One of my favorite blogs is the Canadian Design Resource. I’m a sucker for good design, and I am pseudo Canadian. It’s one of the few blogs I really look forward to finding updates in my RSS feeds. Today, a post for MSN Canada caught my attention.
I was surprised to see the butterfly logo. I vaguely remembering reading something from the Mistress of Microsoft about the company swatting the butterfly. My mistake. Microsoft merely pulled the wings off the butterfly testing group. The MSN butterfly lives, and quite lively in the MSN Canada advertisement.
The visuals are stunning, and based on my fastforwarding, the commercial should still have impact when DVR users skip commercials. In the November 2008 Journal of Marketing, Professors Adam Brasel and James Gips conducted three separate but related studies on DVR fastforwarding (PDF of the article). The academics found that contrary to public perceptions, DVR users who fastforward through commercials pay more attention to the television (Think: They have to focus on the screen to see where to resume the program).
The more centrally placed the branding, and the longer it’s displayed, the better. Based on my observation, the MSN.ca commercial is primed for DVR fastforwarder retention.