Outsmarting TIVO

DVR is great for that extra kick in time-shifting ratings (just ask Keith Olbermann or the creators of Lost) but it’s been heck on advertisers. People skipping past commercials is not what television pioneers had in mind when the economic model was set up. Trudging through commercials was supposed to be the price one paid for this “free” entertainment.

With DVR, however, folks are rushing through your work. All that time spent crafting and producing (not to mention the grueling getting-of-approval) of these works is being undermined by a nation of itchy trigger-fingers.

But don’t give up hope. Clever advertising agencies can still evade the DVR system and render it powerless. We just have to all work together and try any of the following little tricks.

1. If you’ve noticed, when you hurry through commercials with the DVR system, you’re still seeing the commercials only in quick-speeded up time. Why not create commercials in slow motion? That way, commercials, when hurried through on high speed, will be at the right selling speed.

2. OK, that’s stupid. We’re brainstorming here, remember, no judgments. How about this one: Notice that when you time-shift, you still catch the tail end of the commercial before the program begins again. Be sure to put your logo and message in that last frame and make it last longer. That way the viewer sees who paid for it and what you were trying to tell these folks who are in such a big hurry.

3. Trick the viewer. There’s a Nikon commercial featuring Ashton Kutcher taking photos at a wedding. In one scene he spills a tray full of Champagne glasses. Why not pull a Dick Van Dyke on your next commercial? Remember how sometimes Rob would come in the front door and greet Sally and Buddy and Laura and that smirky kid and fall over the ottoman but sometimes he’d dance around it? How about if, when you film a commercial you change some of the details so the viewer has no idea which version is coming up? In this alternative universe, for example, Ashton starts to knock over the Champagne-laden tray but doesn’t.

4. DVR people are heavy viewers. Sometimes they skip through commercials because they just saw them and, enough already. Why not create more and more commercials at shorter lengths and rotate them more frequently. And how about requesting cable stations to stop running the same spots over and over again? Cable is not that cheap anymore, folks. Creating more messages is more expensive, granted, but I hope you never told your clients advertising was going to be cheap and easy.

5. Finally, use your commercials to tell a serialized story so the viewer never wants to miss a chapter. That funny Tanqueray guy, for example, would be a great character to follow through a story. BMW created a storyline that ran only on its web site; why not use it as commercials? Ten second installments would go a long way to keeping viewers interested.

6. Those are some techniques agencies can employ. You’ve probably already got a dozen more ideas. But there’s one really big thing that the cable and broadcast networks themselves can do to retain viewership through the DVR-ad-shunning commercial block. Take a tip from the Graham Norton talk show on BBC. Snuck in between the commercials, Graham runs snippets of the interviews that are not in the show. Imagine if, during Law & Order, for example, the producers snuck in a montage of all of the cop-and-DA teams that have peopled the series since the beginning. Or all of the different hairstyles that the coroner has sported over the 20 years of the series' run. Or if during Ellen, the syndication stations ran vignettes of dancing audience members in the middle of the ad breaks. Every series has these little interstitial devices that usually end up on the DVD “Special Features” section. Use them during the commercials. Sneak them in between the spots so people have to stick around and not hit that funny button with the right facing multiple arrows.

Heck they might even start using the button with the multiple arrows going the other way.