Can't Fight Tivo? Use it...

Let's say that you're a local car dealer in Utah and you fear that everyone is using Tivo to skip over your TV ads. You can fight it, whine about, move your TV budget elsewhere, or get clever.

Tony Divino Toyota decided to place two 15-second "bookends", spots that run at the beginning and end of a commercial break. Check them out. (There are two sets below, each of which would ordinarily be split by other commercials. )





Pretty clever. Can't do it forever, but it will likely get good buzz for them for a couple of months.

"Creativity" in Ads May Be Linked to Media Buying

In an earlier post, I've talked about how important the media buyer is to the creative team. No matter how creative the ad, it does no good if it's in the wrong place. Now, new data from Tivo is providing further proof that the "right" ad in the "wrong" place is not worth much.

Would you believe that the top three least skipped ads among 20,000 Tivo families were for:

• Cort Furniture Rental
• Dominican Republic Tourism
• Hooters Restaurant

Not particularly "creative", not funny, not touching and not big budget, the Cort Furniture Rental spot shared these attributes with other winners. They tended to be straight forward and, most importantly, relevant to their viewers (that's where media buying savvy comes in).

A Bowflex commercial running during professional wrestling was one good example.

Watch for more segmentation to come, not just among stations, but WITHIN INDIVIDUAL SHOWS. Digital signals will allow one type of household to get one TV spot, while another type of household can get another TV spot, even during the exact same show, at the exact same moment.

Yeah, best be nice to your media buyers...

Online Evangelism

A few years ago, creating customer evangelists was all the buzz. If you ask me, it still is the right thing to do. Only a handful of companies actually do it, but that's another story.

Now the Washington Post reports that companies are looking to the web for a place to let their evangelists flourish.

From customized M&Ms, to placing your own Cadillac story, to My Tivo Gets Me profiles, there are good, and bad efforts out there.

One thing is for sure, this is an effort that makes a lot sense. Have you been able to do this for your company or clients? Let me know.

By the way, the Washington Post gives credit to the "Will it Blend" campaign I mentioned in one of my very first posts. It's fun though, so here it is again. This is sheer brilliance...

Tivo has a new TV ad campaign?

The folks at Tivo have done more than anyone to neuter the 30-second TV spot. So it's a bit strange to me that they are investing $15 million in a new TV ad campaign.

They think that people aren't going to fast forward over the ads because they put the little ears from the Tivo icon on real human heads. Wow, that's soooo funny. Must've been a good solid ten minute creative brainstorming session there.

And they NY Times says they have two websites, but it's really one with two URLs going the same place. They're trying to incorporate some social media tools in it, but the whole thing seems forced and contrived to me.

To me, there's no question that Tivo has a much better product than cable company DVRs. What they need is a business model that's competitive in order to make it interesting. Not an "antenna envy" ad campaign that is very unlikely to generate envy in anyone...

Judge for yourself: