commercial break sucks, right?

who likes commercials?
They are everywhere one might look; On TV, on billboards, on the traffic etc. This has resulted in that people are prepared to pay for avoiding commercials which is the reason Tivo:s has become popular. Most people will as a result of this assume that no one likes commercials and to have a TV commercial is a waste of money.

Banned? sexy? or both?

As I presented in the last post sexual videos will attract attention. The viewers will see the sexual parts of the commercials and even replay these parts before continuing. This could be seen as successful if the brand is built around these parts and therefore creates a brand or product awareness. At the same time as this  experiment took place I also launched a second banned commercials video. This was done to have something to compare with and be able to see just how effective sexual commercials are. In this post I will present these differences.

Does sex sell?

“Sex sells”, this is a statement that is used in many ways both in commercials as well as in other media. A car show will always have an amount of women around the cars, why? Because they believe that sex sells. Any teenage college/high school  movies such as for example; American pie will contain more and more sexual content for each sequel. Why? Because they believe that sex sells.

the effects of the word banned

Image via CrunchBase

The experiment has now been up and running since the 17th of september and I will present the numbers I have gotten so far. The videos will stay up on YouTube so if you have future interest in looking into them you can find them on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9XK47PnRsE&feature=channel_video_title
the 5 best banned car commercials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK9ZPEmRuZA&feature=channel_video_title
the 5 best car commercials

Google goes social media.

Image via CrunchBase

Few have missed that Google has launched their latest social media platform, Google +. Their earlier examples of Google Buzz (a social networking, microblogging and message tool integrated with G-mail) and Google wave ( it combines e-mail, direct message, wiki and social media) can be seen as failures as they were ignored or ridiculed. Google Wave is even getting removed as it didn’t give the amount of users as they where expecting.  Google’s third platform, Google Orkut, are popular in Brazil and India but they are losing their visitors there as well. So they have had three tries, why a forth?

Product placement in movies and viral videos

An art that has existed for a long time and that is getting more and more accepted as times goes. A well placed product in a movie can make the sells go sky-high, just as a misplaced product might not get seen or even worse, make the consumer misunderstand when or where to use a product.  Also sounds from a product might sometimes work better than showing the product itself. Apple for example. They claim to never have paid for having their products in a movie and yet they are in many. To see an Apple computer with its logotype works well, but how about an I-phone? A phone is a phone and it can be hard to detect what brand it is, even though its characteristics. A way to solve this problem is to include the sound. In the movie “I love you man” Apple can be seen on many places. Everyone uses the I-phone and in order to make it noticeable and making it easier for the consumer to detect it they use the classic sounds from the phone, making it impossible to miss what phone they are using. The sounds like phone signals and “lock up the phone” sounds are frequently used.

Lost in the river called Youtube

YouTube has all kind of videos. Amateur made videos, viral company videos, commercials etc. It is possible to find just about anything on it and companies has tried their best to produce viral successes with different results. But with YouTube came also the possibility for average people to create their own videos. This result in that 24 hours of material is uploaded to YouTube every minute. To get an understanding how much this is it’s possible to compare it to the major networks in USA. More videos are uploaded to YouTube in 60 days, than all the 3 major networks created in 60 years. It is said that the average person spends 15 minutes on the platform each day. It is easy mathematics to understand that if it each minute is created 24 hours of material and the consumer spends 15 minutes on the site it won’t take long before your message is gone in the river of videos called YouTube.