RTÉ will screen the first live advert on Irish TV on Tuesday, as advertisers seek imaginative new ways to create a buzz, writes Kevin Courtney
QUICK, PUT on the kettle, the ads have started. If there's one thing guaranteed to make an advertiser's blood boil, it's the tendency among television viewers to get up off their couch during the ad break.
It's the age-old problem - how do you get viewers to stay put during the commercials, and how do you prevent them from flicking through the channels while the ads are on? In thousands of homes around Ireland, advertising campaigns costing millions are regularly playing to an empty living-room, as their occupants pop off to the loo or go check their e-mails.
Short of manufacturing TVs that double up as tea-making machines, it's hard to see how advertisers can win the battle against our ever-shortening attention span. But imagine a world where the ads are the main attraction on TV, and the actual programmes mere filler until the next ad comes along. That's the sort of world marketing people would like to see, but the reality is that TV ads are still considered an irritating interruption, a nuisance that viewers must endure in order to get to see the next pointless plot development in Lost.
Next Tuesday night, however, RTÉ is hoping that viewers will have the tea poured in readiness for the ad break, and will be glued to their screens in anticipation of Ireland's first-ever live advert. During half-time at the Munster versus All Blacks match, two actors, Paul Reid and Feidhlim Cannon, will act out the advert live, working from a script written up during the first half of the match.
If you're the type who actually does watch TV adverts, you'll recognise Reid and Cannon as "118" and "50", the sporty, mustachioed, retro-looking guys plugging the directory enquiries service. They may not be in the league of Clooney and Pitt, but next Tuesday's event will certainly put the two men's acting talents to the test. If they fluff their hastily scripted lines, it could look bad for the brand. If they get it right, however, their number may be on everybody's lips.
This won't be the first time advertisers have tried to slot a sense of occasion into the ad break. Since the early days of television, ads have competed with the main programmes for our attention, trying to grab us with a catchphrase or hook us with an unexpected twist. When we lived in two-channel land, it was easy to keep us entertained with such inane slogans as "just a squirt gets the dirt", but since we've moved up to multi-channel heaven, advertisers are having a devil of a job getting us to sit up and take notice of their special offers.
And when you add digital TV into the mix - Sky offers viewers the ability to fast-forward through the adverts and speed directly to the next part of the programme - then it becomes imperative for advertisers to start thinking outside the goggle box.
"Statistics show that digital TV viewers will skip adverts that they perceive not to be relevant to them or that don't entertain them," says Gervaise Slowey, head of advertising at Ogilvy Mather. "Getting viewers today increasingly means that advertising must engage with them rather than the traditional way of interrupting them." That means coming up with adverts that are more entertaining than the programmes. Many big brands are using technology to turn their adverts into art and thus get more Cillit Bang for their bucks. The Sony Bravia adverts, featuring a quarter of a million multicoloured bouncing balls, are a prime example of visually arresting advertising, as is the most recent Schweppes ad, which shows in breathtaking definition what happens when you fill a balloon with the product and burst it in slow motion.
Other advertisers take a more "indie" approach, keeping the budget low and the concept high. The Cadbury's gorilla, for example, has drummed his way into the annals of great advertising - the ad won the Grand Prix at this year's Shark awards, the annual advertising shindig in Kinsale, Co Cork.
From simians doing drum solos, it's not a great leap to live television advertising. Tuesday's 11850 extravaganza won't be the first live advert, however. Earlier this year, a squadron of skydivers jumped out of an aircraft live on Channel 4 and, in a feat of aerial choreography, formed the five letters of Honda with their joined-up bodies. It was thrill-a-minute advertising, the message parachuted directly into a million living rooms.
"Everybody's trying to do something that's different, exciting and stands out from the other adverts," says Sean McCrave of the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland. "They've got 30 seconds to get a story across, so they have to be creative. When we were limited to only two stations, the costs were higher and the lifespan of the advert was shorter. But with more outlets both on TV and on the web, you can get a longer life out of an ad campaign and reach a bigger audience. There's the chance of your ad going viral, so people keep watching the ad on the web long after it's finished on TV. The bottom line is creativity."
THE DOWNSIDE OF OUR endless choice of channels and websites is the inevitable endless stream of adverts - the challenge for advertisers is to elbow their way through the clutter and get their product into the foreground.
Many are turning to the internet as a platform to "advertise the ads". If they can generate a buzz about their adverts on blogs and media sites, then TV viewers might pause before flicking the remote control, eager to catch the latest "buzz" advert. The idea is to entice consumers away from the kettle and get them gathering around the watercooler to talk about the advert. "Murketing" has become a way to get around consumers' natural wariness of adverts and snare them with a killer idea before they realise they've been "adverted".
"We're moving back to the old days," says McCrave. "You'll see more product placement, going back to the days when soap operas showed the sponsor's brand of soap powder. It's already happening on shows like American Idol, with its thinly disguised Coke cup, and The Apprentice, where contestants have to do a job for a named company."
So what's the next move? Stay tuned and you might just find out.