Hello out there TV land. You are producing content for television. You do an hour show. You need to leave 12-16 minutes open to pay the freight. Why eat up a whole minute with opening credits? After the third season of ER, I didn’t have to see the blue green snippets of the cast- I knew who they were- and the “theme music” that too got old…
This is what the VCR fast forward was for- and TiVo only made it easier.
So, instead of spending a ton of money with a composer and a “title” house like Digital Kitchen (who did the openings title sequences for shows like Six Feet Under, House and Nip Tuck) or Imaginary Forces (who did The Practice and Homicide) you could actually use that time to put relevant content on the air.
Some shows that don’t waste viewers time with this dated concept are: 24, where the previous shows are recapped to introduce the characters, Lost where the show just begins and sooner or later you get a one word title for all of a few seconds before a break.
Paraphrase what Howard Luck Gossage said about ads to main title sequences- people watch what interests them, and sometimes it’s opening credits- and think, is this content, or fluff?
Time is money, and airtime is valuable as well as the viewer’s time. By moving straight to content you are making better use of resources. Granted extra minutes of shows cost money to produce, but the longer you make your mandated viewing appointment, the better your chance to give advertisers value. Watch the lead in for Fox’s 24. “A new episode of 24 starts now” and there it is- cut to the chase (often literally) and you’re off and running. Compare that with ER, where if you miss the first few minutes, you haven’t missed much. “Must see TV” my rear end.
Television is not a place for small talk. People come to be informed or entertained, not played with. Once you begin to understand what consumers want, you have a better chance of gaining their “friendship.”
Some other things to consider: with people meters recording viewing habits there is less need for recall ID. Also, with interactive program guides and program meta data readily available, I can click on the guide or info button, and get all that info from the opening credits- plus a synopsis. With web links coming, and tv content search engines (see blinkx.tv) I can even find out details in depth about each actor. I don’t need your opening credits.
Take this one more step- local news: if you think your super busy graphics package that opens your show is worth any more than last weeks front page, think again. Same goes for your “teasers” coming up next- just give us the short bullet, real info- we’ll click though if you have a credible record of getting the story right, if not, we’ll click to your competitor, no matter how many times you say “exclusive.”
I guess it comes back to content is king.
Give me something new, fresh, relevant, or the viewer is gone. Skip intro is the future of TV.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of TV

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a opinion writer for the Miami Herald. His column in the Dayton Daily News is one of the bright spots in a generally unbright paper.
Yesterday I wrote about satellite TV killing the last easy way for local business to reach a market efficiently. Today, Pitts writes about how Johnny Carson was a uniting force in our country(he died this week)- and how back in the good old mass media days, with only three TV networks to choose from, a show like “I Love Lucy” would garner a 67.3 rating while today’s “American Idol” is considered a hit with an 18.3.
As I said in a Business Week letter to the editor, there never was really a “Mass Market” just big players in a small sandbox- now that the sandbox has enlarged (more media to choose from) it leveled the playing field. Satellite TV is a step back to a smaller sandbox.
The reason I like Pitts so much, is his commentary on humanity is usually idea driven, instead of personality. His thoughts have a longer life expectancy than just today’s news. This is a mark of a good ad campaign as well, if the idea can keep going and going, it’s generally a good one. Favorites of mine: Got Milk, Absolute __________, The Ultimate Driving Machine- you get the point. Sometimes even great campaigns get ditched due to stupidity- and then the “Hot Agency” (in this case Crispin Porter) “rediscovers” it- like Burger King’s “Have it your way.”
Great ad campaigns from major marketers can have a unifying effect on our country, just like Johnny Carson did- remember “Where’s the Beef” or “Whatzzup.”

I’m placing a link to this Pitt’s piece, “With Johnny gone, a piece of our culture is gone too.” The link I found is from the Detroit Free Press- which may want to charge you to read this tomorrow, but hopefully it will still be there and they won’t have made fun of their name…. (or is a “Free Press” that kind of freedom of the press that existed pre-the current political atmosphere where journalists weren’t getting sued to expose their sources? The latest lawsuit by Apple against thinksecret.com comes to mind).

