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'DVR-Proof' Commercial Kind of a Failure

by Matthew Zuras on January 21, 2010 at 09:23 AM

Back in the late '50s, a market researcher named James Vicary decided that by flashing "Drink Coca-Cola" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals during a film would make audiences desire to quench their deep-down thirst with the soda. In 1962, Vicary finally admitted that subliminal advertising was a massive hoax -- although for some nefarious marketers, the dream of penetrating the consumer's mind has never quite died.

Recently some ad people put together a commercial (for what looks like about a $10 budget) that is supposedly insusceptible to the powers of DVR fast-forwarding. (It's being hawked as "TiVo-proof," but that's false advertising if we've ever seen it.) With Grasshopper.com's mascot at the center of the screen for the entirety of the commercial, his face stays static while scanning through -- and will ostensibly stick in potential customers' heads.

But here's why the ad men behind this commercial have totally failed: Yes, if you are staring directly at the center of the screen while zooming through to the next scene of 'Jersey Shore' or whatever, you will have noticed the grasshopper. Seeing as the commercial is only 30 seconds long in real-time, the average couch potato's eyes will maybe grab 5 seconds max, during which they will see... a grasshopper.

Yet having now watched the commercial about a dozen times, we're still not sure what they're trying to sell. (Yeah, we could Google it, but this is rigorous scientific method stuff we're doing.) So how exactly do they expect the average viewer to have any idea what they're seeing? If the ad copy sucks in real-time, it's positively inscrutable at 4x.

We'll put forth a helpful suggestion to these ad mavericks that we think may make them shake their sorry heads in shame for not thinking of this earlier: instead of making the grasshopper static, why not make your company's name (or, for that matter, whatever it is they sell) the focal point? That's probably more valuable in terms of brand retention than a clip-art grasshopper that no one's ever seen before. Think about that the next time you try to brainwash us with your high-tech voodoo. [From: AdGabber, via: Gawker]

Tags: ads, advertising, commercial, dvr, dvr-proof, grasshopper.com, marketing, subliminal, tivo, top

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