I just saw a GEICO commercial immediately followed by another GEICO commercial. I’ve seen that kind of thing a lot in the last couple of years. What’s the thinking behind this? Have the ad agencies done studies showing that’s a good way of reinforcing the message? Or do some of these companies just have a bloated advertising budget and it seems like a defensible way to spend it all up before the next budget review?
(Maybe this should go in GQ, but since it’s essentially about TV . . .)
The mundane answer is that there are two types of ad buys. One, the more expensive, places a specific ad in a specific slot connected with a program.
The other, far cheaper, is a contract that merely says that the station has to run x many, say 1000 [or, given GEICO, 100,000], commercials in a given period of time, say a month.
So the station looks for openings in its schedule into which to drop these bulk-purchased commercials. Occasionally, it may happen that they do two in a row. They’ll probably hear from the advertiser if so, because all the major ad buyers subscribe to services that list commercial showings on every station.
I dunno–it seems as though Geico’s been doing that for years, and lately I’ve noticed a few more advertisers doing it. I personally find it mega-irritating, and it just strengthens my determination never to buy anything or any services from the companies that do that.
Perhaps they bought 60 seconds but only had two thirty second spots or maybe, they know you get up and go to the bathroom so with the saturation they get you coming and going.
Bah, this phenomenon has been annoying me for at least 10 years, at least dating back to ads in the mid-90s for chewing Wrigleys in places where you can’t smoke (first spot: when you’re stuck on a plane for hours; second spot: when you’re a soccer mom shuttling kids to little league).
[WAG]
Theory: At about that time (circa 1995) ad executives realized that many viewers were taping shows so that said viewers could fast forward through ads. Therefore: when you once had 30 seconds to make an impression on the viewer, now you’ve got about five.
Response: Run two nearly identical ads back/back so viewer notices.
Argument: Viewer will notice, even when fast-forwarding, that two ads for the same product were run back to back and find this rather annoying.
Response: We’ll make a stronger impression by being annoying than being ignored, won’t we?
Executives: Let’s do a study.
Researchers: We already have. How much we annoy our audience is orthogonal to purchases. What seems to matter is the amount of impression we have, as measured in raw seconds.
Executives: Or microseconds, when we’re dealing with those VCR cowboys.
CEO: Let’s give it a try. If it works, we’ll be first on the block. If it doesn’t, well heck the board already knows this quarter’s gonna suck almost as bad as the last quarter.
[/WAG]
Not only that, but I noticed two commercials always shown back-to-back that had the same woman as main character, as if her agent got the deal for that so she’d get noticed! Those two were always played that way- the one about the woman who greets people to the restaraunt who has to cover her teeth with a menu until she gets whitener, and then one about dandruff I think. This woman was also in one of those unwanted bill ads as the wife, I remember.
Bad teeth and dandruff. Huh. Lot of problems going on there.
I always assumed this was the situation. They’d made fifteen second spots but bought 30 seconds and the network just put them back-to-back. I would prefer a sandwich but whatchagonnado.
I’d say it’s the fault of whoever’s in direct control of these things at your local station.
Back to back commercials are called piggybacks. A 15-second commercial that starts a cluster and then ends the cluster is called bookends.
These are specific buys and cost bucks. By the way, bookends were created for the very reason stated in these threads…people leaving and coming back to the room during commercial breaks.
In the case of GEICO I’m going to go with Exapno and bet that they bought an ROS (Run on Schedule) buy. Cheap. When the traffic computer is placing the commercials it sticks 'em where they can.