Hile has created an animated 30-second TV spot for their client Grasshopper. Gary the grasshopper, the corporate mascot Hile designed last year when the company changed its name from GotVMail to Grasshopper, has the starring role in the commercial. In the spot Gary morphs from one scene to another while his head remains in a consistent position throughout. Why? To help assure the brand message still gets expressed as TV viewers fast-forward through their commercials. The goal was to create an ad with visuals interesting enough that viewers have to stop fast-forwarding and watch them. An article posted on Wired by Eliot Van Buskirk explains the results of the study, performed at Boston College, and described in the November 2008 issue of the Journal of Marketing:

“The act of fast-forwarding through ads causes viewers to pay even more attention to the center part of the screen—the better to know when to return to ‘play’—even as advertisements whipped past at 20x the normal speed without sound. Apparently, our brains are still able to process images and retain brand messaging even when we’re only seeing one out of every 24 video frames.”

The concept of the “TiVo proof commercial” was the brainchild of Grasshopper’s CEO, Siamak Taghaddos. Grasshopper is a Boston-based company offering virtual phone systems, which empower entrepreneurs to start and grow their small businesses from anywhere, using any phone. The company has won many accolades including: “66^th fastest growing company” by Inc. 500,  “Best entrepreneurs under 25” from Business Week, and “Top 40 under 40” from American Venture.

See the Hile Design–created Grasshopper commercial.

Contact information for Hile Design

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Press Releases.