COMMENTARY: Fringe Points the Way back to Effective Advertising
Issue: Fox experiments with shorter ad blocks
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri
For a decade or more, advertisers and networks both have been bemoaning the loss of audience for advertising. Part of the culprit was a drop in the overall prime-time television audience, which declined by a third or more in less than ten years (even as the overall U.S. population climbed). To listen to the networks, however, we would think that digital video recorders and ad-skipping consumers were solely to blame.
Fox has just proven that this was never the case with an interesting experiment on the new prime-time drama, Fringe.  The show debuted with fewer ads in shorter blocks (Fox, of course, charged more per ad). The result, according to AdAge:
Brand recall of ads that appeared during the first episode of “Fringe” was 32% higher than that of commercials appearing in traditional broadcast-TV programs, according to Nielsen IAG. The level of “program engagement,” or audience attentiveness, for “Fringe” was the second highest among debut episodes on broadcast TV in the past year (only NBC’s “Chuck” did better, IAG said).
We like this strategy for two reasons. First, it re-contents television which for many years has been incrementally adding more commercials per hour (advertisements in the 1960′s ran for just 8 minutes in an hour – last year it was 18 minutes for the same hour).
Equally important in our view is execution. Fox wisely inserted time markers before the newly shortened ad blocs. “Fringe will return in 60 seconds” was a very effective inducement to keep viewers stuck in place, hands off the remotes. Without these prompts, we doubt that the new strategy would have functioned as well. They set expectations for consumers and allowed viewers to make rational decisions, which benefited the Fringe advertisers more than on similar shows.
Advertisers and networks need to continue to take responsibility for the sad state of broadcast advertising. Showing more and more bad advertising just won’t work. Thanks to Fox for taking a step in the right direction.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
David,
As a veteran copywriter from DDB and Satchi I'm thrilled to find this blog. Especially this Microsoft Blog. I have been wanting to vent about the Microsoft spots for forever in an intelligent forum. Even someone who is a big fan of Seinfeld and Gates, as I am, was lost, just as the "message" was. I know they thought this idea was layed back and hip, but it actually was all over the place, just as the newer unfocosed "surfing tsunami" campaign is. Now I see the introduction of a young woman (and probably not young enough) searching for an affordable computer (under $1000) at an Apple Store. Are they kidding? Even in a financial downturn, that doesn't stop Apple people from buying Apple or aspiring to buy Apple. Just bringing up the subject shows the creators of this advertising are totally missing the emotional attachment, no fervor, people have for Apple. Save us from this weak, undirected, unemotionally moving, uninspiring and uninformed advertising. It doesn't "click on any level. This makes me as mad as when the best tag line ever was removed from BMW. The ultimate driving machine. Thank God they eventually realized the terrible mistake and put it back. When is Microsoft going to get it? I know there are some problems with Vista, etc. but heck this is Microsoft. Instead of acting like the guy in the Apple commercials, they have to start acting like the biggest, most successful, most ubiquitous, most powerful software in the world. Why don't they ask me to do the advertising? I'd give them the image they have earned and deserve. Hint, hint, what kind of software do Macs usually use? Isn't that Microsoft Office the Apple Store sells me every time I get a new Mac?
April 30th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
[...] Hulu is a great success, but the point here is that part of their magic formula is simple: they aren’t greedy. If television networks hadn’t progressively crammed more and more commercials down viewer’s throats, we’d probably still be watching there, too. Ask FRINGE … SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “COMMENTARY: Hulu’s Got Game”, url: “http://www.thirdwayblog.com/post-types/commentary/commentary-hulus-got-game.html” }); [...]