Predictions of the death of the traditional 30-second advertising slot have been doing the rounds for a couple of years. By common consent, the rise of diverse forms of new media in the Web 2.0 landscape has made TV commercials look tired and stale. How, then, does a brand go about harnessing television’s reach and yet appealing, in a fresh way, to viewers?
For Honda, whose strapline is “If it’s difficult, it’s worth doing”, the answer is in the heavens. Literally. As this Press Association report explains, the car manufacturer staged a live television ad involving a skydiving jump. As PA says:
“The commercial, screened during the channel’s dinner party series Come Dine With Me, saw 14 daredevils jump out of a plane before forming the letters H-O-N-D-A. With only three minutes and 20 seconds to spell out the message the skydivers appeared to struggle over the letter “N”, but it all came together in the end.”
There was even a bit of quasi-ambush marketing, as one of the skydivers delivered his own message. Fortunately for Honda, it was merely “HELLO MUM”.
While Honda’s deployment of a team of parachutists was both high risk and innovative, live commercials are not new. They were a staple of television in the 1950s, and their appeal then was perhaps as now. The spontaneity and danger of the medium – the ‘what if?’ question on every viewer’s lips – may just hold attention long enough to compete with the many and varied allures of the Web 2.0 world. Watch this space – Honda might have made a relatively small step as a corporation, but a giant one for contemporary television advertising.
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
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All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
In this article, Gavin Ingham Brooke and Rohit Grover of Spada examine the importance of marketing and PR in a downturn.
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.