When does a TV commercial pass from interesting to boring? From boring to annoying? And when does it lose its power to convince you of the desirability of the brand and, instead, gain the power to make you throw things at the TV? After you see it 10 times? 20 times?

What if you saw the exact same commercial 62 times in two weeks? Diehard viewers to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament saw the Southwest Airlines “Bags Fly Free” commercial an average of one time per hour. That’s enough to make a consumer want to pay to check baggage with another carrier.

Oversaturation Can Turn Brand Awareness into Brand Annoyance
While Southwest Airlines was not an official sponsor of the NCAA tournament, it advertised often enough that the average viewer could certainly make that connection. The Southwest ad featuring the baggage handlers pulling up their shirts to display the chest painting proclaiming that “Bags Fly Free” ran 62 times; other similar ads ran 14 times from March 18 to April 3, 2010.

At Empower we generally define wearout as the decreasing ability, over time, of a TV ad to effectively persuade the audience. It usually happens once the ad has been seen by heavy TV viewers 20-25 times. But that assumes a reasonable spot load over a reasonable campaign time period. For a sporting event like the college basketball championship, which attracts a loyal audience to live telecasts, media planners can assume a high level of frequency. The time period until wearout is faster.

Southwest Airlines’ undoubtedly spent a lot of money to get their message in front of a live, engaged audience. Their TV investment could have been maximized by rotating three or four creative executions instead of relying primarily on one. Instead, it’s possible that all those bare chests were simply contributing to a new kind of “March Madness”.

By Julie Pahutski, Senior Vice President of Consumer Insights

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