Commercials are entertaining, but…

I’ve been watching a lot of television lately. I’m not a big TV guy, but for the past ten days it’s one of the few activities that I’ve been allowed to do. You see, I’ve had a problem with the retina in my left eye. First it was torn. Then it was detached. Now it is fixed. For good I hope. It’s kept me down, but not out. So, with a damaged retina, TV watching was my mandated pastime.

It’s given me an opportunity to watch my favorite stuff—namely the commercials. (This year’s new programming is, IMHO, quite dismal. I had hopes for CANE and Dirty, Sexy, Money, but as it turns out I’m unimpressed.) Of course, most commercials on network television are aimed at the consumer; the B2B marketing specialist has only a few offerings to critique, namely spots by IBM, Intel, SAP and a few others. And, let me be among the first to say that commercials this season are great!—if entertainment value is your qualitative criterion. If you think about it, why else do most people watch TV? We watch to be entertained. We certainly don’t tune-in to Nip/Tuck in hopes of upgrading our year-old Blackberry.

So, with our brains switched to “entertainment mode” we watch today’s crop of “really really creative” commercials, and we laugh, and chuckle and make comments like, “now that was funny”, or “I can’t believe they can get away with that on TV”, or “that’s classic!”, or “little kids are so adorable, aren’t they?” At least that’s what we do in my family, and I’ll bet we’re not alone. Of course, being the marketing communicator that I am, I play a little game with whoever is sitting in my living room at the time. It’s a game that I truly enjoy—my viewing partners not so much.

At the end of a program, I’ll say,

“Remember that commercial we saw a few minutes ago?” I’ll briefly describe what we saw (‘ya’ know, where the guy did this, and the kid said that?’).

Everyone says, “Yeah, that was funny!”

“Have you ever seen that one before?” I’ll ask.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it million times”, they’ll answer.

Then, I’ll make them think. (They hate this part.) “What was the commercial selling?”

“Hummm. Ummm.” Each is looking at the person next to him. “I don’t know, but it was pretty funny.”

That’s the answer I get about 98% of the time. It makes me wonder: What would happen to our economy if all ineffective advertising was prohibited. Or, maybe we could create value with all the ineffective TV commercials, by turning them into a reality TV show. Sounds silly, but is it any sillier than a guy who spends $3000 on a flat screen TV to be entertained by commercials?