Characteristics
Television advertising in the U.S. and in other countries involves two main tasks: 1.) creating a television advertisement that meets broadcast standards, and 2.) placing the advertisement on television via a targeted air time media buy that reaches the desired customer.
To accomplish these tasks, it is important to choose a television production company and advertising agency with pertinent expertise in these two arenas, and it is preferable to choose an agency that both produces advertisements and places air time, because expertise in broadcast quality production and broadcast standards is vital to gaining the advertisement's acceptance by the networks. After the advent of cheap video software and consumer cameras, numerous individuals have offered video production services on the internet. Video production companies that do not regularly place TV ads on the air often have their productions rejected by networks for technical or content issues, due to their inexperience with creating broadcast-ready content.
Many television advertisements feature songs or melodies ("jingles") or slogans designed to be striking and memorable, which may remain in the minds of television viewers long after the span of the advertising campaign. Some of these ad jingles or catch-phrases may take on lives of their own, spawning gags that appear in films, television shows, magazines, comics, or literature. These long-lasting advertising elements may be said to have taken a place in the pop culture history of the demographic to whom they appeared. An example is the enduring phrase, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should", from the eighteen-year advertising campaign for Winston cigarettes from the 1950s to the 1970s. Variations of this catchy dialogue and direct references to it appeared as much as two decades after the ad campaign expired. Another example is "Where's the Beef?", which grew so popular it was used in the 1984 presidential election by Walter Mondale. And yet another popular catch-phrase is "I've fallen and I can't get up", which still appears occasionally, over two decades after its first use. Some advertising agency executives have originated more than one enduring slogan, such as Mary Wells Lawrence, who is responsible for such famous slogans as "Raise your hand if you're Sure", "I♥New York" and "Trust the Midas touch."
Advertising agencies often use humor as a tool in their creative marketing campaigns. In fact, many psychological studies have attempted to demonstrate the effects of humor and their relationship to empowering advertising persuasion.
Animation is often used in advertisements. The pictures can vary from hand-drawn traditional animation to computer animation. By using animated characters, an advertisement may have a certain appeal that is difficult to achieve with actors or mere product displays. Animation also proofs the advertisement from changes in fashion that would date it. For this reason, an animated advertisement (or a series of such advertisements) can be very long-running, several decades in many instances. Notable examples are the series of advertisements for Kellogg's cereals, starring Snap, Crackle and Pop and also Tony the Tiger. The animation is often combined with real actors. Animated advertisements can achieve lasting popularity. In any popular vote for the most memorable television advertisements in the UK (such as on ITV or Channel 4) the top positions in the list invariably include animations, such as the classic Smash and Creature Comforts advertisements.
Other long-running ad campaigns catch people by surprise, even tricking the viewer, such as the Energizer Bunny advertisement series. It started in the late 1980s as a simple comparison advertisement, where a room full of battery-operated bunnies was seen pounding their drums, all slowing down...except one, with the Energizer battery. Years later, a revised version of this seminal advertisement had the Energizer bunny escaping the stage and moving on (according to the announcer, he "keeps going and going and going..."). This was followed by what appeared to be another advertisement: viewers were oblivious to the fact that the following "advertisement" was actually a parody of other well-known advertisements until the Energizer bunny suddenly intrudes on the situation, with the announcer saying "Still going..." (the Energizer Battery Company's way of emphasizing that their battery lasts longer than other leading batteries). This ad campaign lasted for nearly fifteen years. The Energizer Bunny series has itself been imitated by others, via a Coors Light Beer advertisement, in motion pictures, and even by current advertisements by GEICO Insurance.
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