"Creatives" in advertising

[Flowboy]

I have been musing over the world of advertising more than normal of late.
"Creatives" as they call themselves, come up with the ideas. Now its common to use famous songs now out of Copyright in ads, I can't believe J Lennon's Revolution in a car ad!!
But there are two that really drew my attention lately and neither was designed to attract Web cult status.
1. An ad for a natural worm killer to give to kids. While the "talking head" says how important control is to prevent cross infection, if you look behind her, there's a kid picking his nose and then digging into the bread packet. Fear and trepidation. Thats real creative...not!
But the bestis
the Angels in the Kraft Philly ads like the one where one girl says to the other, those wings can't be real. Well the latest is one doing Yoga while the other gets out the Philly and gives some to the first, who then says predictably, "Yum" To which the other says, "Yes and you don't need to put your knees behind your head to enjoy it":eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: Way too creative for my simple mind. Just too unfathomable.

Regards

Rob

[silentC]

Don't watch them! Ads are for going to the loo/getting a beer/putting on a jumper etc etc. Didn't you know?

[Lignum]

Even SBS has started with adds in the middle of shows:( The last two eps of OZ had 3 five minute add breaks during it:(

[bennylaird]

The unfortunately more frequent ones on Foxtel have you jumping channels but they seem to time them together. Anyway no where near as bad a free to air.

[Flowboy]

Even SBS has started with adds in the middle of shows:( The last two eps of OZ had 3 five minute add breaks during it:(


Absolutely soul destroying. In Mythbusters its tolerable, but if it hits the next series of Topgear, I'll be devastated. Point here is, on SBS a 1 hour show usually takes up 50-55 minutes. Now we get an extra 15 minutes of ads, what's going to go!

Rob

[Bob38S]

Absolutely soul destroying. In Mythbusters its tolerable, but if it hits the next series of Topgear, I'll be devastated. Point here is, on SBS a 1 hour show usually takes up 50-55 minutes. Now we get an extra 15 minutes of ads, what's going to go!

Rob

I emailed SBS expressing my :mad::mad::mad: opinion [politely] of their new policy and received the following in reply - Lignum may be surprised with one of the paras relating to times. I have since replied again as the last "Mythbusters" had 5 self promotions for upcoming programs.
I would suggest that if you are serious - tell them - on their website in the comments/complaints section.

SBS's reply

"Dear Bob,

Thank you for writing to express your concerns about changes to program
breaks on SBS Television. Your comments will be shared with SBS
management.

SBS has taken this course of action following a great deal of
consideration and investigation. It was not an easy decision to make,
but the alternative is less palatable.

SBS could continue with its current format, but its ability to
commission quality Australian productions and to purchase the world's
best films, television programs and sporting fixtures would become more
and more constrained by lack of funds and rising competition from Pay TV
and the other networks.

SBS obtains about 80% of its funds from Government, and the remainder
comes from advertising revenue. Even though that amount is relatively
small, it is vitally important revenue that goes exclusively to the
purchase, commissioning and production of programs.

Under its Act, SBS is obligated to operate in an efficient and
cost-effective manner and, importantly, it is required to actively
pursue funding opportunities independent of Government funding.

The Act also stipulates that SBS is not permitted to show more than
five minutes of commercial advertisements in an hour, considerably less
than the 13-15 minutes typically shown by commercial networks. This will
not change.

Up to now, SBS has run five minute blocks of ads between programs and
the most immediate effect of this is more than 50% of our viewers switch
channels. Because of this reduced audience, our advertising rates have
to be pegged at levels far below the commercial networks.

By placing short ads within programs when we reach peak audiences, our
advertising rates (and revenue) can be increased. All of this additional
revenue, as mentioned previously, will go into the commissioning and
purchasing of programs.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to SBS, you are obviously
a committed, regular viewer; please be assured that your comments along
with others we have received will be given due consideration.

Yours sincerely,

David Lance
Manager, Public Relations"

[Rocker]

The situation here is still far better than in the US. There, advertising takes up around 1/3 of air time, and no program segment lasts longer than 7 minutes. Be thankful for small mercies.

