Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:35AM Did you catch CareerBuilder.com and Docker's bad advertising luck? Exactly $5M of bad luck!
An "insiders" view of what happened, didn't happen, and should have!
Everyone's still talking about what Super Bowl ads were their favorites or not. As a sometime advertising guy I was struck by the dumb bad luck of CareerBuilder.com commercial [the Casual Friday spot] and Docker's one [the I wear no pants spot] occuring together, one-after-the-other in the early period of the game.
What you'd never like to see happen...especially if you'd just spent $2,500,000?
If you'd wanted it to happen [and who would have hoped for that except their direct competitors?] it couldn't have occurred more exquisitely--but, ideally it shouldn't have: Two commercials that showed two different products...where the key creative device employed was seeing people in their undies--and here's the important part--literally back-to-back! Here, see for yourself...watch each of the commercials in sequence...just as they were shown on your television Sunday:
CareerBuilders.com spot: Casual Fridays
Docker spot: I wear no pants
This is how a commercial is supposed to be run.
In advertising there's a very important rule broadcasters are expected for abide by: Never place the commercials for competing brands adjacent to each other--to do so causes unwanted comparisons as to the appeals and offering merits of two marketplace contenders. This rule is honored 99.9% of the time--and it's a big mistake when a broadcaster violates the rule--because of a procedural step that's in place, namely having all commercials identified, coded, if you like, with one or more product codes which instantly "signal" to the person scheduling the spots [the "traffic" guy] to not put two of the same codes together! [By the way, in case you're wondering, after an advertising "standards" review person okays the running of a commercial as being acceptable, nobody from a broadcaster's operation ever watches, or views, commercials--it is largely a mechanical process at that point in the sequencing and airing of a spot.]
But, you say, the product offerings of CareerBuilder.com and Docker aren't the same, i.e., they're selling different "things"--and you'd be right--which is why the product codes for these two commercials, being different, signaled to the traffic scheduling person in this incidence that these two spots--two spots he or she had no idea what they were about and couldn't have care less--were perfectly fine to place back-to-back.
However, with the We wear not pants spot that follows the CareerBuilder.com Casual Friday spot--if you were CareerBuilder.com--you'd want your $2,500,000 back! After you thought you'd done a decent creative job at getting your message across, the next ad causes people to not reflect favorably on your message, but, instead, to question..."Is this a joke? Why am I seeing two commercials with people walking around in their skivvies?" Or, "Why is no one wearing clothes in this ad either?" Maybe, "Are these two commercials from the same sponsor?"
And--if you were Docker--you'd want your $2,500,000 back as well. Because now viewers are wondering..."Is this part of the CareerBuilder.com ad that I just viewed?" Or, "Why am I seeing two commercials with people undressed?" Possibly, "Why is CareerBuilder.com running these kind of commercials? ...One was funny but this one not so humorous!"
After I quit sobbing, here's what I'd do now--if I were CareerBuilder.com or Docker...
Nobody at CareerBuilder.com or Docker--or CBS for that matter--did anything wrong, but the outcome was just that...wrong! No, there wasn't any direct product or brand competition--but there was creative competition that simply screwed up how both commercials, running back-to-back, were perceived. If I were either CareerBuilder.com or Docker I'd politely ask CBS--not for an apology...that's not in order--but I would ask for what in the business is a goodly number of "make-goods." Each can say, after all, "CBS has two and a half million dollars of our and we deserve--although what happened happened entirely by chance--say three or four prime-time commercials to make my investment in advertising on the CBS network 'right'."
And if CBS was smart--they'd listen and do the fair thing.
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Reader Comments (1)
I would be interested to see if CBS does either of these brands a solid and gives them some prime time spots or other "make-goods", as you say.
However, I am confident that that will recieve no publication, in fear of setting a precedent.