Crafting effective commercials is difficult. Comedy is difficult. And blending entertainment with advertising is difficult.
Given all this, it’s little wonder that several videos from restaurant chain Denny’s, which have been posted on CollegeHumor.com, feel mostly unsatisfying. They simultaneously fail in being anything more than moderately amusing and don’t awaken desires for the restaurant’s offerings.
The spots feature actor Dave Koechner sharing a meal at Denny’s while sitting across a table from a variety of comedians and movie stars. The conversations tend to hit the same themes often – making faces, exploring personal space issues and improvising on “What would we do if” scenarios. (The whole exercise feels like an awkward take on 1983’s “My Breakfast With Blassie” – which was itself a parody of “My Dinner with Andre”. But that film worked more consistently than these videos.) 
Within the Denny’s spots, guests’ reactions range from the mildly uncomfortable (Amy Poehler and Jason Bateman seem particularly ill at ease with Koechner’s violation of their personal space) to the gamely going along (Kristen Bell is affable, but isn’t given much to work with – and when one has seen Koechner’s “make the dead eyes of a shark” bit once, it loses its appeal. Jessica Biel plays along nicely).
The segments featuring Sarah Silverman and Will Arnett fare better as entertainment. In Silverman’s case, it’s because her public persona has no personal space issues. She’s cheerfully able to discuss being stranded on a desert island and cutting open an old sea captain and using his remains for nourishment (despite, she points out, being a vegetarian) while calmly eating her food. Silverman is probably the only person who can make mentioning a rectal medical condition fit in the context of a restaurant spot.
Arnett’s spot works because, at one point, he blurts out “Dave, I’m a sociopath” and then follows up on it. It’s hard to have a bad interview with someone who offers that tidbit for attribution. Arnett also turns tables on Koechner and does schtick. As a result, it’s one of the more watchable videos.
But more watchable doesn’t necessarily translate to good advertising. Each spot runs around three and a half minutes. That’s a long time to sit through uncomfortable silences and facial mugging, which several of the videos rely on.
There are other missed opportunities from an advertising standpoint. In keeping with the “this is not really advertising” theme of the spots, there’s no hot link, or even mention of a link, to a Denny’s page where a viewer, having had the craving for food awakened, can look at a menu or play with a restaurant locator. The beauty of Web advertising is that it is supposed to be measurable and actionable. This may be the former – clicks are clicks – but it sure doesn’t seem to be the latter.
If Denny’s is applying any sort of measurement to the spots, I’d love to know the percentage of viewers who click away from the them before their conclusions. Because boy, in some instances these videos drag. Webisodes and videos can and do work at even longer lengths. These… don’t.
Each video starts with a waiter’s-point-of-view shot of food being brought to Koechner’s table. And the food varies with each opening – it really is what Koechner and guest are eating. And in the Jason Bateman video, a medium shot features a table topper for the Denny’s Value Meal in the foreground.
But on the whole this campaign has the feel of an ad agency showing off how creative it can be, and being very pleased with itself. The videos apparently been tweeted as well — and when the stars have Twitter followers who number in the hundreds of thousands, that's not insignificant. Does the campaign sell Denny’s? Meh, it’s not even trying. This may pass for hipster advertising, but I’ll take a sell.
Network