Rocker

[silentC]

I'm sure we will follow them like we do with everything else.

I wonder if the new media ownership laws will change anything?

The problem is the 'product' that media companies sell is advertising, not programming. The programming is just the bait.

[Bleedin Thumb]

Makes you wander why we spend an extra $600 each year for pay TV.
Wasn't the idea that we pay them the money so they didn't have to get money from advertising.
If the cable networks increase advertising and hence raise their revenue surely we should expect subsidised (free) rates. oops I forgot about the monopoly (dueopoly in name only) of Foxtel.
Thanks Mr Alston.

[silentC]

Their argument would no doubt be that advertising allows them to keep subscription rates down.

We've just cut ours down to the basic service only. No more How Not To channel, no more Comedy Channel, no more UKTV. Saves us a fair bit per year for something we only used infrequently if ever. Really only want it for the sport channels but they wont give them to you individually. You have to take (and pay for) all the other crap as well.

[Flowboy]

The important thing here as SC says isn't the programming. Its absolutely essential that we watch the advertising especially at peak times so that companies can fool themselves into believing that they work. Just one look at a Bunnies ad and SWMBO has to get a thermos of hot tea for me.
But most important is the need for us to see the amount of creative thinking, intellectual wit and vision coupled with Community sensitivity which allows Ad Execs the power and expedable income they "earn" You could hold the likes of John Singleton right up there as a role model.
Also, how else will you know when your version of English is no longer valid.
How would you feel saying " I'm going to have a shower to refresh my body", when you really should be saying " I'm going to have a shower to fresh my body", like you several in the wardrobe.
If I ever get a "Creative" near me at dinner or a party, start counting the minutes till I'm evicted.
Bob,
That email is a great example of doublespeak and just another way of saying we must advertise in prinme time to get the dollars

Regards

Rob

[Lignum]

Up to now, SBS has run five minute blocks of ads between programs and
the most immediate effect of this is more than 50% of our viewers switch
channels. Because of this reduced audience, our advertising rates have
to be pegged at levels far below the commercial networks.

By placing short ads within programs when we reach peak audiences, our
advertising rates (and revenue) can be increased. All of this additional
revenue, as mentioned previously, will go into the commissioning and
purchasing of programs.


Yours sincerely,

David Lance
Manager, Public Relations"





So what he is trying to tell us is that by putting more adds on during the show more viewers will tune in and stay :rolleyes: Clown:p



And whilst im having a TV winge, a pox on Eddy and CH9 for relagating The Sorpranos to Midnight Monday :( :( :(

[Bleedin Thumb]

, no more UKTV..:eek:

Mate what will you do if they repeat Sharpe's War IMHO the best peice of TV made since Napoleon invaded Spain.

[Lignum]

:eek:

Mate what will you do if they repeat Sharpe's War IMHO the best peice of TV made since Napoleon invaded Spain.

My favourite of all time was the BBC drama Children of the North and here in Aus its Blue Murder

[silentC]

:eek:

Mate what will you do if they repeat Sharpe's War IMHO the best peice of TV made since Napoleon invaded Spain.
Don't they run that on the ABC? I've never watched it.

I think the only thing I ever watched regularly on UKTV since The Bill soaped up was A Touch of Frost. I've got that many more reasons now to head for the shed ;)

[bennylaird]

Heard that only 400,000 tuned in for Sorpranos so they relegated it, will probably drop it soon if it doesn't make them money.

[scooter]

Aw, crap, Lig, have been taping this series (have the rest on DVD) :(

[Lignum]

Heard that only 400,000 tuned in for Sorpranos so they relegated it, will probably drop it soon if it doesn't make them money.

