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I've had a couple thoughts about television advertisements lately that I thought I would share.

The first one occurred to me while I was watching a show on a VHS tape (thanks Mom and Dad for taping Battlestar Galactica for me). I was fast-forwarding through the commercials when I thought about Tivos. Even though the "commercial skip" features have been extracted, you can still fast forward through the commercials. I suspect this will become quite common (until the collapse of broadcast TV).

When a commercial is being fast-forwarded, you can still see some of it. It might still catch your eye but since the product may only appear periodically in the spot, you are not really being advertised to very affectively.

But if the add had a logo or a watermark stuck in the same spot throughout the spot on the screen (or even slowly moving across the bottom) the viewer would still know what the product was for and are still being advertised to.

I think that's a beautiful idea. Especially since people with Tivos are usually a good demographic to advertise to.

The second advertising thought I had was while watching Monday night football. It was the Bears/Cardinals game where the Cardinals blew a big lead and then missed the game winning field goal. I didn't really have a dog in the hunt except that I know a lot of Bears fans.

But that got me thinking, a lot of fans were really disappointed by the outcome of that game. It can feel pretty bad after blowing a game. Does any company really want their product presented to people when they are in such a poor state of mind?

I don't know if sporting events are really a good place to advertise. It's one thing if you can tie your product to the sport experience, like beer and brats with football. But for anything else it's a question. Half of the audience is going to be unhappy, sometimes extremely so.

I wonder if there has been a study on the negative effects of sports ads on a product.

mwz