I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV but I find the subtle evolution of commercials fascinating…an evolution that tracks my own gut reactions pretty well. I should document more of these because these subtle corrections happen all the time…not unlike how things worked in Orwell’s 1984. We don’t notice most of the time…but the subtle changes alter our perceptions of the brand.
An early ad for Sprint was almost giddy with the idea that people would pay for access to the wonders of technology–like the ability to update your Facebook status from your phone.
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But then, the economy soured and Sprint tried to acknowledge that with this ad in Central Park.
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Now it’s about giving everyone access to the network so you can save money.
But I felt (and probably others did too) that CEO Dan Hesse in his fancy long coat and expensive scarf, and filmed in a highly stopped-down aperture made it seem like he was almost blue-screened into the shot with those “ordinary people.”
So Sprint decided to roll up Dan’s sleeves and put him in a limo with a laptop, riding across a bridge. I could not find this precise version of the commercial online…it was quickly updated by placing some stickers on the window of the car to make it obvious he is in a taxi…
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Now Dan is one of us, a guy you could bump into hopping out of a cab. At the the end, he says “I’m workin from the road today!”
Maybe I’m imagining things…but I think the marketing folks at Sprint have been listening and fine-tuning these ads all along. Partly, it’s just different campaigns, different seasons, etc. But the change from limo to taxi was subtle and effectively erased from anywhere I could find online.
Fans of Battlestar Gallactica certainly noticed a more blunt mid-course campaign correction in the evolution of KFC’s promotion recently. Originally dubbed the “Frak Pack Sweepstakes” it quickly turned into the “Can’t say that word on TV Sweepstakes.” But if you look closely, while the ad has been sanitized in most places, one of the prizes remains the “Big Frakkin’ Bag.” If the humor is not obvious click the links above for a more explicit discussion of “Frak.”
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