The Oscars: Serving Advertisers While Annoying Viewers

Posted on | February 25, 2008 |

by Andrea Learned

Excuse me if I yawn while I type… I was up late watching the Academy Awards last night trying to keep my eyes open until the Best Picture was announced. I doubt that I was the only viewer who just couldn’t make it.

Advertisers have taken over the Oscars, and it would seem that television viewers (aka the buyers of those advertised products) can just lump it if they don’t like it. Is this how the television networks should be wooing viewers after years of sub-par programming and the agony of enduring the writer’s strike this past few months?

As per a MediaPost Research Brief, the ads just keep making the Academy Awards-broadcasting network more money:

“According to TNS Media Intelligence, marketers have spent over $650 million during the past decade to advertise during the live network TV broadcast of the awards ceremony.

Over the past 10 years, the price of a :30 second spot in the Academy Awards has increased by 75 percent, reaching $1.67 million in 2007.”

Now, that sure does seem like good business for the network, BUT - do those many expensive spots that may well be seen by a lot of eyeballs (with muted sound, no doubt) actually result in increased sales in proportion to the money that goes into them? I’m not so sure. Rather, it is likely that plenty of viewers are at their wit’s end.

In a time when more people are turning away from traditional and even cable broadcasts to go online, hunt, pick and watch what and when they choose, it seems a little odd that the networks chase ad dollars almost exclusively, and, at the expense of sought-after viewers. The economy is bad and I’m sure the network’s decision-makers are in a bit of a push for short term gains, but they seem to have lost sight of the longer term prize: getting consumers back and loyal to that form of media.

Marketing is all about figuring out how a brand can be relevant and engaging to the consumer. But, I can see how this may be all the more difficult in the media realm, when the market consists of two entities - advertisers and consumers -with very different demands. The advertisers won’t come around if the networks can’t prove that people are watching, and the people won’t watch if the networks focus too much on ad dollars and not quality programming.

So, what would happen if just one network stepped up to the plate and thought of the consumer first? Well, consumers would take notice, write fan mail and give that network a lot more credit for trying to serve them, to start. But, could that network then sell advertisers on the fact that less means more to the end-viewer? Probably not.

For the television networks, I’m guessing that this “advertiser first/customer…down the list somewhere” is a tradition that must die a very cruel (at least R-rated) death in order to wake up the industry. It would be a huge business culture shift and it may still be a while before that happens.

The universal Oscar-ad-overkill lesson for anyone in the marketing field is this: annoyed consumers will not find your brand relevant for long, so make sure you are serving them first and foremost. Otherwise, they will “mute” you, never to return.

[tags] Oscars, Academy Awards, branding, advertising [/tags]