ABC ad campaign gets cheers, boos
The thin line between love and hate
Case in point: In the last week, ABC's network-wide promotional campaign "TV is Good" made it onto lists for both the best and the worst ad campaigns for 1997.
In its year-end issue, Time magazine placed the Alphabet net's $40 million effort on its list of the top 10 ad campaigns of the year, noting that it "lampoons the very idea of watching TV ... with cheeky maxims like 'The couch is your friend.' "
ABCers were touting that fact Monday in the wake of criticism for the campaign last week in the New York Times and ongoing complaints from the consumer group TV-Free America.
In his Dec. 30 advertising column in the Times, Stuart Elliot placed the TBWA Chiat/Day-produced "TV is Good" campaign at the top of his alphabetical list of "dim bulbs" from the ad world.
"The tone of the ads varies wildly: though some are cute ... others are mean-spirited ('You can talk to your wife anytime.') or condescending ('Don't worry, you've got billions of brain cells.')," Elliot wrote.
A spokesman for the Washington-based TV-Free America on Monday called the ABC campaign, which began in late summer 1997, an "absurd and desperate attempt to make it cool to park in front of the tube all day" at a time when networks are worried about declines in viewership.
"Americans who are fed up with television -- programming and ad-vertising -- can show their frustration during national 'TV Turn-Off Week,' " the group's program director Monte Burke told Daily Variety.
Burke said the group expects more than 5 million Americans to unplug their sets during "Turn-Off Week," which runs from April 22-28.
