I watched TV for a couple hours tonight, and at least twice I noticed the same commercial played more than once during the same break. I’d see an advertisement for Chili’s flying mushrooms, then some other ad, then the flying mushrooms again.
I know if I were an advertiser and I paid for my spot to be shown 50 times daily, I’d expect them to be scattered throughout the day. What’s the deal?
That annoys me to no end also. To possibly answer your question, I notice that you did faithfully remember the commercial, sponsor, product and theme. BTW - were the flying mushrooms good 
I imagine the goofballs at the local station somehow foul something up and have to fill some dead air time. The advertisers probably get a buy one get one free in such cases.
Sometimes you even see half of a repeated commercial.
I’ve seen this happen at the radio station I work at, so I assume it’s a similar case with TV. See, the client buys an ad with the network, and may also buy a spot regionally, which the local station runs itself. Most commercial breaks run the national spots first, followed sometimes by a promo, then the local affiliate has a chance to pay some bills.
It’s up to the station’s traffic department to keep the same spot from airing twice in a break. But sometimes those buggers catch you by surprise; there’s just no warning that a duplicate spot is coming up in the network bloc.
I imagine you’d see this most often in franchise restaurants, which have a national and local presence. Big Soda, too, which advertises on the network, and also with the regional bottler.
–Grump “don’t touch that dial” y
It is the same thing with TV – my Uncle ran commercials for a Fox affiliate in Maine. Screw ups happen, but generally the National commercials not being immediately duplicated by the locals is left up to fate.
Nonesuch, sleepyhead. It is done quite intentionally, simply because people get up from the couch when there is a break to grab a snack, take a piss, et. al. This strategy lets ya get em comin’ and goin’.
MOST of the time it’s done intentionally.
In fact, it’s done intentionally often enough to a name.
To spot a TV commercial at the beginning and end of a stopset is to purchase “bookends.”
And the reason it is done like this is because your short term memory fades within seconds, if you reinforce that memory just as it is fading, it will stay in the mind of the viewer much longer. This is the reason that the second commercial is often only half as long as the first, it only needs to reinforce the message, not create it anew.
Forcing the consumer to remember a product or a company is only half the task at hand, and sadly I think it’s the only half that gets accomplished. If I see the same ad twice, and I’m annoyed by this action, I remember the product. Great. Now why would you suppose I’d then buy the product? Just becase I remember the damn thing doesn’t mean I’m remembering it fondly.
I recall reading a copy of a magazine for the Advertising trade and the ‘article’ was the annual recap of the best/worst ads for the year (sorry don’t remember the magazine - maybe AdWeek - or the year). The story said that when people ranked ad spots (TV) that they liked the “Not Exactly…” spot by Hertz Rent-a-Car rated as least likable - most disliked. The same survey group also scored that spot highest when asked to match it with the company that it represented. So, while folks hated the ad, the spot had the best ‘branding’ or company name recognition. I think most ad professionals would consider this a WIN scenario. I was once told that the ENTIRE purpose of advertising is to get the name out and recognized (remembered).
It’s slowly coming back to me…this was a USA Today story about an article in (I think) AdWeek. Anyway…
Just my 1.5 cents.
If that’s correct - and I have no reason to doubt that article - then to me, this is why I perceive so many marketing people to have their heads up their asses. What kind of screwed up logic is that? “Oh, they may hate us, but they’ll remember us?” What?! Why on Earth would they expect a consumer who - by their own admission! - hates them to buy one of their products?
Sheesh. Maybe it’s just me. If I hear a commercial for a product and I think the commercial was annoying or offensive, I’m not going to buy their damn product.
Oops… BTW, that nasty post was not directed at hermn8r. It was a rhetorical rant directed vaguely at marketeers in general.
The general thought is that if you’re making a choice between a number of different products of a given type, the average (note the emphasis) person is going to go with one he’s heard of before. S/he’s not remember that s/he hates it, only that s/he is familiar with it.
Well, that might be their logic, but I wonder if it’s really effective? Or is it just a dumbass assumption on their part? I can only speak for me; anyone think they buy things because they heard a commercial mention it?
I am afraid it does work–I mean, the companies that advertise the most sell the most, and more specifically, they sell more to the groups they advertise to than to the groups that don’t. There are very very few products out there that are sucessful without advertising (Carmax comes to mind). It is unlikely that this is because there is an almost perfect coorelation between quality products/best buys and advertising.
Of course, neither I nor anyone I know personally has ever bought anything becuase of an ad–so it must be hte rest of you suckers.
Manda JO,
I’m not curious as to whether advertising itself works - of course it does, that’s how branding works. But negative advertising? Making annoying commercials? Does that work because it simply plants the product’s name in the person’s head? Or is there more to it than that? I say it’s a two-step process. The ad must a) place the product in your mind and b) make you want to buy the product. Let’s face it, if you don’t wanna buy the product, you’ve failed, right?
So what I’m wondering is, do people buy products based solely on whether they recognize the product name? Does it matter if the commercial was annoying? For me, it does. It puts a bad image in my head.
“Bookending” as someone else called it seems to work for thos (like me) who use Tivo or those other digital recorders. I don’t EVER watch “live” TV anymore – everything’s on the Tivo. Thus, I see a small portion of the “first” commercial in the break, and usually the last 4 or 5 seconds of the “last” commercial in the break. Being that this is the only way (as I’ve said), I can say with great faith that “bookending” is in very common, frequent use. It seems that these commercials are almost always for restaurants (especially Chili’s) or soda-pop.
So, despite the fact I use Tivo, Chili’s is STILL getting their message across!
I don’t know about the rest of you dopers, but I have felt the subtle pull of annoying advertising. and it scared the bejeesus outta me
I needed a new suit.
I didn’t want to pay a lot.
I am mutantly tall (6’6"), and want some choices in my size.
I was in a new city since the last time I needed dress clothes.
And the only thing I could think of was the annoying guy in fake looking hair saying “I guarantee it.” I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to reward them for such annoyance. But, in the end, they had the best selection and price. (Ech, I feel slimy)
I think there are a couple factors at work:
Annoying ads certainly don’t work with me. To this day, I absolutely refuse to buy Charmin toilet paper because of those offensively stupid “Mr.Whipple! Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” ads they ran decades ago. I mean, jeez, I’ll use corn cobs before I’ll use Charmin!