Commercials that air too often

Happy Wednesday to you all! It’s a beautiful day where I’m camping (future posts coming) and I’m sitting at a picnic table. A cool breeze, birds chirping, and I’m NOT watching TV commercials. Of course, I may watch a few tonight if I happen to turn on the college women’s softball World Series, but for now, nope! Even still, though, I wanted to write about commercials. I guess I’m obsessed? Maybe I need a therapist. While I ponder that, take a look at this ad you’ve probably become familiar with already…

Amazon’s Mustache Woman Commmercial

If you haven’t seen it, you’re one of three people in the world, and the other two are in outer space so they don’t even count. After I posted my blog about the ad, I noticed people mostly commented about the actress, the music, or more often about their annoyance with the ad airing entirely too often. So often that people said they’d change the channel as soon as it came on TV. Then I started to wonder how much is too much? It’s a question of critical importance to every ad executive. The ideal scenario is an ad that airs just enough to pique the interest of consumers and then it catches on through social media, Youtube, etc., leading to what the company hopes for… profit. On the other hand, an ad that doesn’t air enough or airs too much brings about negative results. Little to no profit because of lack of exposure, or overexposure. Neither is good for the company or for viewers.

An example of having a good amount of ads without overdoing it is Flo and Jamie with Progressive. A delicate balance of humor, new commercials, peppered with the boring info (insurance rates and coverage) seems to be working for them quite well. An example of overdoing it might be Amazon last year. They had a series of ads about Greek mythology and some viewers were unhappy with the amount of airings of the various commercials.

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Then there’s Bud Light. They took a chance with an ad through social media. From their side of things, very inexpensive with the possibility of a huge payoff. It’s probably worth applauding their willingness to risk. Sometimes good things happen. This wasn’t one of those times. Just one single video. Unfortunately, the brief campaign blew up and not in the way they were hoping. I’m sure you know the details by now but needless to say, they’ve provided a great example to every other company and upcoming ad agencies of what NOT to do.

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Do you have examples of commercials airing too often? Let out all your frustration in the comments below.

-Out of the Wilderness