Grunt Work

I haven’t posted to my state constitutions blog since I launched the site … too busy.  And, unlike the conventional wisdom that you beat the hell out of people with blog posts, twitter posts, linkedin posts, facebook posts, Google+ posts, tumbler posts, etc, I just kind of write when I think I have something relevant to say.  But I’m sharing this post with both blogs because they share a common element.  Lists.

I am a list builder.  It is one of my gifts (and curses).  I can build a list with phone book sized data in very short order because I am extremely focused and I know where to go and what to do when I get there.  To wit, I’m just about finished with a list of all of the mayors of all of the major American cities.  I started it yesterday.  I’m going to use it to tell them about my state constitutions website.  I am constantly hearing about how mayors bump up against governors, or how smaller cities are constantly wrestling with larger cities, or how municipalities and counties have disputes with the state over issues like Home Rule and taxes, for example.  So I guess that by giving these mayors access to a resource like my site, it might make it easier for them and their staffs to research questions just a little bit faster.

This makes probably the 10th such list aimed at the 10th such specific audience I’ve thought up.  I’ve got another three or four more lists, just as long and detailed, to go.  But when I’m done, everyone I can think of with interest will know about it.  Then, I’ll just have to wait for the idea to percolate.  But at least I will have done my part.

New Oreo Commercial

Commercials are funny things. The trend throughout the 70s and 80s was 60 second commercials. Then it dropped to 30 seconds in the 90s. Then, for awhile in the 00s, marketers experimented with 20, 15, 10 and even 5 second commercials on the thinking that people didn’t have the patience to watch long commercials anymore and that a quick, focused ad would stick in the mind better. It’s the same thinking that eliminated the black between commercials. Remember that? Commercials used to fade completely to black and the sound used to go completely silent. Then, after a second, the new commercial would start. But stations started editing the end of one to the beginning of another because network bean counters realized that over the course of an evening, they might be losing as much as several minutes of potential revenue to black which could add up to hundreds of thousands of lost dollars a day.

Kinda sorta the same thing with program intros. I think of old school intros like Gunsmoke, or the Rockford Files or Gilligan’s Island. Maybe, more recently, Law and Order, as intros that were at least a minute. But Hawaii Five-O has an intro version that is less than 15 seconds long.  CSI’s isn’t much longer.  Again, the longer the intro, the shorter the time for commercials.

But this new Oreo commercial is delightful in that it is a luxurious minute and a half long. That is crazy! That makes it longer than the intros to Psych, NCIS or the Big Bang Theory. And it’s full of animation that reminds me of Prince from his Paisley Park days, but with robots and monsters and vampires.  It’s totally fun.  Could Oreo be onto something? Do they think that our culture has suffered enough blazingly short commercials and that now it’s time to swing the pendulum back? I mean, who cares if the local attorney or used car sales man has a 180 second ad on at 3:17 a.m. But, Oreo? That’s Nabisco, and Nabisco doesn’t screw around with its revenue. The Oreo cookie was the best selling cooking in the US in the 20th century, and is still the best selling cooking well into the 13th year of the 21st century. Let’s see what everybody else does. Expect down-and-dirty-in-a-minute-thirty copycats.

UPDATE:  Many of the drug companies are now using 1:00 to 2:00 commercials to promote their drugs and discuss the potential hazards of them.  According to ispot.tv, they include 1:00 commercials by the makers of Lyrica and Embrel.  The maker of Eliquis is running some 1:15 spots and a spot for the drug Xarelto is 2:00 minutes long.  These represent hundreds of thousands of dollars for drug companies, for example.  It is no wonder time and space for commercials has become a hot commodity.  Wasting a second of time is not in a network’s interest.