Nationwide Adverts with comedians

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've seen a couple of these adverts at the cinema recently (and they may be on tv too, I'm an evil torrenter so wouldn't know) but despite liking some of the comedians involved they're fucking awful. Like I saw Helen Bauer on a mixed bill recently and thought she was great but her routine for this is terribly bland, Sunil Patel's normally decent but weak here, and though I've not seen Maisie Adam before I've heard really positive things, but her bit on Monopoly is sub open mic stuff and I can't believe it made it in to an ad. Anyhow, you can watch them all here - https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/nationwide-payday-saveday-vccp/1593785 - am I being too harsh? Or not harsh enough?

[idunnosomename]

surprised they still have the gall to try and be funny after they inflicted flo and joan on us

[Pseudopath]

I still can't decide if their slogan building society, nationwide is genius or utter, utter dogshit.

[Jockice]

Better than those two sunrise sharing fake photo booth twats. Poets allegedly. They deserve to be publicly executed. And I'm not even joking here.

[Brundle-Fly]

The ones I've seen I think are fine for what they are.  They're on a hiding to nothing putting stand up comedy in this context though. Bring back Mark Benton.

[Pseudopath]

Bring back Mark Benton.

Probably one for the Fuck My Hat thread, but I've just realised that those adverts were directed by Armando Iannucci.

[paruses]

[...] am I being too harsh? Or not harsh enough?

Just harsh enough, I would say.

I thought it was like that thing organised by Lucy Beaumont for women with post-natal depression and the that's about the level of the bit from the lady who does the "food money at the end of a night out".

Then I saw one with Sunil Patel on and it was slightly better.  I am very glad you mentioned this because I missed him at Mach and was going to get a ticket to see him in Aber. This did make me seriously reconsider so although he's getting national exposure it's potentially a Strand cigarette advert waiting to happen.

In and of themselves, though, I agree with Brundle-Fly. What are you going to do in 30 seconds to a cold audience and then for the rest of the time it's the same joke repeated over and over so it's pointless.

[jimboslice]

Nationwide always seem to get peoples backs up with their adverts. The poetry ones a while ago definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Suppose it works if people are talking about them though.

[dissolute ocelot]

You have to film things differently for TV if you want to immediately engage with the viewer, not just show footage of someone talking to an audience behind a mic. Certainly if you're only showing a brief clip.

The question of why advertisers keep using poetry in adverts, despite the almost total public indifference to any kind of poetry as an artistic medium, will have to wait for another day.

[The Lurker]

Better than those two sunrise sharing fake photo booth twats. Poets allegedly. They deserve to be publicly executed. And I'm not even joking here.

The bloke in that advert was in the 90s boy band Northern Line. Fun fact for you there.

[Jockice]

The bloke in that advert was in the 90s boy band Northern Line. Fun fact for you there.

Shame a train didn't run him over.

[Sebastian Cobb]

surprised they still have the gall to try and be funny after they inflicted flo and joan on us

I'd forgotten all about them. Easy come easy go I guess.

[Shit Good Nose]

Bring back "one cup ah cha" man.

[a duncandisorderly]

What are you going to do in 30 seconds to a cold audience and then for the rest of the time it's the same joke repeated over and over so it's pointless.

this is the problem I've had with tv advertising since forever, whether they're supposed to be funny or not.

look, mr advertising exec- you've spent a small fortune on the set-up here. why are we only doing one scene? why not do seventeen or eighteen versions of the thing, even if they are only slightly different? then rotate them, so they don't go stale in front of your smart demographic? stupid coked-up twat.

[Gurke and Hare]

look, mr advertising exec- you've spent a small fortune on the set-up here. why are we only doing one scene? why not do seventeen or eighteen versions of the thing, even if they are only slightly different? then rotate them, so they don't go stale in front of your smart demographic? stupid coked-up twat.

This is only a guess, but is it because repetition helps the ad to get noticed, and get the product embedded in people's heads?

[a duncandisorderly]

This is only a guess, but is it because repetition helps the ad to get noticed, and get the product embedded in people's heads?

doesn't work if there's humour involved, though. there are better psychological tricks to make an ad 'embed' anyway, such as lopping the end off the music so that your brain is forced to complete the phrase.... I've studied this shit.

I saw my first one of these nationwide ads tonight, & sub-open-mic is right. the young lady performing the supposed humour seemed to be relying on shouting & sounding vexed to get the laughs, rather than actual wit or surrealism.

[mippy]

this is the problem I've had with tv advertising since forever, whether they're supposed to be funny or not.

look, mr advertising exec- you've spent a small fortune on the set-up here. why are we only doing one scene? why not do seventeen or eighteen versions of the thing, even if they are only slightly different? then rotate them, so they don't go stale in front of your smart demographic? stupid coked-up twat.

Scheduling 18 different versions of the same ad is really, really complicated. And gets expensive.

