Listening to yet another furniture store commercial on the radio the other day, this question popped into my head:
Why do furniture store commercials sound so much like car dealership commercials?
The primary difference between the two is that the furniture store ads usually feature a high-pitched woman doing the yelling instead of an echoing man.
Marketing types, help me out here.
Simple, would you trust a man to make good furniture choices?
The question is “why do these two disparate industries utilize almost identical commercials”. The sex of the announcer is simply the only apparent difference between the two.
My WAGs:
(1) Furniture and Cars are very much impulse buys. You want to excite people and get them thinking about how nice a new couch would be.
(2) Furniture and Cars are both negotiable price items. You want each customer to think they got a deal, when in fact they are all getting essentially the same price.
Now that was Sofa King funny. How did they get away with that?
I’m agreeing with this. The main thing is that with both, the old one performs pretty much the same primary function as the new one would. The 8 year old car still gets you from point A to point B, the 8 year old couch still keeps your ass from hitting the floor when you sit down.
There’s not enough profit in people who only replace this stuff when it’s completely worn out, you have to convince them to replace it prematurely, when there’s still significant value in the old stuff. That’s why there’s a big market in both used cars and furniture, because they both are often replaced early.
Reminds me of this one from a few years ago.
I do love me some Enil Angus.
Another point is that both furniture store & car dealership ads are almost always local. That means low budget & low talent from the beginning of the idea & throughout the execution.
[hijack]You notice that the graphic “Sofa King” came up every time someone would say … Sofa King great etc. That is how it gets by the censors. [\hijack]
SSG Schwartz
That’s a good point. Although the most obnoxious car dealer commercials I hear around here on the radio seem to be farmed out to big city ad agencies. I can tell because the announcers pronounce the name of our city incorrectly.
The locally-made ads are usually really terrible. The local Honda dealership is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and the owner (who is doing the voiceover) made a rather unfortunate choice in how he put his sentences together. His first sentence says, “Dealer Name Honda was founded in 1987 on the principles of great deals and excellent service.” The next sentence says, “But times have changed, and we’re changing with them.” :smack:
I feel Sofa King dumb right about now, because I didn’t get the joke until you said this. I guess that graphic was throwing me for a loop, too. I thought they were poking fun at some actual furniture store named Sofa King.