Sarcasm is a risky advertising tactic, regardless of the age group you’re targeting. Most viewers only pay fleeting attention to ads, and an ironic or tongue-in-cheek creative concept requires a little more attention from the audience in order to be successful.

That said, a sarcastic ad can stand out and achieve better recall because it’s different and perhaps a little startling. The advertiser is wise to test the ad in one market first. You can never really know what the results will be until it the ad is on TV.

I’d also argue that it’s fine for the advertiser to not say much, or anything, about their homes. I assume the primary goal for the campaign is to raise awareness of teh Erikson Homes brand. Also, the ad does try to say something simple — we’re different. Most of the time you can’t say much more than that in a 30 second ad. The ads are successful if people remember the name Erikson Homes and look for more information when they’re in the market for a “retirement community.”

You toss out scores of negatives in a commercial - and eventually that’s what sticks in people’s minds. They associate negatives with the product.

As a little film with no point other than to entertain, it’s fine - although embarrassingly derivative. As a piece of marketing - it fails.

But funny or not, a brilliant piece of cinema or not - it says absolutely nothing about the product or service. NOTHING. If you take each ‘problem’ mentioned - somehow buying a home in an Erickson community will solve it? Even better, solve all of them???

Buyer beware.

Tell me about Erickson Homes. I need to know about their homes so I can ‘control my destiny’. I don’t need a lot of people spewing a bunch of tongue-in-cheek, corny, reverse platitudes.

I’ll admit this: Apparently, this commercial is aimed at the 65+ crowd - not Baby Boomers. Maybe people over 65 need a commercial like this in order to dismiss their fears and control their destiny by - I guess by moving into an Erickson Home. (Although I think they’re smarter and more emotionally secure than that - but who knows - I may be wrong.)

I know something about Erickson Homes. They have enough to offer and tell about without vague, empty, cute sayings with no real meaning.

The funny ad I was talking about can be found on UTube by clicking the link under my name. It’s actually a send up of the monster.com ad.

Take the monster.com ad, the send-up under my name, the Erikson ad - and tell me if they’re not all the same.

Your ad agency stole from both. If anything, Erickson should be doing something original (or at least something that separates it from the other spots) to brand Erickson Homes.

I like retirement living TV (except, as we’ve discussed, the name).

Nice write up about Mr. Erickson in the recent issue of GRAND Magazine. (Oh, yeah - I’m in it, too ….)

You might think it’s funny. Or not. I think it’s clever and it cracked me up.

But it’s a video. For fun. It’s not selling a product.

The spot is a lame rip-off of a very funny video I saw on UTube with kids talking about why they wanted to be in the advertising biz when they grow up. Of course, it wasn’t a commercial - just a video. Woody Allen inspired.

If this were simply a video - not a commerical - I’d find it mildly amusing and tongue-in-cheek. But to sell a product??? I think not.

I often talk about these types of ad campaigns in my blog. Take a look at this post .

Everything these people say may or may not be true. But why you would beat your audience over the head over and over and over and over with negative fears in order to sell your product? Now I associate all these ‘fears’ with Erickson homes.

And BTW - I like the philosophy of Mr. Erickson and his business. He’s smarter than most of the home/condo and adult community builders who are simply going for the gold - the top 20% of ‘rich’ Baby Boomers. My prediction is that over the next ten to twenty years we will have a glut of super-upscale retirement housing. His communities have a more egalitarian approach.

Isn’t this the problem….too many people living in denial of their situation? I haven’t seen anyone bring out the harsh reality of retirement as experienced (or the lack of thereof) by many folks?

We can’t keep fooling ourselves or better yet older retirees can’t keep fooling themselves about their lifestyle. My mom lives in denial about her “good health” and how satisfied she living alone in her house of the past 58 years!(and she better be she never leaves it!). The reality however is that she falls well within in a few scenarios in that ad and is she falling apart at the seams!

I am curious to see how my mom would react to seeing this ad. I do plan to show her. I always joke that her generation is actually the “denial generation” because they all seem to be in the same sinking ship but keep the music playing as it goes rapidly down like the Titanic.

An overdue wake up call in my opinion.

About the spot: yeah, let’s go negative and dredge up every downer associated with retirement and then magically we can make them disappear.
Blech. Hated it.