some of life's lessons

This was originally posted May 29. The Creatives' insight has been added.

per david's request, i brought over one of my entries on a campaign he wanted written about here at the ranch. here it goes:

i don't know how many people have caught tlc's "life lessons" campaign going around, but i think it's just great. i saw a few print ads in the latest 'entertainment weekly' and searched online shortly after to see if there were any commercials. tada! there are.
i love how the "lessons learned" resonates perfectly with their targeted audience and the commercials are served up with an excellent dose of dry humor. to top it off, the strange statuettes are crazy reminiscent of the precious moments ones (sans halos and dopey eyes) and are actually being sold through tlc's website for anyone interested in having their own life lesson reminder.

edit: Here is additional insight into the campaign from The Martin Agency. Work can be seen here at Duncans TV Land


How did you come up with the campaign?

Sean Riley, the Creative Director says:

TLC came to us with the goal of rebranding their network. They wanted to move away from do-it-yourself programming and re-define themselves as the network that offers learning for "30 somethings." People who have reached the stage in life where they are dealing with parenting, marrige, homeownership, careers and spirituality, as they put it, people who have grown-up but not grown old. All Their programming is developed around subjects that will resonate with this target.

It was important for the advertising to maintain the learning aspect of the network but make it relevant to this group of people and their particular life stage. The agency felt that it was important to make learning fun, it's not medicine it's entertainment. The Life Lesson campaign came out of that mix: relevant learning with enough of a laugh to make it
entertaining.

How did the idea for figurines come about?

Now, it's Todd's turn (the copywriter).

TLC wanted to hit the folks that are between MTV and Bravo. They're grown-up but definitely not old. They are forever young-ish. They're learning as they go. They're faced with the hard choices in life -marriage, buying a house, kids, establishing a career, putting roots in the ground. In these times there is a lot screwing up. There is a lot going on and not a lot of guidence. TLC wanted to be that guidance. They wanted to show this target that screwing up is all part of the learning process.

Their tagline says it best - "Live and Learn."

Pat and I looked at this target and the things they face, we wanted to communicate to them in a way they would believe. If you put the mirror up to them, and say, "Hey, we know what you're going though," it feels like a bunch of B.S. and these people are savvy and will see right through it. Being in this target ourselves, we both really understand and appreciate sarcasm. That coupled with fact that we wanted something slightly bizarre and weird to get attention and a knock on "Precious Moments" or the crap you find a Hallmark seemed to stick. Take those terrible, pull at your heart strings trinkets and figurines that they sell and put that "screwing up and learning" filter on it and there you have "Life Lessons." Since we had to promote a bunch of shows it seemed perfect that you could have a figurine for every show. Every TLC show you watch is another lesson learned. Hope that answers it. What a longwinded answer. Sorry.

Did you watch a lot of TLC while you and Pat Wittich (the AD) were
brainstorming?

We watched some clips of each show to get a sense of what was happening. But to b honest, we really didn't focus on the shows construct. We just wanted to get a topline of what the lesson what that each show was trying to give. Take a show like "Honey, We're Killing the Kids." There's a lot going on there. The concept of the show is hard to summarize. It's almost two shows in one. But the bottom line is what we needed to quickly capture a lesson and make a figurine for it. The one liner for the show is that parents can sometimes be too nice to there kids and let them go astray. The lesson became, "Sometimes Being Their Best Friend Isn't Being Their Best Friend." Again, hope that makes sense.


Are they for sale?

Back to Sean now.

They are for sale $14.95.

It seems like The Martin Agency does a tremendous job at humor with this campaign and then the Geico work too. Is there something in the water in Richmond that creates humor?

We live in Richmond, the only other funny thing to do around here is civil war re-enactments. I'm not that into guns.