Television, Do You Remember These TV Ads?

I’m not a big advocate of TV ads. Generally, I believe that they are a downright waste of money. In fact, I believe you could be just as effective as throwing handfuls of company literature out of an airplane over a big city, with the hopes that the pamphlet will glide into the hands of the perfect consumer.

It used to work a little better when there were less choices and attention spans were much longer, but interrupting people’s lives has just never been a good strategy. Today the list of factors that must line up before a TV ad can be an effective form of advertising is longer than ever, making it very rare for an ad to rise above the clutter, and keep from being skipped by Tivo.

Nevertheless, every great once and a while a TV ad, or series of ads, will come along and defy gravity by maintaining the attention of the consumer, communicating effectively and producing results.

CareerBuilder.com’s new series of TV ads have peaked my interest. I find them quite humorous, which is usually a red flag in TV commercials. Many ads use unrelated humor to get noticed, but in doing so the messaging and branding is overshadowed. That’s why you can often remember a funny scene from a commercial, but then you have no idea who or what the ad was for. However, I found the humor in these ads to be very relevant and on target, depicting scenes that America’s workforce can immediately relate to.

I don’t want to say too much more about the commercials because I want to see if you can remember them when all you have been provided is the companies name, CareerBuilder.com, and my short vague description above.

Could you recall anything about the commercials?

Here are a few of the CareerBuilder spots:

Performance Evaluation

Training Seminar

Trap Meetings 

Promotion Pit

Did you remember the commercials? 

Do you think these ads are effective or merely entertaining?