For a bunch of ostensibly creative people, we sure take a long time to come up with the "Next Big Thing." But it’s here, and just in the nick of time to save our industry (dum da da dum!).
Advertainment.
For those of you who haven’t heard of this because you’re either A.) desperately trying to get work or B.) working your butt off to cover all the stuff that used to be handled by all those people who got laid off, here’s the deal: The television commercial is dead. Instead of selling discrete :30 units to advertisers, television shows will now be conceived and executed with advertisers as part of the story.
In other words, instead of slaving to try and produce a 30-second commercial, we’re all going to get rich writing TV shows … that just happen to take place at a Hertz Rental Car counter.
Wow. And I thought the dot.com thing was exciting.
Cheerleaders for this "new" medium point to the BMW films. "Look," they say, pointing. "Everybody watched those."
Um, right.
How many of you went to see Club Med: The Movie, or Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man?
What was hailed as the harbinger of a new paradigm was actually a success in the midst of countless failures and occasional successes.
This isn’t a "new" idea. In fact, it’s as old as commercial radio. Our industry moved away from this paradigm for several reasons, not the least of which was that people who evaluate and approve entertainment operate from a completely different set of rules than do people who evaluate and approve advertising.
Sure, some advertising is extremely entertaining. In fact, I’ll bet that most of us in the advertising business fantasize about applying the skills we have to something more exciting than the background noise to someone’s potty break.
And given a strong brand, you can create a strong piece of entertainment.
Castaway, that Tom Hanks movie, is a perfect example of a strong brand (FedEx) helping to define a character. It was essentially a two-hour commercial for FedEx.
I understand why hundreds of companies are lining up to explore the possibilities. I don’t doubt that millions of dollars are going to be made by people clever enough to position themselves correctly to take advantage of this "entirely new" paradigm.
But there’s one little piece of this puzzle that doesn’t fit. The consumer.
You know what a syllogism is? A syllogism is a logical construct, a form of deductive reasoning that goes back thousands of years—before advertainment, dot.coms and even Tony Robbins.
Here’s how it works: You start with a major premise (people hate watching commercials), and a minor premise (a 30-minute commercial is still a commercial).
If those are both true, then your conclusion is inevitable (I think I’d rather go paint the garage).
