Truth Tries Block Ad Programming to Capture TiVo Skippers
Looking for ways to prompt ad skippers to view its ads, truth, the American Legacy Foundation’s national youth smoking prevention campaign, has bundled some ads into a five-minute “TiVo-able” TV show.
The effort marks the first time an ad campaign allows TiVo users to record the block as if it were a television show, TiVo said.
Through a partnership with Comcast’s G4 TV, a digital cable network dedicated to video gaming, the Fair Enough ads ran last night consisting of five 60-second sitcom-style ads, four of which had never been seen before. The one-time airing ran from 8 p.m. to 8:05 p.m., the minimum programming length that can be recorded by TiVo, on G4.
American Legacy promoted the programming with ads on several channels throughout Comcast’s cable system. While the ads ran, TiVo users were able to press a button on their remote that recorded the program.
Complete with cast, theme music and promotional teasers, the ads featured actors playing tobacco employees and consultants. Set in a typical office, the employees dramatize hard-to-believe marketing tactics, such as targeting a hipper and younger audience, making flavored products and reaching inner-city minority populations. The content of the dialogue is taken directly from actual internal documents from tobacco companies—brainstorming sessions, proposals and reports—that were made public as a result of years of litigation against the tobacco industry. An audience laugh track between the employees’ lines gives the spots a comedic feel.
Truth took the TiVo-able approach because teens spend more than six hours a week watching some form of media, and it is tough to break through that clutter, said Joe Martyak, American Legacy interim executive VP.
He said American Legacy tried to hit the teen demographic in a way that is relevant to them, and said that sitcoms are very relevant and appealing to them.
“We think this will be very appealing to teenagers not just because of the approach we took with the campaign, but because they have the look and feel of a sitcom,” Martyak said. “When we put the ads together as a package, it’s very much like television programming.”
He said the tone of Fair Enough was chosen so teens could understand how they are marketed to, can get an anti-tobacco message, and not feel as though someone was preaching to them.
“We appreciate the programming that they provided us. We just needed to be airing as a five-minute program to have it become TiVo-able,” Martyak said. “[G4 is] exclusively about video games and they are teen oriented, and they’ve been a partner for several years. It’s just logical that we set it up with them.”
“We’ll be able to monitor how many people recorded the program as well,” Martyak added. “If the response goes over well, we’ll keep this discipline in mind for the next phase.”
Fair Enough runs other ads on G4. The ads can be viewed at fairenough.com, which has received more that 600,000 hits since the first ad launched on March 7 as part of a new anti-smoking campaign. The ads are also shown on network and cable stations, including FOX, UPN, Spike, Fuse, Comedy Central, G4, MTV and BET. The Fair Enough campaign is supported with print ads in youth-oriented magazines such as Cosmo Girl, Vibe and Transworld Skateboarding.
Fair Enough is handled by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami.