[a duncandisorderly]

Scheduling 18 different versions of the same ad is really, really complicated. And gets expensive.

not really, not these days.

twenty years ago, the opening weekend of a movie might involve upwards of two dozen spots, from multiple 5"/10" versions all the way up to one or two 90" versions; the number of spots in use would gradually reduce until maybe a handful of them were left in rotation, or some new ones would come in without the time-specific stuff like "opening this weekend" & so forth.
when they were all shipped on tapes (to the very few broadcasters not taking a line-feed from the Mill or wherever) then yes, this could be a bit messy.
the biggest cost there is the post-production of the different versions, especially since there's an iterative component to this, with various creatives thrashing out the whys & wherefores of the nuances of the campaign & the brand-values.

digibeta cassettes were a tiny fraction of the cost & of the value of the campaign to the client, insignificant compared to the penalty payment if the broadcaster marred or missed an airing for some reason.

airtime was & still is sold by the second (much much cheaper these days though), irrespective of which spot the agency or airtime planner puts there. scheduling them is just numbers on a spreadsheet.

one of my projects at viacom, going on twenty years ago now, was the very first tapeless delivery of a tv commercial in the UK. the ad in question went from the edit suite as a file to the intermediary we were doing this with, then via FTP to our playout facility. the workflow we designed allowed the airtime sales people to view a quicktime 'proxy' of the spots & add our internal house ID* to them, triggering the release of the broadcast quality copy into the ingest processes of the playout system.

(*viacom was unique & awkward in this regard- everyone else just used the agency "clock number" but we argued that this was harder for the tx ops to read, as it was fifteen characters & our playlist views were cluttered with secondary events- graphics & w.h.y.- that other broadcasters didn't have.)

now everyone does it like this, it's taken for granted, & there are several providers of the service layer that sits between the agencies & the broadcasters. the benefits to the agencies & their clients aren't so much cost-reduction (cassettes, couriers, all that), because these were never much of a factor in the first place. the real push for this came from agencies wanting to schedule spots much closer to air-time; the first one we played out during the test had been finished in the edit suite some twenty minutes before it aired, so it gave the agencies (assuming the broadcasters played along) the ability to air commercials at very short notice.

going back to my point- if each of the eighteen versions of a spot is the same length, the airtime sales ops could just schedule them in order, or randomly, or pick-&-choose them according to what else is in & around the break. these days, you could even set up the playout automation to do some rules-based thing & pick one at random itself, as some of them do with automated continuity or promos.

the big problem with tv advertising is that it's dead in the water as a sales mechanism; apart from the very real problems of the 'art-form' no longer getting the viewer's attention (or worse, annoying the fuck out of them by being too loud or whatever- & I was in all those meetings about loudness, & pitched a context-based solution which the other broadcasters said would be too complicated to implement), there are so many damn channels now that the airtime sales people can't be arsed putting the commercials where they could reach the right people.

our creative director at Mtv pretty much resigned over this- he'd been used to being able to red-pencil campaigns, on the basis that they weren't 'Mtv enough', but pressure from the bean counters meant we had to take money from all sorts of advertisers, same as all the other broadcasters. so... life-insurance, funeral services, shit like that, starts turning up on VH-1. how to piss off your demographic. eventually, we lost our own very successful airtime planning department & sky took over the scheduling of ads on all the Mtv/VH-1 channels, & then we were properly fucked.

[SteveDave]

Sort of related

https://twitter.com/michaellegge/status/1168439435047907328

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

It's a good a idea for an advert, the problem is that 'comedy' written for each one is about as funny as a severe onset of gout.

[mippy]

Aye, but wouldn't then you'd have the issue of scheduling between regions and channels, so splitting the airtime up effectively between twenty versions of the same ad would be really time consuming? It's not about it being delivered digitally rather than on physical media, it's filming, clearing through the regulator then playing out each version (playout is expensive, and every ad would be treated as a different creative with a different clock, so then playout fees x 20), then getting the airtime placed and working out the scheduling. If one of the jokes means it can't go out before 7pm, then it gets harder.

[mippy]

"one of my projects at viacom, going on twenty years ago now, was the very first tapeless delivery of a tv commercial in the UK. the ad in question went from the edit suite as a file to the intermediary we were doing this with, then via FTP to our playout facility. the workflow we designed allowed the airtime sales people to view a quicktime 'proxy' of the spots & add our internal house ID* to them, triggering the release of the broadcast quality copy into the ingest processes of the playout system."

When I started, ads were biked round on DVDs. Digibeta was just being phased out. We ended up with SO many of those disk-size DVD holders around the office.

[Icehaven]

The bloke in that advert was in the 90s boy band Northern Line. Fun fact for you there.

Eh? How is he old enough?

Edit; Bloody hell he's 39? I had them both down as about 20.

[imitationleather]

At his age he really shouldn't be ringing people at 3am.

[Rolf Lundgren]

surprised they still have the gall to try and be funny after they inflicted flo and joan on us

It is odd considering they must have been aware of the backlash on Flo and Joan. They talk on the recent RHLSTP about the flak they got and though I agree the criticism was strong, you are putting yourself up to be knocked if you're on an advert of all things.