Thats what happens when they start the series of at 20 to 11 on a wednesday night, so naturaly its to late for most, then chanell Eddy then decides because no one is watching they will put in on at midnight. All the other crap they show early and all the good stuff they send to the graveyard shift. :(

I bet if they put on crap like Dancing with the so called Stars at 11pm no one would bother watching


Aw, crap, Lig, have been taping this series (have the rest on DVD) :(

Hope you havnt been tapping it on a Wednesday night:eek: This is gaining pace and will again be the best quality show for the year. I also have the rest on DVD. Every now and again ill pull out a series of Sorpranaos or 24 and start on a Friday night and watch the entire lot in one go:eek: :D Taxing but a great way to watch it.

HBO makes great dramas, do you watch or tape OZ? That is the most full on show ever to be shown here on telly.

[Bleedin Thumb]

Ok remain calm this is a hijack!

[Glenn_M]

I feel like a hypocrite but anyway..........My work involves television advertising yet I detest ads in the programs I watch. Don't know how I live with myself. Oh wait, yes I do, I dont watch them.

This may be a bit drastic for some but my solution is a HTPC and some open source software and voila! No ads. At the worst a press or two on the Skip button on the remote and gone.

Advertising is a necessary evil and as long as companies can use it to make a dollar we will be inundated. FTA TV is free due to advertising revenue. It's not 'free' - the price we pay is having to put up with ads.

I'm not a Foxtel subscriber but that's when I would get cranky. They want you to pay for content *and* be subject to advertising? Two revenue streams for them.

While we have only three major commercial networks in Aus with an increasing demand from advertisers the shennanigans of the networks will continue.

Cheers,

[Auld Bassoon]

:eek:

Mate what will you do if they repeat Sharpe's War IMHO the best peice of TV made since Napoleon invaded Spain.

I must agree that "Sharpe's War" has been superb. I also enjoyed greatly the similat historical drama "Hornblower". Great TV, unlike most of the US sourced garbage...

[tameriska]

What I intensly dislike is when you are watching a programme and the programmers cut the ad's in randomly, our station even cuts off ad's with another ad :mad:

[Groggy]

This may be a bit drastic for some but my solution is a HTPC and some open source software and voila! No ads. At the worst a press or two on the Skip button on the remote and gone.
Glen, I'd appreciate a bit more info, perhaps a link. Are you using a HTPC (home theatre PC?) as a recorder then overlaying that with some sort of ad identifying s/w?

[Glenn_M]

Hi Groggy,
Yep, using a HTPC to record DVB-T (DigitalTV).

There are a number of options for detecting and removing ads from recorded programs. For those using Microsoft MCE then the DVRMSToolBox + Crunchie combination does the trick. Can also use ComSkip with some applications.

These work by post processing the recorded TV file, detecting the ads and either marking or deleting the frames.

However, I am using MediaPortal - the most brilliant (and open source) media application on the planet. An new TV engine is due soon so I am not mucking about with post processing at the moment.

MediaPortal allows you to configure the keys on the MCE remote to 'skip' 15, 30, 60, 180, 300 seconds etc.

So when watching a recorded show (most of our viewing is these days. Just tell the electronic program guide what shows we want to watch and the machine records them whenever they go to air. When we wantto watch TV, just look at what was recorded over the last few days - pick a show and away we go). When an add break appears, 4 taps on the skip key, jump three minutes and keep watching. Jumps back and forth instantly.

For live to air TV, we just timeshift the program and start watching about 20 minutes later. So we start 'taping' an program at 8:30, start watching about 8:50, skip the ads and finish the show when it finishes at 9:30.

At the moment MediaPortal is recording in Micro$oft DVR-MS format which limits the use of the commercial skipping software as most works either in .TS streams (ditigalTV) or MPEG2.

As said, I have used post processing before but the present issues with the DVR format and the ease of configuring skip times on the remote havent made me revisit it yet. My kids are showing more interest in TV these days and I'll be buggered if I expose them to the childrens TV advertising barrage. So I'll be looking into it again soon.

