The Kmiec Ramblings

Tag Archive: AMC

Mad Men’s Performance Is Raising The Bar For Advertisers

Written on August 30, 2010 by Adam Kmiec in Marketing & Advertising

If you’re a frequent Mad Men watcher, I wonder if you’ve started to notice the strange phenomenon I’m noticing. The ads, you know those “annoying” commercials, are getting a hell of a lot better. When Mad Men first launched the commercials were your run of the mill, everyday ads. In short, they were boring, expected and lacking soul. Even the BMW ads (and you know I’m a huge BMW fan) were nothing to tune in for. But, as Mad Men has taken off we’re seeing advertisers up their game. The content in Mad Men is so good, advertisers are having to make their ads better.

This is a win-win for the user. Commercials are simply part of a TV viewing experience. Yes, even if you have Tivo, they are part of the experience, because you have to skip them. But, when the ads become enjoyable, entertaining, riveting and immersive, the user almost doesn’t mind watching them…almost.

Not unlike TV Shows mailing it in for an entire quarter, until just before sweeps week or an awards cut-off date, we’ve grown accustomed to ads being horrendous all year, until the Super Bowl. That’s the one time when marketers and advertisers and clients and agencies come together to create ads that are interesting, emotional, fun and more importantly, worth hunting for on USA Today or YouTube, to watch again. I’ve long lamented that marketers and advertisers should treat every day like it was the Super Bowl, bring their A game and never mail it in. But, let’s be honest, that just doesn’t happen with the exception of a few brands (eg Nike and Apple). It’s fun to see marketers and advertisers alike acting like Jr. Art Directors fawning for the approval of Don Draper.

Am I the only one noticing this?

Tags: Advertisers, AMC, Commercials, Mad Men, Tivo

Mad Men And Advertisers

Written on October 9, 2008 by Adam Kmiec in Marketing & Advertising

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MadMen is a show on AMC that’s centered around the advertising agency business. As AMC puts it, MadMen is “Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.” It’s a good show, a really great show. Here is a clip from Season 1.

Unfortunately, it seems like majority of companies are still buying advertising space based on demographics. Company X, which for the purposes of this argument is BMW, will buy space on show Y, which for the purposes of this conversation is MadMen, because people between the ages of A and B who make somewhere between M and R watch the show. If we assume that’s who’s watching the show, we wouldn’t take into account that a large portion of the viewing audience are advertising people. You know, people who work at agencies

If my hypothesis is correct and agency people are a big part of the audience, wouldn’t companies, like BMW raise the bar on the creative? Running the same creative they run on every other channel seems silly to me because the viewing audience is much more sophisticated. I’ve been taking note of the ads that are running during the episodes and assigning them letter grades from A – F. The average letter grade is a D. I also casually looked at the critical reviews of the ads that had reviews available, and the pundits seem to agree with me.

Aren’t these just wasted dollars? Why aren’t we being smarter about the ads we create? Shouldn’t we consider the audience we’re speaking to, the show we’re running on, and may other factors when creating ads. Well, I do. MadMen is the perfect test kitchen for ads. Where else can companies get free feedback from other agencies about their work?

C’mon people, we can be better. We can be smarter. We can make this work. We just need to think things out a little bit more.

Tags: AMC, BMW, Commercials, Mad Men