Bart Feder was right to a degree – who does want to watch ads? Most of the time, most of us seek to avoid them and technology has kept pace with that desire - thank you, Tivo, and on-demand cable services. But is it really ads we’re trying to avoid or just the annoyance of interruption during that second plot point in the movie? Maybe it’s bad ads we want to avoid. Commercial advertisements have been known to create quite a buzz – think Superbowl spots and in particular, the Apple “1984” commercial. Clever, well produced advertisements can be just as compelling as other, longer film and video productions.
Firebrand apparently believes there is a market in commercials – not as filler but as the main course. Firebrand offers hip, slick ads and Public Service Announcements on it’s TV ‘show’ as well as its website. The emphasis is on world-wide so you won’t find Ernie Bock schilling cars but you can check out Japanese ads for Budweiser and Czech PSA’s advising slower speeds while driving. “Brand” is another selling point (sorry) for the site as well as category for watching ads. C-jays introduce commercials and the television component of the site is set up to encourage visiting the site. In fact, the TV screen actually mimics the site webpages, minus interactivity, of course - this year, anyway.
Short agency/director credits are superimposed over the end of each clip so we know who to praise or blame for the work.
What’s most interesting about the site/show is the very explicit effort being made to converge these media. Content is the same regardless of the technology used to view it. They even enable posting ads and PSA’s to blogs, though I didn’t see anything about compensation and you might have to register for that option.
Ads as entertainment. What will they think of next? Compulsory media literacy classes?
No comments:
Post a Comment