Peter Griffin: Overkill on the internet in the Land of the Free

COMMENT

As I took in some American television on my tour of the Holiday Inns and Motel 6s of the Land of the Free, I was amazed at the amount of advertising shoved down the throats of the audience there.

I thought New Zealanders put up with a lot of advertising, but the US takes the cake for overkill.

The adverts, predominantly for food, cars, pharmaceuticals and Bill Clinton's memoirs, seem to wrap around ever-decreasing sections of programming, creating one long, mind-numbing splurge of "advertainment".

It was amusing, then, to learn that US advertisers are turning their attention away from television to pursue new forms of advertising, as shortening attention spans and the growth of TiVo - a digital device effectively allowing you to fast forward through adverts - devalues television as an advertising medium.

Advertisers are expected to shell out US$22 billion on network advertising this year, up nearly 10 per cent on last. But the growth rate of spending on web advertising has overtaken that of television - growing 16 per cent last year.

Every company, from Ford to Nike, is investing heavily in capturing the attention of web surfers. And they're coming up with some ingenious web campaigns, using sexy graphics and the warped minds of a generation of geeky web designers.

Take Burger King and its inane Subservient Chicken campaign, for example. The fast-food vendor has attracted millions of visitors to its website, where a man dressed as a scruffy chicken can be commanded to do all sorts of stupid things.

Supposedly the gimmick is designed to push BK's motto - "Have it your way".

Another BK site is a parody of high-fashion websites where fashion designer Ugoff presents a range of designer bags for BK's new line of health-semi-conscious salads.

The ads are designed to be viral. A 30-second TV spot may introduce the concept, then curious web surfers log on to check out the birdman and forward the link to friends.

Ford may have had that in mind with its controversial campaign for the Sportka, a version of the Ka it sells in Britain. The spin doctors portray the Sportka as an evil twin of the Ka, one web ad showing the bonnet of a Ford popping up to take out a pigeon and another showing a car sunroof decapitating a cat.

The animations had animal activists hopping mad. Apparently only one of the ads was approved, but they both slipped on to the web to be viewed by millions, for better or worse (I suspect the former for Ford, the latter for pigeon and cat lover).

Last week's glitzy Cannes Lions global advertising awards celebrated the supposed best web campaigns, with Japanese electronics maker NEC taking the Cyber Grand Prix award for a touchy-feely campaign allowing web visitors to add branches to a cyber tree.

Other winners included Nike again, for a campaign promoting the San Silvestre Vallecana race in Spain. The ads portray bears silhouetted against racing athletes echoing some Spanish folklore, apparently.

Napster also won a gong for web ads promoting its relaunch as a genuine fee-charging music service

It is unclear just what impact these flashy ads are having. Are they as effective as TV spots? Probably not, because the internet has empowered us. We can turn off pop-up ads, click through promo screens and ditch sites altogether that have too high an ad quotent.

We're relatively insulated here from this second front in the advertising war, but it can't be long until we're targeted too.

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