Content Is Advertising: Free Local Commercials, Sponsored By Another Company
from the get-yourself-a-home.-or-don't.-i-don't-care. dept
Via Adam Savage, I heard about a fun project that highlights the advertising is content, content is advertising concept in multiple ways. It's a site called ILoveLocalCommercials.com, which features two filmmakers going around the country making (free -- and awesome) TV commercials for local businesses that are nominated on the site. As mentioned, the commercials are really quite impressive, such as the "brutally honest" commercial for Cullman Liquidation ("get yourself a home, or don't, I don't care") or for Ray's Midbell Music that involves a rap about how being in the school band is cool:But why are these guys doing this? Well, the whole thing is actually part of a promotion from another company, MicroBilt, that's trying to promote its own line of small business services. So it's paying for the whole thing -- showing how content is advertising. None of the videos are actually about MicroBilt, but in sponsoring the entire site and the whole process, it's helping to get its name out there in a fun (non-intrusive, non-annoying, non-sneaky) manner. It's not about product placement or trying to "sneak" a brand into something. Everything's totally upfront. But it's a fun project, with highly entertaining content that shows both how advertising is content and how content is advertising.
Oh yeah, and it appears that Cullman Liquidation has also picked up on the whole "looooooooooots of t-shirts" concept. On the Cullman Liquidation website, the company is selling t-shirts based on the commercial...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: advertising, commercials, content, local comercials
Companies: cullman liquidation, microbilt, ray's midbell music
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I really liked the furniture store and the "Cuban Gynecologist turned car salesman".
Hilarious stuff.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Love these Guys!
I religiously watch their commercials and even the making of videos. They were all very entertaining.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sweet!
This is awesome, thanks.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Yes. But do the ads sell the flipping products?!?!
It's plain you like the ad. Did the basic business model actually work? Or is it your contention BMW, Proctor & Gamble, and Norfolk Southern, all the way down to the Mom & Pop grocer turn to selling shirt in lieu of their primary product?
The site is heavy on Star Trek, shoddy on workable revenue and improvements upon old business models. I'd simply like to know whether any of these "examples" produced a resulting sale, comparable or superior to anything else they could have done?
Selling shirts when your product isn't shirts notwithstanding, but I'd even take that -- if the income was comparable to plain old selling your product the sneaky, "Hey I gotta eat" way of getting the thing the company is actually trying to sell sold.
[ link to this | view in thread ]