Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter (known in my family as I Can't Believe We're Eating This) is eschewing TV commercials in favor of a 4-part animated mock soap opera at TasteYouLove.com.

It's certainly interesting when a retail product jumps off of TV. For one thing, the Web ad doesn't interrupt me while I'm trying to do something else. And the first two episodes ICBINB has posted are a tiny bit amusing. But just a a tiny bit.

The problem is that products like ICBINB aren't interesting. The script tries to make up for the product's tedium by hitting the predictable soap opera parody points (handsome doctor, evil twin, amnesia), but it's hard to believe that people are actually going to send this around to their friends. Maybe if the product made fun of itself instead of a tired TV genre...

I would love to see more advertising move off of TV and onto dedicated websites, as ICBINB has done. But the Web sites can't be as boring as TV ads are. If you want our attention, now you're going to have to earn it. Turning your bottle into an animated character that looks like Nicole Kidman just isn't going to cut it. [Technorati tags: marketing]