TV Advertisements

Before I was in the graphic design department, I started out in CDM's Digital Cinema. At one point, I really wanted to create movie trailers, and possibly even commercials. Since the cinema department was more focused upon movies themselves, I moved to graphic design. The interesting part of this reading for me was chapter 12 about designing for motion, broadcast, and broadband. In particular, this reading reminded me of TV advertisements that I have been particularly interested in, including the Miller Lite advertisements that are done in the style of e-Harmony's/Match.com's advertisements.

If you haven't seen them, here are a few:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXXgBU_bS7A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4orc-bHYLxo

The thing that I find particularly interesting about these actually relates directly to what the book discusses on page 218 - TV and Web commercials have to do the following in 15-30 seconds: "Get someone's attention before he or she zaps, skips ahead, or leaves the room." The first time I saw one of these commercials, I almost skipped it because it was just another one of those dating site advertisements. However, there was something about it - something different enough - that kept my attention and allowed them to get the entertainment part of the commercial across. This works well for other reasons also - this commercial, for example, is supposed to be geared towards men it seems, but women might stay around and watch the commercial thinking it is something else. It works both ways.