Before you hit the “play” button, get ready to hit “pause” at :03. Ready? Okay, remember: Pause the audio at :03….
Assuming you did pause at :03, I don’t suppose you’re able to predict the wacky misunderstanding that will follow, huh? Go ahead, listen to the rest of it.
What a shock, huh? Who would’ve guessed the kid was referring to the name of a website, while the Moron Dad thought his son was (repeatedly) asking him a question? What a masterful use of the element of surprise in humor.
How believable is the father? Does any of that sound like a real father-son relationship?
Is that the tone of voice a man uses when speaking to his young son? Does it sound like a man talking to his son, or does it sound like a voice actor delivering corny lines?
If you’re a father, how often do you find yourself saying to your child, “I’m your father!”
In theatrical terms, that’s “telling” rather than “showing.” In laymen’s terms, it’s “bad writing.”
It’s also terrible directing. Listen to the way the kid is forced to pronounce “to” in “Who Do You Want To Be?” A real kid would pronounce “want to” as “wanna” or “wantuh.”
So what? Why is it important for this to sound “real”?
Because those people are supposed to represent the targeted consumer. The targeted consumer is supposed to identify with those people. In which of those two phony people do you see a version of yourself?
But ultimately the only question that matters is, “Does the commercial succeed in motivating the targeted listener to act on the sales message — to do what the advertiser wants the listener to do?”
This commercial campaign — presumably financed with taxpayers’ money — is trying to get people to visit the website. (Just what the heck the website does or why it exists apparently is not important.)
How successful has it been? Well, according to Alexa.com, that website is the 20,241,359th most popular site on the Internet! You can’t argue with success.
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Wow…that is one very bad spot! Dan, thanks for using it as an example of so many “what not to do”s in a commercial.
I would venture to say that the very first mistake that was made was in the actual website name. As you pointed out, Dan, no child/teen is going to say “to” clearly. whodoyawannabe dot com is much more realistic, if your target is the below-20 set. All the rest of that spot’s badness…the writing, directing and acting…flows from the fundamental error of assuming the target audience talks and writes the King’s English. Sorry…can you txt it 2 me?
With 30+ years in major markets, one thing I’ve learned is how hard it is to create a great commercial. Thank goodness for the internet, where we can access great info, some of which is used in the feature article on my site this month.
But Dan, thank you…NOTHING compares to having a bad spot used as an example of the many ways a good concept can go horribly wrong!
The site name isn’t surprising. It was created by a bunch of government stiff shirts that probably don’t know you can type a URL without “WWW” in front of it, let alone that their web browser isn’t actually called “Microsoft”.
In defense of the poor soul who probably had to run this spot past government committees and focus groups, the bad copy and poor execution were probably forced on him/her.
Being one who writes a lot of ads for our local Health Unit, sometimes you simply can’t win. Clarity and natural speech MUST be ditched in favour of the PC “term of the month”. I’ve had it go so far as being forced to change names to ones that do not end in an “E” sound (IE: Barry or Cindy) since they decided that names that end in “E” sounds are associated with people of lesser intelligence. Seriously.
Heck, I had a campaign that they wanted to target teens (for a new website oddly), being VOICED by teens, and then their focus group threw it back, claiming that the teens that voiced it sounded too much like teens and not enough like voice actors. Seriously. (Fortunately, I won that battle with a simple “If you wanted announcers, why did we go through the trouble of finding teens and recording teens sounding like teens to target teens in the first place? I have plenty of announcers who could have given you an ‘announcer’ sound.”
So, in defense of the writer … even the producer … they may have been victims of what I’ve termed “committeeitis”.