The Nature of TV Ads: Delving into the World of Commercials
I have a confession to make:
I don’t know a thing about TV commercials.
This may sound strange regarding the fact that we live in a world that is inhibited, if not even overloaded, by advertisement and especially TV commercials. There’s hardly a place in which you don’t encounter a screen with a seductive commercial trying to persuade you into buying the latest gadgets, services, or groceries. Be it at home, in shopping malls, at train stations or sometimes even on planes – you are exposed to ads, most of the time even without noticing or reflecting on them.
Or are you?
As for me and from an early age on, I was actively raised by my family to ignore commercials and ads whenever they pop up or to actively reflect on them if we can’t. Ever since I can remember and as long as we owned a TV, we would constantly switch channels during commercial breaks or turn the TV off. We would ignore billboards and TV screens in public spaces unless they provided only news. We switched to watching only public TV channels that are covered by the mandatory TV license and thus don’t need commercials to survive. Later on, when commercial breaks would occur more frequently within the hour, we would rather watch a film on the internet than turn on the TV at all. I would not be able to recognise famous jingles everyone else automatically associated with a product or service and whenever people talked about a certain commercial, I would not know what the talk was about.
This was all amplified when, after studying Film and Media Studies for a semester in Frankfurt, decided that I do not want to partake of the German TV culture at that time anymore. As original content was pushed out in favour of awful reality TV shows and commercials would be superimposed onto broadcast films, I decided to get rid of the TV. Ever since 2010, I do not own a TV and while I never missed it, it naturally renders my knowledge of TV commercials nigh. This not only holds true for German television and German taste in commercials, but also for commercials in general.
Which is why I did some basic research into the subject matter at hand. Since it is our objective of this term’s filmmaking module to film a TV commercial on 16mm, I can only benefit from learning a bit more about the structure and proprieties. This will not only come in handy for the Nahemi Kodak Awards, but also for my general path in filmmaking as well. In TV commercials lies money after all.
I started out by generically browsing on Youtube and specifically looking at commercials that were named ‘best’ and ‘student commercial’ in a certain year or category internationally while still running only 30 sec long. This I did to honour the fact that we shall film no longer than 30 sec and I wanted to develop a feeling of how much of a time that actually is in storytelling terms. So right from the start, I learned a great deal about the structure of TV commercials.
TV commercials have to be short, clear and to the point. As broadcasting time is extremely expensive and manufacturers or agencies still want to earn their more than fair share of money, TV commercials are rarely longer than 30 sec. Anything that runs longer than that, apart from their TV premiere, risks to lose the audience’s interest while still costing a lot of money for every broadcast. Furthermore 30 sec slots seem to be favoured by TV channels as they form a solid ‘time unit’ or ‘slot’ for broadcasting.
Commercials need to tell simple stories concisely and quickly. The simpler the idea, the more effectively it can be told.
Commercials sell their products or services as a solution to a (perceived) problem, the latter which is presented in the micro-story within the commercial. One example of this would be:
Commercials need to be bold and daring. Since our consumerist society is flooded with them, every commercial needs to ensure that they stand out one way or another. One way to ensure that unique selling point is to create a commercial that pushes hot buttons and provokes the audience as much as possible. This is achieved either by pushing social norms or breaking taboos.
Commercials push the button by triggering your emotions. And while commercials are predominantly on the funny end of the spectrum, there are also extremely touching or even shocking ones out there, the last of which can e.g. be seen here:
While some commercials feature the product entirely through their running time, some don’t reveal the actual product until the very end. This ‘symbolic’ or ‘metaphorical’ approach as I call it, not only keeps the audience wondering as to what the product might be and thus captivates the viewer’s attention; it is also a good loophole to keep in mind if you have to sell a product, which has not yet hit the market. One commercial I found especially compelling in this regard was this:
However, there were also bad examples of TV commercials on Youtube, most of which either ran for too long, were too boring or based their entire selling pitch on having someone delivering all by dialogue instead of visually (and thus creatively) displaying it.
This fits my impression of the 2018 Nahemi Kodak Awards that I attended in London last March. When I compare the findings above to my observations of the competition, I realise that a lot of commercials there – if not deliberately going for a polished look – preferred natural lighting scenarios and moving shots. However, the most convincing measure to engage the audience was the use of humour and even cynicism. It was immediately obvious that funny, comical content and tone was the way to go. One commercial that was, to my mind, extremely powerful in doing so, was the 'Healthy Back Bag' Landmine Commercial done by the National Film and Television School, which I sadly, cannot find in a linkable version to put it on this blog.
These are the few of the aspects that I will have to keep in mind for my pitch on the 22 October. Sadly, due to reasons of confidentiality, I won’t be able to disclose the product I have chosen to pitch or my project development for it on this platform. For now, it’s safe to say that creating an idea small enough to fit the 30 sec and be told concisely will be my main issue for now.
References:
Ace Metrix (2016) Amazon Prime ‘Lion Mane’ [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbU3cihcSqE&frags=pl%2Cwn [Accessed on 8 October 2018]
Ameya Gupta (2014) The Sea – Nahemi Kodak Awards [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zvm4B9gjhk&frags=pl%2Cwn [Accessed on 8 October 2018]
St John Ambulance (2014) Break the Barrier 30 Second Ad [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dX8AQ8oXPM&frags=pl%2Cwn [Accessed on 8 October 2018]