Doing more with less has long been a corporate mantra. Fox TV hopes to bring this concept to television with consumer-selected immersive and interactive ads and, in the process, “reset” the relationship between consumers and advertising.
“We call them engagement ads because we know people are engaged with them, which I believe is the goal of all advertising,” says Joe Marchese, President of Advanced Advertising Products at Fox Networks Group.
Fox took the plunge into immersive ads with its acquisition of Marchese’s company TrueX and will be promoting the concept of fewer but more effective TV ads at the upcoming Cannes festival. In an interview with Beet.TV, Marchese says Fox can set a new industry standard if the creative community does its part to help brand marketers place more value viewers’ attention.
“The thing for Cannes for us is if we’re going to set a new standard, if we’re going to start respecting consumers’ time, we need to do more with less,” Marchese says. “We can’t say ‘Okay, we’ll make an ad and then shove it in front of them as many times as we can.”’
A recent example of letting consumers choose was Fox’s deal with Hulu, in which viewers could watch an interactive 30-second ad instead of roughly two minutes and 30 seconds interspersed within a normal episode of a Fox show on Hulu, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“If you think about it, it’s the difference between watching a commercial and being first person in the commercial,” Marchese says. “It can be as simple as interacting and designing your own car or checking out the features of something. The idea is that it delivers the message more clearly so that you don’t need a frequency of five or seven or ten.”
This is how Fox hopes to “fix the social contract with the consumer,” according to Marchese. He believes that the industry has gone too far down the road of interruption via ads that “consumers have started to get the raw end of the deal.”
Fox’s message to the creativity community can be summed up thusly: “We’ll give you a consumer’s undivided attention once. Do the work there,” says Marchese. This, he adds, means “drawing on a new canvas” combining sight, sound and interaction.
This interview is part of our series “The Road to Cannes”, presented by FreeWheel. Please visit this page for additional segments.
