Is relevancy really more important than creativity? It's hard to prove.
But now there's TiVo StopWatch, a new way of measuring minute-by-minute television viewership. It tracks the viewing activity of 20,000 households that use the TiVo service and detects which commercials are most skipped by fast-forwarding and which are skipped least. The conclusion: Relevancy beats creativity every time!
The least fast-forwarded commercial on TV wasn't for any major brand but for a company called Cort Furniture Rental. And far from being clever, these spots weren't much more than a string of Cort salespeople delivering ordinary slogans like: “It's not about the furniture, it's about lives.” But they caught and held prospects' attention with a clear, direct sales message.
In the long run, this measurement tool may curb the excesses of irrelevant creativity in television advertising and ultimately in print advertising as well.
