With the Winter Olympics a few weeks behind us, I must ask: did you buy anything you saw advertised on TV during the Olympics solely because you saw it during the Olympics?
I vaguely remember car commercials: were they for Chevrolet? I don’t know because I didn’t buy a car due to its appearance on TV.
How about beer? There were lots of those commercials. Which brand? I don’t remember because I don’t drink beer.
Doesn’t Home Depot have lots of Olympic employees? I don’t care because Home Depot has failed me in the past. I love competitor Lowe’s.
Then there was that one movie preview I kept seeing. I think it was The Da Vinci Code. This one did look promising. I’ll have to add it to my list of movies to see.
Of the four commercials I can remember, I will most likely take action on one of them (the movie). Why is that? Because TV commercials are too broadly targeted.
Mass Media
As Seth Godin communicates in his book Purple Cow, mass marketing is useless. Companies spent millions of dollars on Olympic advertising and sponsorship to questionable financial benefit.
Brand Reinforcement
Commercials during the Olympics, while ineffective in swaying you to purchase new products, did hammer the companies’ brand into your head. This may just leave customers thinking: “oh, I already do business with company XYZ. That’s nice that they sponsored our Olympic team.”
Doing Good
You may say that sponsoring the Olympic team is a noble and charitable endeavor. Absolutely. Guy Kawasaki in his Art of the Start reminds us that we should give back to the community by being a Mensch. Give charitably because it is the right thing to do, not because you think you’ll gain business because of it!
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Mary-Ann
March 6, 2006
That’s not how brand advertising is supposed to work (or not!) though
I don’t know what Olympics viewers are like, but motorsport fans have some huge amount of loyalty to companies that sponsor “their” F1 team, and it can’t really be compared to mass advertising as criticised (rightly IMO) by Godin et al
Rob Poitras
March 6, 2006
If the content sucks, then I have no reason to stop the fast forward on my tivo for ads when I am going past all of the commentary and fireside chats that totally suck. I didn’t even want to waste space on my tivo for the Olympics unless it was going to record downhill skiing.
Joe Rawlinson
March 6, 2006
Mary Ann - loyal fans like you describe have already been hooked by the advertiser’s bait. New customers are particularly hard to reach by broad advertising.
Rob - you make a good point. Technology like Tivo is just another way that the mass advertising is being lost before it even reaches the target audience.