Last week I challenged faithful readers to do something to improve upon this embarrassing piece of, uh, radio advertising from Chevron:
I knew that I wouldn’t know how to turn that into anything that even resembles an effective commercial. The task turned out to be daunting to you guys, too; we received only a small number of entries.
Here are two of the best.
Frank Baum does a good job of attracting our attention:
Eventually the spot sinks under the effort of attempting to say so many different yet meaningless things. But between Frank’s version and the original? No contest.
Gary Gerber takes a very interesting approach, turning the original dead commercial into a surprisingly human message:
But this approach doesn’t allow him time to include the 10 tons of necessary fine print.
Two valiant efforts. Thanks, guys.
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I finally figured it out Dan!
Not the commercial, just the solution to a dilemma.
It’s clear from their commercial that Chevron is paying some marketing staff and an advertising agency WAY TOO MUCH MONEY for the crap they’re getting.
The solution: They can fire everyone in their marketing department and their advertising agency and instead hire me. I’ll take half of what they’re paying all the previous people and I promise them I’ll screw it up just as bad. But at least they’ll be saving money!
How ’bout it Chevron? You know where to reach me!
Gary – a good listen. A simple straight concept to generate curiousity.
John – yagottareadthefineprint.
This is a commercial for GE Moneybank, not Chevron.
GE is using the universal need for fuel to cause the concerned to separate their credit cards, with the GE card for fuel use.
As you may know, in the US right now there is controversy about credit card companies “suddenly” raising rates, and bumping them to incredible levels if a payment is missed.
Credit card applications are not being sent out as often as they used to be, and only to non-default payment people.
SO for GE marketing, an intelligent observation of what people will spend money on in a down economy, and an opportunity for people who do separate their luxury from necessity and pay those necessity cards first.
How the marketing good idea came to be wedded to the commercial we listened to is beyond me. But the commercial is about a credit card application they want you to fill out.
And Dan, thanks for the kind comments.
If a director and client were there, I’m pretty sure they’d have wanted a more firm aggressive voice.
They also would have wanted me to use a higher gate threshold setting on the mic line to remove breath noise. As also tweaking EQ on the high end to replace frequencies my voice just doesn’t have plus bring a sharpness to gain attention. (I’d argue against the sharpness. Works for announcing tickets available they’ve waited months for, less so in persuasion).
As a person to person communication I laid it out in audio as an open door that they could look through and decide to digest or not … as painlessly as possible. The content being the grab, not the delivery.
I wrote a shamwow approach, but couldn’t bring myself to do that voice. How would you like to spend a dollar on gas and get a dollar twentyseven cents worth of fuel? Well, YOU CAN! ANd That’s NOT ALL!