The poets were slightly more tolerable than the comedians because they were shorter. The girl sharing sunrises with you doesn't outstay her welcome. Actually I've remembered the long one about a bloke having enough money to pay for better drains so retract that.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Aye, but wouldn't then you'd have the issue of scheduling between regions and channels, so splitting the airtime up effectively between twenty versions of the same ad would be really time consuming? It's not about it being delivered digitally rather than on physical media, it's filming, clearing through the regulator then playing out each version (playout is expensive, and every ad would be treated as a different creative with a different clock, so then playout fees x 20), then getting the airtime placed and working out the scheduling. If one of the jokes means it can't go out before 7pm, then it gets harder.

The tv place I worked at did 4 regions worth of ads all from the same place. The MAM took over when I was working there but before that I think it was on tape.

Things were all done from there so HD could be done on the cheap without having to upgrade the regional outposts, which only really did news.

What's less regulated and more targeted is the streaming side though (for the content, not ads), where ads are paid by impression and the campaigns can be targeted so blokes see PlayStation adverts and the women get Always Ultra pads or whatever. Well until a campaign is running short and they turn off all the filters and collision detection to get the numbers up anyway. We also offered a subscription to not see ads, a trailer which didn't get shown to people who watched a load of hours a month.

[a duncandisorderly]

The tv place I worked at did 4 regions worth of ads all from the same place. The MAM took over when I was working there but before that I think it was on tape.

Things were all done from there so HD could be done on the cheap without having to upgrade the regional outposts, which only really did news.

What's less regulated and more targeted is the streaming side though (for the content, not ads), where ads are paid by impression and the campaigns can be targeted so blokes see PlayStation adverts and the women get Always Ultra pads or whatever. Well until a campaign is running short and they turn off all the filters and collision detection to get the numbers up anyway. We also offered a subscription to not see ads, a trailer which didn't get shown to people who watched a load of hours a month.

you come across adsmart? targeted ad replacement using the hard-drive in the set-top box. if only we'd had this twenty years ago, we'd not have hundreds of channels of dreck, but maybe just a few dozen properly curated & then the adverts delivered on a demographic basis... they're large groups at the moment, because of the limited amount of personal data that the stb provider is allowed to share with the advertisers & airtime planners, so a lot of it is geography-based rather than age/lifestyle. but it's getting there. the feedback loop is more convoluted, so it'll never be as targeted as online advertising, & this is probably a good thing....

[mippy]

I do some work with Adsmart, it's interesting - makes a lot more sense for the broadcasters, especially for things like offers for existing Sky customers.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'd not. I'd have thought that pushing ads to subscribers set top boxes is more complicated than having the boxes stream curated feeds (like they do on vod or live streams).

Sky could definitely do this, and they'd probably want to because their vod ad system (and vod delivery system - it's a Cablelabs product originally designed to deliver vod to cable subscribers, so you have to deliver vod/programme assets to their headend for ingest) is a convoluted piece of shit that would basically force you to use sky's ad subsidiary to deliver them for you.

It could probably work with the Freeview Play standard, which is gaining a lot of popularity with both users and content providers (because you just have to deliver one webapp and it works on a load of modern tv's*), they're bringing out a 'green button' function which when you watch a broadcast channel lets you jump back to the start of the current programme by using the resume function on the online stream, I'm sure similar stuff could be used to temporarily forward you to an advert stream.

I think the hundreds of channels of dreck will be the first to suffer as more and more people use vod and ad-supported streams. Both because they can watch better stuff rather than shite now because it's on, and also I've seen (and built the pipelines that let them go from these parties into our CDN) plenty of bargain basement dreck cheap content licensing companies are selling cheap to build people's streaming libraries. Just even cheaper documentaries made out of library footage and a talking head sat behind a curtain, Secrets of the Royal Kitchen was one of them.

What I do hope is in amongst all of this is that some companies start getting more experimental again, like when Channel 4 had to fill late night slots with things like 4 later, or Bravo made World Famous for Dicking Around I hope they start taking a punt on daft cheap programming that isn't shit.

*the exceptions being Sony's which tend to use Youview which is very similar to Freeview Play and will work with minor tweaks and Samsung which uses Tiezen, whch again can be a webapp, but like their phones Samsung never update software when the model is no longer brand new.

[a duncandisorderly]

I'd not. I'd have thought that pushing ads to subscribers set top boxes is more complicated than having the boxes stream curated feeds (like they do on vod or live streams).

Sky could definitely do this....
I think the hundreds of channels of dreck will be the first to suffer as more and more people use vod and ad-supported streams....
What I do hope is in amongst all of this is that some companies start getting more experimental again.

it is a sky initiative. getting the stuff onto the STBs is pretty easy, as you'd imagine. the tricky bit is the 'splicing', which has to be frame-accurate, & making sure that all of the content has matched durations. getting the required triggers to work from a cloud-based playout system with somewhat variable latency was a right laugh. we tested it with a sky box in the office that was pre-loaded with test adverts that had burned in tc. it was quite weird seeing them being cut into regular programming...

yes, I tell people that linear broadcasting is barker channels for online offerings, & that viewer habits have changed dramatically. the only appointment-to-view stuff now is live. experimental may be a way to get people back, sat, & putting up with adverts, though I've been saying for a couple of decades now that the future of airtime revenue is sponsored programming & pop-ups.