The new TV engine for MediaPortal will provide some further options that I'll look into when released. MediaPortal is still in a development phase but I have been using for about 18months now with little problem. If you're interested check out

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Cheers,
Glenn

[Schtoo]

What's TV? :confused:

Only gagging, but not by much since we don't even own a TV. Have a TV board in the computer here, but I use it maybe 4 hours a week (movies) and Mrs. Schtoo watches it about the same for other things.

I don't think I will ever go back to watching the stoopid thing, since I do not miss it and don't really have enough time to watch anything anymore.

I think there is a bunch of "24" DVD's kicking around, some "Lost" and other things, and we just don't bother since the little fella arrived.

We did chew through "24" in a week or two though. 4 season's worth...

And You tube supplies me with adequate "Top Gear" bits, since the fools won't put it on DVD...

So, why bother watching it at all? If I had a shed just outside, I wouldn't even bother with the TV card in the computer.

[silentC]

the price we pay is having to put up with ads
No, the price we pay is having to pay more for the stuff we buy so that we can keep you and your mates in chardonnay and lattes ;)

[Glenn_M]

No, the price we pay is having to pay more for the stuff we buy so that we can keep you and your mates in chardonnay and lattes ;)


More like beer and tools and who would deny me those?

[scooter]

Glenn, thanks for posting the info :)

What other hardware/software requirements are there? Do you have to have MCE or can it be done with XP?

Is it a digital TV card you're using, or both dig. & analague? I assume you need a truckload of hard disk space.


Cheers mate...............Sean

[silentC]

More like beer and tools and who would deny me those?
But if we didn't have advertising, you would have to get an honest job and beer and tools would be cheaper for all of us ;)

It's a wonderful scheme though, isn't it? Companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars every year advertising their products so that they can sell more, but consequently they have to factor that into their pricing.

So us poor mugs who hate ads and never watch them, pay for their production. Not only that, but we also pay for the purchasing of programmes, making of new ones, the salaries of all the people who work for the TV stations, the various boards of directors, the freelance journalists and photographers, the marketing people in the companies who advertise and so on.

Meanwhile there's a whole industry based around advertising, and if you can believe the stereotype, a lucrative one.

Makes me think that people who watch the ads are the sensible ones. At least they're getting something for their money.

[Glenn_M]

Scooter,
Hardware and software are somewhat related to the choice of operating system and application you make.

For me, I run MediaPortal as the media application on Windows XP machine which is:
2.4G Celeron P4 (plenty power)
512 MB RAM

Video card are an issue but do not need to be grunty - just need to support DX9. I started with a ATI 9250 but now have a passively cooled ATI9550 (needed DVI out connector). So cheap is good here.

Disc space is the biggest issue really. Digital TV / Movies can chew up lots of space. Depends on how much you want to store. I get by easily with 120GB drive and just transfer shows I want to keep to DVD or my fileserver.

Tv Tuner is a Dvico Fusion Plus card. Various applications allow you to use either digital / analog or both. I found digital has a lower CPU load as the signal does not need encoding (and I only had a software encoding analog card). Sound is way better from the digital card as well.

Will be getting a second tuner (or dual tuner card) soon.

I output sound directly off a SPDIF header on the motherboard to a Sony home theatre amp. Reduces CPU load again (therefore heat and noise).

Whole thing controlled by a $60 MCE remote control (I dont use the MCE operating system, just WinXP)

Other requirement are the codecs required for the various plug ins that MediaPortal has but that is all configurable and up to you.

Hope that helps. Feel free to PM me if you'd like more details

Glenn

[Groggy]

Hi Groggy,
Yep, using a HTPC to record DVB-T (DigitalTV).

There are a number of options for detecting and removing ads from recorded programs. ...snip of some good gumphThanks for the info Glen, I'll be looking into it a bit further!

[scooter]

Strewth, Glenn, looks like a slippery slope :o

Love the idea, & had planned to get a TV card when we bought this computer earlier this year, but bugger all spare $ to splash around so ended up going with a M/B with onboard graphics & no TV. Have an 80 gig HDD & DVD burner so could probably get by on that front.

Might keep an eye out for a 2nd hand / superseded graphics/tv card. Needs to have directx 9 you say? What's the DVI output?

