SM and TV

I recently had the opportunity to meet with a few people at Hill Holliday regarding a position.  Without going into too much detail, it seemed like it went well.  Time will tell if they think the same.  However, while I was there they threw some interesting questions my way, and gave me many ideas for future blog posts.  Thanks!

SM and TV have a strange relationship.  Most commercials now-a-days point you to their Facebook page or Twitter account, but recently there has been a trend, trying to get people to connect instantaneously using their smart phones.  Here is an example from an Old Navy commercial that uses Shazam:

So there are three things that I find wrong with this commercial initially.  One being Shazam in general.  In today's world who still listens to the old style radio?  iPods, Droids, Pandora, either you chose what songs you want to listen to, or the station digitally tells you the name of the song.  On my car radio there is a digital displays the shows the name of the song and who it's by, so there is no need to even use Shazam.

Moving past how unnecessary the Shazam app is, we also have the problem of the length of the commercial.  It's about thirty seconds.  By the time they tell you to turn to the Shazam app the commercial is about half finished.  I decided to see how long before they told me to use Shazam and how long it would take to look up the song.  The ad was just over twenty seconds in before I was able to take out my phone, find my Shazam app (hidden in some folder) and read the data.  Keep in mind I knew I was going to pull out my phone, if I was not ready it would have taken longer.

My last point relates to the issue of time sensitivity as well.  The commercial never gives me a reason to use my phone, why rush to pull it out if I have no incentive?  Do I get a discount? Is there some cool bonus content I'm going to get?  Who knows.  If I were sitting at home watching this commercial I would never have been tempted to even look at my phone (at least as far as this commercial is concerned).  Since the ad is only thirty seconds there needs to be some sense of urgency so people can act in time.

Until the issue of "why" is answered this style of commercial seems a bit pointless.  Perhaps I'm quick to judge, it could just be this commercial that is poorly made.  If there were a static Shazam logo in the bottom corner with a little text, something like "Shazam this for a 10% discount" it would be infinitely more effective.  I'll keep my eye out for commercials like this in the future and keep pointing out how effective they are.