Staying Power: How long will you last?

Each medium you select has its advantages and disadvantages – one of them that’s not discussed very often is the staying power of a campaign.

Seth wrote about Reebok a couple weeks ago and how they have a fully active campaign that they’ve, unfortunately, abandoned. Derrick Daye nominates the series in the Top 5 Best Superbowl Ads ever! Go to the site, though, and you get a 404 error.

Today, we logged into one of our vendor tutorials and found that the video no longer matched the upgrades that have been happening to the interface. Instead of leveraging new videos to talk about the changes and why they are so great, the folks learning from the tutorials were left confused. What an unfortunate opportunity for marketing lost! If you’ve got great features, you should be calling them out in your video!

Back on point… one of the surprises of video is its lasting power as a storytelling medium. Blog posts do eventually go out of date. Seasons change, bloggers change their minds, or another blog does a better job and gets the attention. I’ve seen a couple blog posts from my counterparts where I said, “Hey… I wrote that a month ago!” Guess what? It doesn’t matter!

Blog posts don’t have the staying power that you might think. Imagine a pile of content… the old content at the bottom stinks. It’s old and no one can find it anymore. It’s been replaced by new content. Some bloggers like me try to revive old content by referencing it in a post or utilizing related posts plugins. Related posts are the Viagra of blogging. It extends the life of a post a little, but it won’t revive it and get it back to the top of the pile.

If we look at other mediums, they’ve got different degrees of staying power as well. Television has about a 10 second staying power (unless you go back to the days of Johnny Carson and 3 networks). Radio has a few minutes. Daily newspapers have a day. Sunday newspapers might have a week. Websites may last a few months to a year. Blog posts might last a few days to a week. Direct mail lasts the distance between the mailbox and the trash can…

But Video! Here it is 4 years later, and we still laugh at Terry Tate, Office Linebacker:

Something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about Return on Marketing Investment, isn’t it?

Alex B

Doug, that’s still my favorite SB commercial of all time. Although have to admit I forgot it was for Reebok.
http://www.formspring.com Chris

Great post WOOOOO!, I agree that video is a much longer lasting medium. I am not sold that video is the new wave in Marketing ROI though. I think very few companies “get” video and what it takes to make them last…too many treat it as just another push medium that they can talk to their customers. It will be interesting to see how companies utilize video and consumers consume them now that broadband and social networks allow video to spread easier.
http://www.simivalleyca.net/index.php/dell-laptop-pc-computer-notebook Laptop Bargains

A couple of past superbowl commercials hae lifetime staying power with me, I love em. Darned if I remember anything more about the creators than the logo though. /shrug

With the Patriots dominating I bet we see an unusualy heavy “patriotic” theme this year with advertisers hoping NE makes it to the big game.
http://www.ychange.com Small Business Marketing

I hear you loud and clear. Nevertheless, I wonder how come Shakespeare or some of the other great writers have been able to withstand the ravages of centuries. No video there. Perhaps it is just that our generation prefer pictures as opposed to the written word.
Who knows?

http://www.ciphersearch.com/cipherfeeds.htm Caleb

Because they paint pictures with words so well. When words paint the pictuires each individual sees -within their own mind- “unique” picture(s) .Whereas with tv/movies we are forced to see someone else’s interpretation rather than naturally forming one of our own.

http://blog.projecteric.com Eric Ellis

Wow, amazing that that commercial still has staying power – it’s just damn funny!

@ Alex. I too forgot it was for Reebok though. What does that say?

Notice the one out-of-date item on the commercial? “That’s a long distance call, Doug!” Hmm, don’t think that’s a big deal anymore.

Nevertheless, still hilarious.

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Staying Power: How long will you last?

About Douglas Karr