The season premiere of Rick Mercer’s The Mercer Report aired last night along with what I think is one of his best commercial parodies:
I remember our Whipple book warning future advertisers not to “make your ad look like an ad” because people’s ad-detecting radar will pick it up, and they’ll automatically tune out. Yet Vince and the ShamWow, Slap Chop have done an impressive job of making viewers pay attention (Am I the only one whose friends can actually recite lines from ShamWow? It’s scary.)
If any of you have had a class at the U of W in the past 2 years, you’ve probably sat through one of those speals from Australian students promoting adventurous summer jobs in places like South America. Some of them use the same technique as Vince – they talk super fast and act out their speech with hilarious imitations of white water rafting and scuba diving. In other words, they take the animated, larger-than-life approach so you find you can’t look away - you even want to watch - despite the fact that you’ve already seen the ad 4 times that day.
Another great tactic is using a cheeky personality with some great tongue-in-cheek lines (“cause you know we can’t do this all day”) behind what appears to be a cheesy infomercial. It’s a bit like watching all those animated movies (like Shrek) that are supposedly “for kids” or “the family” but realising they contain a lot of adult-content jokes (“you’re gonna love my nuts”).
What do you think contributes to the ShamWow success? Or maybe you can't stand the commerical - why?
I agree, I think its cause its so 'out there' too.. its almost obnoxious, so you want to pay attention. It's like when somethings so gross or hideous you can't look away.
ReplyDeleteIt's far from boring, that's for sure. The challenege for them would be if their products really work and if they can build a reputation, and maintain a steady client base. Seems like they're doing well so far, but time will tell. After a while, people get sick of obnoxious and finally pull away.
True story: One of those Australian students came to my dad's class the other day, and when he left, my dad called out "Thanks, Vince!"
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the ShamWow guy - he actually makes me laugh harder than Rick Mercer!
ReplyDelete