Television commercials in regional areas are commonly bad. You might, if you live in a regional area, have assumed that low production standards and owner operator cameos were endemic to your particular geographic region – but I assure you – this is a global phenomenon.
Rhett and Link love local commercials. Especially these ones.
They were so inspired by ads like this that they now travel the United States making local commercials for local companies. Awesome.
The quality of advertising in regional Australia lags about 15 years behind the quality of spots produced in capital cities. Local advertising can be frustratingly bad.
Townsville suffers from a paucity of quality ad producers. Too many advertisers rely on quick fix production from the local networks. There’s a massive gap in the market for a creative video producer to come in and change that status quo.
There are three local advertising phenomena that I think are particularly odd.
1. Patio World v Superior Patio Systems – how is it that two competitors in a very narrow niche can afford to wage a long running advertising battle. One featuring an annoyingly catchy jingle – the other featuring a good looking girl the local paper rated as one of the region’s most famous faces. I don’t get it. Is it a perpetual motion loop where one advertises and the other can’t be out done so they advertise and the other can’t be outdone so they advertise… To end this viscious cycle both would have to stop at the same time – otherwise there’d just be one patio company out there on the airwaves.
Rachel - the face of Patio World
2. There’s an ad for a local computer repairs company where the young lady requiring computer repairs calls up using an iphone – and in what could be described as a continuity error – is calling up about a beige computer tower that looks like it was built in the 80s or bought at an ex-government auction.
3. There’s a Kip McGrath Tutoring ad that has just started running locally that I think was probably actually produced in the 80s. This is not a figure of speech. The tutors feature moustaches and are wearing brown. It’s like one of those dodgy, dodgy corporate training videos. I know economic times are tough but rerunning ads from 20 years ago to cut costs is ridiculous.