Oct
02
2008
Little Women.
Posted by: admin in advertising, marketing, media, tags: commercials, Dori Kelly, Glade, Jill Wagner, Mercury, Progressive Insurance, series, spots, Stephanie Courtney, TVAs frequent readers of this blog (and it’s sister publication, Captain Digital Speaks! – www.captaindigital.net) I’m a big fan of commercials. Good commercials, that is. I don’t know if I’ve related this here, but my parents tell me that, as a toddler, I would run into the room for commercials, and leave the room when the shows came back on. That may sound weird, but not if you think about it for a second. Most national TV spots have the same production values, budgets, and talent as a 30 minute sitcom or in the cases of national brands, a one-hour drama.
Recently, I’ve seen a couple of spots that have been able to penetrate the general noise level and get my attention. They’ve done so, largely for a couple of reasons:
- They are well produced, directed, and acted.
- They feature some spokesmodels/actresses with talent well beyond their looks.
- They are part of a long-running series of commercials, so they have longer to make an impression.
The three series are:
- The Mercury spots, featuring actress/model Jill Wagner
- The Glade spots, featuring Dori Kelly
- The Progressive spots, featuring Stephanie Courtney as “Flo”
Of the three series, the ones that have grabbed my attention for the personality of the spokesmodel are the Progressive spots. Turns out Stephanie Courtney is a member of the L.A.-based comedy troupe, the Groundlings. You can catch at least one of her stand-up bits on YouTube. Makes sense – she’s got less than 30 seconds at a time to develop a character, and yet I’ll bet most of you could say that you “know somebody just like Flo – bright, quirky, with an off-beat sense of humor and a retro fashion sense.” Having seen some of her stand-up, there’s a lot more to Ms. Courtney than the “Flo” character, but I’ve yet to meet an actor or actress that doesn’t put a lot of themselves in their part. As a result, Progressive has managed to cut through the clutter with a campaign I don’t mind seeing continue to run.
I’ll admit it. The Glade spots got my attention because Dori Kelly is a major babe. As I descend into the maelstrom that is my fifth decade, I find the SWTs (Sweet Young Things) less and less appealing, and find women a lot more interesting than girls. I suspect Glade’s target market knows that – and understands that the women that care enough about their homes to buy candles and other air freshening products are more likely to relate to a woman, and not a teen or twenty-something. (Hard to get excited about a product when you’re busy hating the spokesmodel for being young.) Interestingly, there’s very little on the web about Ms. Kelly. I suspect, however, from the amount of chatter on the ‘net, that she won’t be only visible in her Glade persona for very long.
The Mercury spots are the longest-running of the three series, and feature an actress/model who’s had the most high-visibility success outside her spokesmodeling work. Jill Wagner is a young lady who was able to parlay her success for Mercury into (so far) three TV series – Punk’d, Blade the Series, and a new game show on ABC. I suspect that she’ll continue to expand her exposure, as she comes across as a genuinely nice person – sort of an über-girl-next-door.
The real reason these spots work, however, is that the advertisers figured out what worked in the first spot, and were wise enough to take that early success and run with it, by turning a single spot into a series. Not being privy to the ad agencies strategies, I’m not sure who planned this, and who lucked into it, but however they did it, they were smart. What they lose in “freshness” by doing something different each time out, they gain with a series, much like chapters in a novel are easier to follow than a book of short stories.
The big flash of insight here, is to think about your advertising as a campaign, and not a bunch of individual spots. You want to tell a story over time, keeping in mind that no one ever gets tired of your spots as quickly as you do. Unless they’re bad, in which case you’re wasting your money to begin with. Creating long-running campaigns is an art – but it’s also very good for (your) business.
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