Word: viewers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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CEBUS. This refreshing infusion of talent came just in time: the old sock-it-to-'em pitch was making a lot of people punchy. The only way to sell certain analgesics was to make the viewer queasy just watching: faucets dripped acids into the stomach, hammers clanged on anvils in the head. It was getting increasingly difficult to tell whether the little old winemaker was getting tanked on Drano, or pushing Ken-L Ration for hungry Living Bras. Gradually, after 20 years of hard-sell harangue, viewers developed a kind of filter blend up front. They did not turn...
...prevalent. But, increasingly, as admen are trying to break through the CEBUS barrier, the old commercial is being replaced with the truly new brand of ad with miracle ingredients some honesty, some humor, packaged with meticulous care. It might be called the uncommercial, and it has transformed the viewer into a consumer of the pitch as much as of the product...
...pitchman in a crate with his head sticking out? Everybody remembers greasy kid stuff, but what stuff is supposed to be superior? Which TV manufacturer, to prove that all its money has been poured into developing a better set, shows its board of directors in their undershirts? If a viewer can unhesitatingly answer Braniff, Vitalis and Sylvania, then he is watching too much...
...Burnett's Creative Research Workshop uses the "galvanic skin-response test," which measures the perspiration level and thus interest of volunteers through electrodes clamped to their hands. Another device is the "pupillary-response camera." It records the dilations of the viewer's pupils as he watches a test commercial. If the subject likes what he sees, his pupils widen; if not, he can catch a little nap time...
What can be done? Chances are that if everyone keeps his fingers crossed and buys the right products, the light-hearted uncommercials will spread and increasingly crowd the ugh-plugs off the air. But that is not enough. Another prospect is that the networks, goaded by viewer resentment, will move closer to the European scheme by having fewer but slightly longer commercial breaks. At present, with 9,000 new items appearing on the supermarket shelves each year, sponsors have started "clustering"-cramming more but shorter