Saturday, September 22, 2012

So the Story Goes (Away)

Nobody really likes commercials on TV. I get that. I fully admit that now that we have a TiVo one of my favorite things is the fact that I can pause a show for a while and then fast-forward through the ads.

But, even so, there are times when I'm watching "live" TV and I do watch the commercials. And, amazingly, sometimes in the middle of the crappy commercials something will happen and you'll find a really good commercial that tells a story or somehow, someway, actually makes a connection with you as the audience.

And it'll be good. And you'll actually look forward to seeing it again or sharing it with someone else.

But the next time it comes on, something's missing. The story and feeling that were there are suddenly gone. And you realize that the formerly 30-second commercial is now only 15 seconds. Sure, the product pitch is still there, but the humor or emotion that made you like it has been stripped out.

Suddenly you really don't care about the product. You don't care about what you're watching. You just know that you've wasted the past portion of a minute hoping for that payoff that never came.

And you feel kind of sorry for the person who wrote and directed the original commercial, knowing that this new version is probably cheaper to air, but is also less interesting and probably less fulfilling.

It's sad, really.

Okay. Sure. Tonight the part of the ad that got cut was the beefcake in the background and not some great "Rosebud" moment in the commercial I was watching. But that's beside the point.

1 comment:

cls said...

They keep screwing up the Geico gekko. (sp?)