Möbius Commercial

This is my Christmas gift to all my readers involved in advertising. I would have made it a Chanukah gift, but I was working through Chanukah and this is a little better than a new pair of socks. But, if you want to think of this as a late Chanukah gift, feel free.

Over the last couple of years I have seen more and more attempts at piggyback advertising, commercials advertising two or more different products in an attempt to save money on media buys by sharing the cost with one or more other companies or divisions of a company. You have probably seen one or two of these commercials even if you are blind, fast-forward through commercials, and don't have a TV.


A fairly recent, extreme, and in my opinion, ineffective example of said piggybacking is this preview/commercial staring Serena Williams and Hayden Christensen which advertises the 20th Century Fox movie Jumper, Microsoft Windows Vista, Outkast, Nike, The HP Pavilion Desktop Computer, and Serena Williams' clothing line. I probably missed a couple of advertisers, so you might just want to watch it for yourself.

Piggybacking in commercials and sharing media buys to cut back on cost is an excellent idea, but only when the ads are effective for all products involved. I believe that my new idea, the Möbius commercial, will fulfill the wishes and dreams of advertisers wanting to share the cost of some prime time air to get more bang for their buck.

Here is the short explanation of how this works.

Don't get it? Well, here is the long explanation along with an example.




The Möbius commercial would actually be two separate thirty second commercials for different products that share a similar or identical target demographic. These commercials are able to function separately or together, and together they loop back into each other infinitely.

Here is an example:

Title: Very QuikWii

Bob walks into the kitchen with a sad look on his face. Seth, a man in his late 20's, sits at a kitchen table stirring up a glass of Nesquik chocolate milk.


"What's wrong?"

"I'm sad."


The Bob sits down. Seth slides the glass of Nesquik towards him.


"Close your eyes... take a sip of this... and I'll take you to my happy place."


Bob closes his eyes, takes a sip, and smiles. He opens his eyes.


"That is delicious and chocolatey, but we are still in the kitchen."

"Wait for it."


Seth claps his hands. Funky music starts playing and two very shapely black women, Mary and Kiki, dance into the room wearing Nesquik bunny bikinis. They dance for Seth and Bob for a few moments.


Bob asks, "Do you guys want to go play Wii?"


They walk into the living room and Venus and Serena start to play Wii tennis.


"It's on!" Kiki announces.

"Girl, I move like Venus Williams."


Seth and Bob sit on the couch and enjoy watching the girls play.

They turn to each other and simultaneously announce, "Wii!"

The girls continue to play and taunt each other.

Seth stands up.


"I'm thirsty."


He walks out of the room, leaving Bob to watch the game by himself on the couch.

The game ends.


"Can I play?"


The girls turn and lean down towards Bob.


"Uhuh little man! This is best of nine."

"Yeah."


Bob gets up and walks out of the room looking very sad.

Bob walks into the kitchen with a sad look on his face. Seth, a man in his late 20's, sits at a kitchen table stirring up a glass of Nesquik chocolate milk.


"What's wrong?"

"I'm sad."


The Bob sits down. Seth slides the glass...



It never ends.

So? What's the big deal? And isn't that a minute anyway? Where are the savings?

This is something new and interesting that will get people talking, and various news outlets will most likely mention the ad, and or play it for free, especially if you buy some ridiculous airtime during the Super Bowl, say a two minute block of time so that you can show the commercials back to back to back to back. That is a lot of backs. The key to this whole thing is buying large chunks of time up front, and then weening down, so that eventually you are just showing the thirty second spots by themselves, but by the time you are showing them standing alone, enough people have seen them together that they are indelibly linked in the consumer's mind. When they see one, they think of the other and vice versa.

I am sure that you can come up with about a half a dozen other justifications and facts to support this idea when you are trying to sell some clients on it. I have several in the back of my mind that I don't want to bore people with.

P.S. Click here to subscribe to Ideas By Chuck before The Rapture.

P.P.S. If you are interested in producing my "Very QuikWii" spot on spec., let me know, as there may be several interested parties. I love parties.

P.P.P.S. For anyone that may doubt me, just remember Spuds McKenzie.

Fast Forward Commercials

I was watching TV the other day - digital cable.

I had paused the program that I was watching for long enough that I was able to fast forward through most of the commercials.

I haven't really ever taken full advantage of this option. Maybe I like to watch the commercial, or maybe I am just a moron, conditioned to watch commercials. Either way, this was one of the first time I basically fast forwarded through all the commercials.

It got me to thinking, and guess what. I had another advertising idea. Yep, I had an idea.

Someone needs to produce some commercials specifically designed to be fast forwarded.

My initial thoughts on this are that the commercial should basically be either simply the company logo or an intriguing image. Basically, I would take print advertising and put it on TV.

This use of a static image combined with longer ad spots - 1min or longer instead of 20sec or 30sec spots - will get people's attention. They will check to see that they are still hitting fast forward and might even stop fast forwarding, thinking that it isn't working or something weird is going on.

I was also thinking that you could make a similarly visually dynamic commercial with movement. It would be in slow motion unless you were fast forwarding it. Sound is lost with fast forward, so it would need to be very visually dynamic.

The audio for these commercials could be either a mantra like, "Drink Coke," or just some music.

Mantras work. Just ask the people at Head-On. You apply directly to forehead.

The great thing about either of these concepts is that, at first, they will get attention whether viewers are fast forwarding or not, because they will be so different from the slick, fast paced, and cutty commercials that we are used to.

I really hope some of you advertising creatives out there take this idea and run with it. I can't wait forever for you to start your own super cutting edge advertising firm and hire me as a consultant.

Yeah, I'm talking to you.

P.S. Why haven't you subscribed to Ideas By Chuck? Are you trying to hurt my feelings?

Hospital Ceiling Advertising

Shortly after I graduated from college a took a job building tents in Miami. I worked with a crew of Welshmen, Germans, Ice Backs (illegal Canadian workers), and a couple of dudes from Atlanta like me.

Things were going fine until I backed off the edge of a grandstand, and I fell twelve feet onto my head (it was shortly after this that I invented the flux capacitor). Luckily, two ambulances quickly arrived. People thought that it was a mistake that two ambulances arrived, but it turned out that a man on the 7th green of the golf course we were working on had a heart attack at the same time that I fell on my head.

What is this all leading up to?

I ended up in a hospital emergency room laying on my back and staring at the ceiling for several hours, with brief interruptions by Indian resident doctors probing my anus with unlubricated, latex covered fingers. It was at this time that I came up with this idea. Why not have advertisements on the ceilings of Hospitals?

Imagine you are in a hospital, on your back, on a gurney, staring at the ceiling, and contemplating your own mortality. Wouldn't you like to have an inspirational poem, painting, word game, a nice magic eye image, or picture hunt to look at and think about? And, wouldn't you be thankful to say, Coca Cola or Johnson&Johnson for putting it there?

This same concept could be employed in dentists' offices as well.

Think of the benefits. The extra revenue brought in by ad sales could lower hospital visit costs without effecting the quality of care, generating positive PR for the hospital and the advertisers, this on top of the brand awareness and good will created by the ads themselves. The general public benefits, hospitals benefit, and advertisers benefit.

Let's all have a group hug.