To be a really great commercial, though, takes some work. Most great spots are part of a series, simply because it’s easier to be memorable if you can inject some continuity into your campaign…that way you can make the same point, with similar stuff, without boring your audiences. A current example of this would be the GEICO commercials with the animated lizard. Classics-to-be. In fact, GEICO has an embarrassment of riches on the “series” bandwagon…the cavemen series, the lizard series, the new money with eyes series, and the customer paired with a celebrity series. By comparison, Progressive’s series with stand-up comedienne Stephanie Courtney makes it seem as they just aren’t trying as hard as GEICO.

Another take on making great spots is where you create something that is not-quite-a-series, yet bears some family resemblances. “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz” did it for Alka-Seltzer.

But it seems that the ones we immortalize in our minds somehow end up being the stand-alone, one-offs, for some reason. Two spots that come to mind for most people (and ranked #2 and #1 respectively in just about every poll of memorable ads) are the Alka Selter “Speecy-spicy Meet-a-ball” spot from Alka-Seltzer and the “Brave New World” spot that introduced the Apple Macintosh. The wild thing about the Brave New World spot was it only aired once – during the Super Bowl – and recently saw a revival, as it was parodied by the Obama campaign, substituting Hillary Clinton for the large screen broadcast from “Big Brother.” (My personal favorite is the 2001/HAL spot that Apple created to skewer PCs for their milenium date problems.)

Recently, I’d say my favorite of the long-running series spots has to be the “Hello, I’m a PC…and I’m a Mac” spots from Apple. For Apple users, these spots are funny and reinforce their buying decision. As I type this on a PC, the spots are funny – and painful, at the same time.

So what does this have to do with your marketing? Well, consider this…when you create spots that resonate – spots that people remember long after they’ve stopped airing – spots that people talk about around the water cooler at work – those spots just increased the reach, effectiveness, and duration of your advertising, all without costing you one dime in additional advertising dollars.

Food for thought.