Keep it on a slow burn I think. :)


Cheers for the info..............Sean

[Glenn_M]

Strewth, Glenn, looks like a slippery slope :o

Love the idea, & had planned to get a TV card when we bought this computer earlier this year, but bugger all spare $ to splash around so ended up going with a M/B with onboard graphics & no TV. Have an 80 gig HDD & DVD burner so could probably get by on that front.

Might keep an eye out for a 2nd hand / superseded graphics/tv card. Needs to have directx 9 you say? What's the DVI output?

Keep it on a slow burn I think. :)


Cheers for the info..............Sean


Slippery slope indeed.......as most hobbies are.

DVI output is a digital output from the video card. Typically you get VGA which is the standard analogue signal which goes to your monitor, a S-VHS which is analogue out used to connect to a standard analogue TV. Then there is DVI which is the newer digital output. I use it to send the output to a projector (as well as S-VHS to a normal TV)

Depends on what you want to see the image on as to what output to. If you just want to view on a normal TV, then a ATI9250 with a S-VHS out can be got second hand for no more than $30 I'd think. The NVidia equivalent should be around the same if you swing that way. This assumes your MB has a (spare) AGP slot. If you have no AGP or PCIE slot you may be in trouble.

Word of caution on the Digital TV card. Not all are created equal. Make sure that your choice of software will support the card. There are plenty good brands available in Aus. Dvico, Hauppage Nova-T to name a few. Ultraview are rebranded DVICO's and are a good buy as well.

Cheers

[Bleedin Thumb]

Excuse me fellas back to the thread for a second (dont worry I wont be long)
Flowboy, for some reason whenever I think of the advertising creatives I picture a group of people huddled around a table snorting coke and saying things like .. Hey yeahhhh and why dont we have this genie appear and offer her a never ending box of timtams.... yeah wow great man! snort..

[Lignum]

whenever I think of the advertising creatives I picture a group of people huddled around a table snorting coke and saying things like .. Hey yeahhhh and why dont we have this genie appear and offer her a never ending box of timtams.... yeah wow great man! snort..

I think your getting confused with furniture designers

[Bleedin Thumb]

I think your getting confused with furniture designers

LOL Maybe I am:D but I thought the drug of preference for those degenerates was sawdust?;)

[Andy Mac]

Ads are for breaks, to go relieve yourself, to go get something. But I'm sure they're getting longer, especially that infuriating trend to rerun the same ad in the same &^^# break...even back-to-back!!:mad: Ad execs, or whatever these creative types are called, should be strung up, alongside bank CEO's. They can talk profit together for eternity!!:D


Cheers,

[silentC]

Here's a thought: do you reckon they have advertising on North Korean Central TV?

[thetassiebfg]

Of course they do.. and as I am assuming they don't watch a lot of stuff from USA, UK or OZ they get so bored with reruns of local programs or propoganda screened as propoganda rather than drama the scientists and politicians got so bored they came up with a new form of reality TV. Instead of The Amazing Race they have "the Amazing Nuclear Race" big brother is "Big Brother is watching" (evictions are terminal though) and survivour is "Fallout Survivour". I beleive however they do get neighbours and home and away and according to secret reports there are plans for thermonuclear blasts for both Ramsey street and Summer Bay - Apperently the United Nations have declared the destruction of both is deemed community service rather than an act of War or terrorism

-- enough with the hijack already what's the topic again?

[silentC]

Actually, it was a rhetorical question to highlight the fact that what we have is better than the alternative.

OK, there are a couple of other alternatives we could have, we have two examples of one of them already but SBS is rapidly becoming a commercial network and the ABC will go that way too.

In NK, they get to watch documentaries about their glorious leader all day. Well, not all day because the station doesn't run all day. And not everyone has access to a TV anyway.

So I suppose advertising is the price we have to pay for a 'free' media. Well, relatively free anyway. At least there's some balance to Johnnie's propaganda. Imagine if the only channel we had was fully funded by the government?