You’ve heard me say this before: Award-winning radio commercials rarely are good commercials. They are radio commercials that entertain the judges.
But maybe you haven’t heard lots of “award winners” and you’re not sure I’ve been telling you the truth. So let’s resume our visit to a number of spots honored as “the best of the best” by the 2007 Radio Mercury Awards.
As I selected commercials to share with you, I followed just one criterion: Was there something about the spot that stood out?
Sometimes — okay, rarely — that something that stood out made it an effective commercial. More often, an entry stood out because it was so staggeringly bad.
You be the judge.
This long running campaign is clever and entertaining and funny and fun to listen to. It has a good wear (or “burn”) factor; you can enjoy the individual spots even after multiple exposures.
But if you’re not already a thoroughbred racing fan, no matter how many times you listen to it you’re no closer to wanting to go watch thoroughbred racing.
They didn’t sell the experience of a day at the track. They didn’t create any mental pictures of the excitement of thoroughbred racing.
You can hear this 100 times and enjoy it 100 times but still never even consider becoming a customer (or “patron”).
This is the kind of campaign that wins awards.
It’s the kind of campaign that will thrill the advertiser because it is clever, and when the advertiser’s friends, vendors and employees hear it, they will compliment the advertiser.
If the NTRA is spending its advertising money as an internal morale boosting campaign, it’s a pretty expensive ego trip.
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I’ve always maintained that so much of what passes for advertising is nothing more than an expensive ego-boost for the company and nothing else. You’d think they’d just be satisfied with buying a fifth Mercedes or a third tropical island somewhere but noooo… they have to proclaim to the entire public on the airwaves how wonderful they are.
Then they don’t understand why their sales are down. Must be radio’s fault.