Time for another look at award winning radio commercials — spotlighting the good and the bad.
This one was a finalist in the 2009 Radio Mercury Awards.
Well, the performances are pretty good.
Which is more pathetic — the fact that the people who produced this apparently think they’re being funny, or the fact that right now you probably don’t remember (or never understood) exactly what was being sold and by whom?
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Seriously- I had to listen to this 3 times to get all of it. I could not stop my mind from wandering. Not a good sign.
massive double entendre overload. For the ski spot – appropriate.
Would make known a new yoga class where non existed before, too. Maybe an investment-startup seminar. But after introduction, sizzle with no meat for yoga and investment is pathetic.
This does make a listener say, “What?”. That’s a job in advertising.
It takes advantage of the trends in society. Obviously targets a younger age group, is “new-thinker” oriented, repels elders offendable by overt mentions of “doing it” fairly non-selectively in the conservative trend of wondering/wandering in the double entendre.
It will set talk potential about the place/business on fire. A very localized use, where “the canyons pair-pass” is common knowledge.
I imagine they sold out their event pair-passes quickly, generated a lot of edge exploration attitude buzz in the right groups, and made the seasonal splash “We Exist In Business!” statement.
For a ski spot, it really is all abut deciding to just jump when you’re faced with a ten foot dropoff. So it swings back to appropriate enough, for me, not pathetic. For skiing. For that, I can see the award finals spot. For yoga, bad taste.
I would agree, got me hooked on what the product was, and being a man, my mind was in the gutter, which seems to be the goal..
For the product involved, appropriate, but not for just anything.
Agreed….We’ve heard this style before and it just get’s annoying after about……:03 seconds!
I’m looking at The Canyons out my office window right now. I have a season pass to The Canyons. I’m very aware of The Canyons. I’ve also heard this spot before, and still didn’t have any idea it was for The Canyons until they said so. It does nothing to reinforce the brand.
It’s utterly forgettable. It’s a one-note joke driven into the ground (which can have its merits) , with the sell as an afterthought. Total borrowed interest. I won’t entirely discount the creative strategy (for reasons outlined by Frank Baum, above), but will concur that this is a spectacular case of people getting caught up in their own clever shorts at the expense of communicating the sales message.
The performance, however, is surprisingly good considering the spot’s ultimate flaws.
I’m in the target demo. The message should make me want to go skiing. What it does is make me not care.
it hooks me in, but one of radio’s strength’s is frequency, and hearing this for the upteenth time will be a big turnoff.
I’m really not used to hearing something like this in my market, so I guess i’m not as jaded as the rest of you.
This goes on for a whole minute?? 10 seconds in and it’s not funny anymore — you know where this is heading, and the payoff is pretty lame. Unless this is your local Active Rock station, you’re going to annoy the crap out of your audience fairly quick.
way to long
Spent too much time on stalling the sale momentum … and everyone just walked away.
Just as Dan noted with the Geico commercial referenced in the same Radio Advertising Letter, “In a successful humorous radio spot, the humor and the sales message should be interwoven.” You could replace this client with pretty much any other client where people “do” something (dining out, minature golf, go-kart racing, shopping for new carpet, spelunking, or whatever) and use this unoriginal “doing it” concept. And it goes on so long that the so-called surprise is lost. There is no surprise. After just a few seconds, any listener with a modicum of intelligence can figure out, Okay, they’re acting like they’re talking about sex but we know it’s not about sex; they’re really just making a lame attempt to be clever and “surprise” us (yawn). Although a spot like this certainly would have its share of fans. I can totally see a couple of teenagers who think this concept is “edgy” raving about it. “Dude, did you hear that commercial about people doing it?” “Oh yeah, that’s hilarious!” “What’s it a commercial for?” “Got me.”