Monty Hall was a visionary.
He twisted the world of marketing and turned fun into a business.
He understood product placement and advertainment and rolled it into one wonderful TV show called Let’s Make a Deal, decades before Hollywood met Madison Avenue.
How much would an advertiser pay for this today:
Advertisers’ products are dramatically revealed by a giant curtain, which prompts large audiences to ooh and aah in delight, as an announcer lovingly describes every benefit of the product. Then the audience at home gets to stare at the product for far longer than a 30 or 60 second commercial.
Realizing the value of such a marketing opportunity, some smart folks have brought back Let’s Make A Deal, 2009-style, with Wayne Brady in Monty Hall’s old role. Yesterday, Wayne tried to give away a VW Routan.
After a woman dressed like a cowboy didn’t win the car, Wayne offered her $900 to spell “Routan;” before she revealed her spelling, he offered her $700 in case she misspelled it. She may not have been real smart, but she was smart enough to know she didn’t know how to spell Routan. She took the seven bills, and when the correct spelling was revealed, America got a look at the car’s name once more, in big black letters, straight to camera.
Who woulda thunk that a show from 1963 would be such a perfect fit for the wild wild marketing environment in which we find ourselves?
Don't discount the Past when it comes to the Future of brilliant marketing solutions.
I happened on this new incarnation of Let's Make A Deal the other day, and found myself thinking about how different and anachronistic it seemed seeing it on air now. The crowd was extremely risk averse, going for what they could see (like cash in hand) vs. the possible "new dinette set!" behind the curtain. It made it really hard for them to keep it interesting. Also, gotta say, Wayne Brady was no Monty Hall.
ReplyDeleteGetting a new dining room set just isn't as exciting now that you can get it on overstock.com, ebay, amazon, etc. And as far as Wayne goes, maybe he should get Wardrobe to find one of Monty's old sportcoats...
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