Monday, September 8, 2008

WBZ Mornings

I'm a big fan of WBZ's promotional efforts... yet this new one leaves me a bit lukewarm.

Here is the spot:



Check out their web section as well:

http://wbztv.com/mornings

I do think its an interesting idea to create pages for your key franchises. WBZ has also done this with declareyourcuriosity.com

Playing the promo, showing behind the scenes footage or pics and inviting viewers to interact with the brand is a great idea.

The WBZ Icon hunt seems a little odd to me - what does it have to do with mornings? Very cool interactive element, however.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the look... Does anyone know if they did the design/animation in house? The moving font reminds me of the Nissan commercials. The music is a little corny but certainly stands out. Overall it has a refreshing commercial-like quality that veers far away from typical promos. However, like the curiosity promos, this seems to be Boston through an outsider's lens. It's cute, uses familiar visuals and icons but I'm not sure it really captures anything authentic about Boston. This is kind of like a Hallmark card come alive. But I'm sure it stands apart from WHDH's and WCVB's promos and that's a big part of WBZ's mission at this point.

Anonymous said...

I love the icon hunt... Of course it has nothing to do with mornings. It has to do with their message:

"Boston is interesting, fun, etc. Let's talk about it."

They're tapping into that emotional attachment viewers have with the city.

The spot is very commercial and competes well with national ads and destroys the local bob-o-pedic ad that runs before it. :-)

Nice work.

Anonymous said...

Spot looks nice.

What's the message here though...I'm so busy trying to see what's going on in each over-crowded frame that I can't hear what's being said!

...and why do i have to sit through a furniture commercial to watch... what's basically a commercial about a sacred cod? At the end of the spot they tell me to look up the sacred cod... so they obviously want me to do that instead of watching the news.
I've lived in Boston for almost 40 years... and I had no clue the cod was sacred. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I'll go back to watching my usual news shows.

Anonymous said...

The best part of this spot is the visuals. Compelling and unique.

However, after listening to the spot three or four times to actually hear the message (kept getting distracted by cods and duckboats)... I have to say the whole spot is way off the mark.

I live in Boston. I've seen the WBZ Morning News. They do a fairly straight-forward news presentation. There's no regular offering of opinions... off-the-cuff talking... or anything else they claim to do in the spot that would make them "different" than other news stations in town.

If you mis-represent your content in a promo, the audience will see right thru you.

Anonymous said...

They seem to be highlighting that they ARE Boston, similar to their curiosity campaign.

I think the spot is fine. But they must have some kind of franchise or segment in the morning news to backup the claim, 'Let's talk about what makes Boston unique.'

Anonymous said...

Hello, promo people. So, I'm the guy who did the spot. And I work at WBZ. This is an interesting conversation. I admit I'm not your typical TV person so I don't quite understand some of this, *but* here's a little insight into what we were thinking:

This spot airs a LOT. Therefore the intricacy of it I think is appropriate cuz the point is that each time you see it you'll notice something new. The icon hunt is meant to be sort of an explanation of what the hell's going on in the bg. If you're interested enough.

Oh, and also, have you seen the morning show lately? It is pretty different. Just sayin. Not that I watch a lot of TV and have ANY expertise on which to base this assertion.:)

I'm about to post it on youtube because that mattress ad annoys the stuffing out of me too!