Studying Campaign Planning Will Change the Way You View Commercials

Two months into my Campaign Planning and Management class and I can confidently say that I will never look at television commercials the same. My marketing professors have changed the way in which I look at commercials. They are not the annoying breaks in between my favorite television show at night. Now, they are thirty seconds full of complex messages being sent to the viewer, in which I attempt to understand and analyze.

Saying that a lot goes into planning a commercial is an understatement. These past two months, I have gotten a crash course on how marketing agencies develop and produce commercials. One of the most astonishing concepts to understand is that every single object, person, sound put into the commercial has a meaning. There is a reason it is there. This ultimately leads to the end goal of persuasion, which is a concept I deeply learned about in my promotional strategy class. I'll touch upon this more later. For now, I will start at the beginning of the strategy process. 

So, what is the first thing to think about once you've pulled together the backstory of your product? You must figure out where the product lies in the color matrix. This is a matrix that divides products into categories based on perceived risk/involvement and informational/transformational value. For this post I will use Allstate Insurance as an example. I take Allstate Insurance and look at the color product matrix. It is definitely a white product because the consumer is highly involved when choosing an insurance company and it is an informational product. So, the next step is to identify the certain characteristics of a white product. For white products, consumers think about the brand, feel a certain way towards it, and then purchases it. This eventually relates to the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. This model analyzes how consumers are persuaded to purchase a product and what is their motivation or ability. Since, Allstate Insurance is a white product and consumers are highly involved and engaged, the consumer uses a central route of persuasion, but peripheral cues are important in television commercials.

Allstate Insurance's commercials do an amazing job at using peripheral cues. Insurance is deemed as protection and security although it is not tangible. You pay insurance for something you wish never happens and may never actually happen. Through their commercials and peripheral cues, Allstate Insurance makes these accidents tangible. Their spokesperson, Mr. Mayhem, personifies the accident. He is the brand's I AM statement. So, he is a peripheral cue. Another peripheral cue is the dark humor. Allstate's commercials tend to shed light on very serious matters (car accidents). They do this to keep the consumer's attention, but at the same time, they are conveying important information because, let's not forget, insurance is a high informational product. 

The reason I say that I will never view commercials the same is because I do not think many people realize how many things are going on to persuade you to think, feel, or act on a certain product. I can attest that before studying marketing communications, I turned the channels during commercial breaks. Now, I enjoy figuring out what the agency is trying to do in the commercial. What kind of product is it? What cues are they using to get me to feel a certain way? This is very intruiging to me and that is why I love studying what I do. However, my roommates get a little upset when I don't change the channel during commercials.