Enjoy the day.

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Posted in: BMW Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Everything you want to know about advertising

OK, no one has been writing about what may be the most dangerous thing to locally owned business since Wal-Mart: satellite television. That’s right, the little ugly dish pointing to the Southwestern sky that is popping up all over the place.
I own a small but mighty ad agency. Most of our clients are local. We need to reach market segments the same way national advertisers do. Want to hit teens, you buy MTV, housewives in midlife crisis, E!, Oxygen, HGTV, sports nuts, ESPN and FoxSports- you get the picture. Used to be 100% of the market had access to broadcast, 80% had cable which included the local broadcasters and about 10% watched on their dish. They did this because the big cable guys had a state sponsored monopoly and kept raising rates to the point that Satellite became competitive, if not cheaper.
Cable also was slow to deliver HD programming- offering only 1 HBO, 1 Showtime and the broadcast stations, albeit late. So, people started buying dishes. Me, I have a 51” HD Sony that was begging for more HD programming, so I went with VOOM- which offered 35 basic HD channels- plus 2 HD HBO and with an integrated HD tuner for the locals- which came in at about the same price as I was paying for Cable, even when I kept the very basic cable for the locals on my other sets- plus the public access channels that the cable company thinks no one watches (I know that at least in Dayton OH, they have no clue how popular public access is).
Now, cable should be cheaper- they have more homes, so they should be able to distribute their costs over a larger base, but on top of all that- they have the ability to sell and insert commercials locally. This is the lifeblood of local businesses that want to be able to target their markets just like the nationals- but with cable penetration dropping with more satellite households, cables ability to deliver eyeballs is dropping, while their ad rates aren’t.
Cable is responding by bundling Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and broadband Internet, and even cell phone service as a single provider. But, until they get out of that fat cat mind set, they are going to gouge themselves into obscurity. The simple fact is, we are moving to delivery of all content over the net with direct IP delivery of programming. Think of the special shows that pop up on your TiVo- delivered overnight direct to your hard drive- that’s the future- with programming and commercials custom tailored to you- the viewer.
But, by the time the kinks are worked out of direct deliver by IP- we may not have very many choices on where to buy from. There will be Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, 2 global banks, and one grocery chain.
Consolidation of ownership in radio has actually driven up the rates to the point that broadcast TV is cheaper in this market. Newspapers are losing readership to the Internet, and TV viewing is dropping off for younger viewers.
Finding new customers is going to be harder and harder through “traditional” advertising methods as the markets become more and more fractured, and the people in charge of our best media tools are asleep at the wheel.
There is another whole entry to write about outdoor advertising, big box stores and tax abatements, but I’ll leave that for another day.
So, when you get right down to it, I am a traitor. My switch to Voom is like divorcing myself from my community and local businesses that are our lifeblood. Is it going to kill my small agency, The Next Wave? In the long run- probably not, since we are media agnostic and work hard to innovate our way into the hearts and minds of our client’s customers. But, remember, you read it here first as cable loses it’s place as the primary pipeline for TV audiences.

What do you think- let me know.

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Posted in: Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of TV

Apple retail stores seemed like a move backwards in the world of build to order customization. Why invest in bricks and mortar when cyberspace is so inexpensive. True, a Mac is still a thing of beauty- a piece of art, that people want to get their hands on, to touch, to feel, but, at the most expensive locations in retail? Something didn’t make sense. What did Apple know that everyone else was missing?
Well, one thing about the brand- just like Harley Davidson, Mac heads like to congregate with each other and the stores serve as a place to hang out with like minded folks. Just as Starbucks is trying to be that third place between home and work, Apple stores are a place where Mac people feel comfortable.
But the big news is that the Genius bars, where Apple trained support people offer free support, end up selling something to 70% of the people that come in to see them. Face to face support is becoming rarer by the day- and this is Apple’s secret weapon. Where did they get this idea? From the hospitality industry- the model was the conceirge service of five star luxury hotels.
So next time your are thinking about how to increase customer volume, the answer might be personalized support from your very own geniuses.

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Posted in: Everything you want to know about advertising