses play.  Grandmother’s tearful reaction to the song chokes me up every time I see it.  If you haven’t seen this commercial and want to, go here. 

Both of these commercials elicit emotion, and that is their strength.  They tap into the magic and family memories of the holidays.  Many call these commercials institutional or image because they do not directly sell.  However the Mac commercial did a good job of prominently featuring the laptop as the girl was working on the duet.  She showed the laptop’s capabilities to record the Voice-o-Graph, guitar background, and her singing.  With her final product on the cell, she communicated that she combined all these together using the laptop.  In each of her scenes, the Apple logo was very apparent.   

On the other hand, the Kohls logo was only displayed at the beginning and the end of the commercial.  The company would have received more credit for the commercial and more connection with it had the logo been displayed in a lower corner throughout.  When you do an image commercial, do everything possible to connect your company with the commercial in the customer’s mind. 

This week's marketing trivia challenge is What is your favorite holiday commercial and why?  E-mail me your answer.

Meaningless Message

A Toyota dealership in my area recently moved into a new facility off the new bypass. As the facility was being constructed, the dealership ran TV ads promoting that the new location was opening soon. The message of one of these ads was “We built it for you.”

The first time that I heard this ad, I responded out loud, “No, you didn’t. You built for yourself.”

I considered writing an Insight about the message. However, I did not, hoping that this was an ad that had been put together quickly and would not continue.

Was I ever wrong!

Evidently, this was the start of their major campaign about the move. I heard the commercial a couple of times, and then it was not on the air for a few weeks. When the new facility opened, however, the commercial aired multiple times a day. During the opening campaign all the business’s TV and newspaper ads used this theme. “We didn’t build it for us. We built it for you. The new facility is everything that you‘ve been looking for.”

Not only was the business continuing the “We built it for you” theme, it had emphasized the theme by adding that “We didn’t build it for us.”

Okay, who buys that? Do you buy it? Do you think any business builds a new facility for its customers first? I don’t. I think that a business builds a facility because management thinks the bottom line will benefit with the new building. In this instance, management wanted to tap into the new bypass, which has an enormous amount of traffic.

What does a customer get from the new facility? I have no idea. I guess “everything that I’ve been looking for.” Well, I have never looked for anything in a car dealership facility. If you asked me what I would want in a car dealership facility, I could not tell you one thing off the top of my head. As most customers, if I thought about it for a while, I probably still couldn’t tell you what I would want in a car dealership facility.

Have you ever bought a vehicle because of the dealership’s facility?

I haven’t. I bet no one has.

The ads did not give me any clues as to what the new facility offered me, either. There were no specifics of what’s in it for me as a customer of the new facility. Backing up this statement with facts would have been more effective. Telling me what the facility offered “that I’ve been looking for” would have been informative and interesting. That would have put meaning into the message.

Advertising messages are effective only if they have meaning to the customer. Otherwise, they are a waste of time and money.

What do your advertising messages mean to your customer?