I’m sure, if you watch cable or satellite TV at all, you’ve seen one of the public service announcements informing parents that it’s possible for them to block certain channels. The commercials are really well done and quite funny, but they’re also missing a huge segment of the population.
Obviously parents who don’t want their children to be able to watch Tony “whack” Guido, or sultry Sandra do whatever she does in Seattle, are the biggest part of the people that would use this service… and these ads focus perfectly in on them. But why only focus on people who want to block “bad” shows? What about people who may not have children and yet could use this feature to block out annoying shopping channels, PPV channels, or other things that you simply hate having to “scroll through” as you’re looking for what’s on?
The Ad Council has come up with a fun way to show what is possible for parents… but they’re missing out on using the same tool to target a wider market. Would it damage the message for parents? I don’t think it would. Would it increase the importance of the message for non-parents? Possibly.
Sometimes we get so focused in on our target market we miss out on all the potential that lay just outside it.
