How the Ad World's Dealing With the Decline of the :30 November 12, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , trackbackProduction Houses and Agencies Are Forced to Slash Costs and Find Unique Ways to Leverage Online Video
Published: November 12, 2007
The 30-second spot isn’t dead yet, but it’s taken a turn for the worse.
As marketers continue to embrace unmeasured media and funnel fewer dollars toward TV-production budgets, 2007 will go down as the year the 30-second spot’s health took a noticeable downturn. Faced with ever-more-powerful procurement departments, clients clamoring for return on investment and a general consumer movement toward interactive ad environments, agencies can no longer cavalierly bill multimillion-dollar commercial extravaganzas to clients as in years’ past.
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THE (NOT SO) REAL WORLD: To create this recent Honda ad, shop a52 relied on computer-generated graphics, a method much less expensive than live action. |
And while it hasn’t yet shown up on the bottom lines of most traditional agencies, it’s increasingly clear that Madison Avenue isn’t the Easy Street it once was. Shops are being forced to make do with less, forcing wholesale changes in the TV-commercial- production business.
“This year has been hard,” said Mark Tobin, managing director and executive producer at a52, a visual-effects and design company that has serviced clients such as Lexus, EA Sports and Nike. “Budgets have been seriously cut and reapportioned into different areas. We have to find ways to make more with less.”
Tightening belts
For commercial producers, that’s meant tacks such as outsourcing, filming in less-expensive locales and using less-costly film and computer-animated graphics. For agencies, it’s meant thinking more outside the box and developing expertise in online video, new formats and lengths — and when the slick sophisticated :30 is called for, bringing it in less expensively.
“It’s not about whether TV is coming or going; it’s about where are the best places to put ideas to reach consumers,” said David Lubars, chairman-chief creative officer of BBDO North America, the shop most synonymous with the splashy Super Bowl commercial. “The [30-second spot] is still a viable form; it’s just not the only viable form.”
Indeed, many marketers and their ad agencies are rethinking their approaches. Long gone are the simpler days when agencies used to “fill boxes” — two :60s, five :30’s and so on. That system has been replaced by a more rigorous, focused process. “There is this pull toward video and other media placements,” said Ann Green, senior VP-marketing solutions at market-research firm Millward Brown.
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