January 3, 2007
New Year's Skywriting Let Down
Just stop wondering about the "Who Will She Choose?" sky-writing from New Year's Day. It's really anti-climactic. A few people Flickr'd it, but we doubt they actually tuned in for the premiere of the ABC Family drama Wildfire to see if heroine Kris would choose Matt or Junior. Because how were they supposed to know to tune into ABC Family in the first place?
Gothamist only knew it was for Wildfire because we saw ads for it all day on New Year's Eve - during the all-day marathon of Ugly Betty episodes. Yet we had no desire to see Wildfire (though if anyone knows a decent Wildfire recap site so we can find out who she chose, tell us in the comments!). Note to ABC Family's promo company: You'll need to be less vague next time!
Photograph by Joe Schumacher on Flickr
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They were also doing it today around 12:15 over Murray Hill/the East River
and in Santa Monica, CA over Will Rogers State Beach on Dec. 30th
I saw this from the williamsburg bridge on new years eve and was very confused as it looked like ||OUM. I thought it was maybe a Vik Muniz artwork this is a letdown.
It takes up so much sky that the letters fade before you can read the whole thing.
www.forgotten-ny.com
I'm sorry but that is some of the ugliest skywriting I have ever seen. The pilot must have been drunk or something.
That's actually the old-fashioned version of skywriting, in which one airplane spells out whole letters with a long stream of smoke. The modern version uses three or more airplanes flying in formation, each of which emits short bursts of smoke to spell out letters.
Driving through Staten Island on Sunday afternoon, the letters were inverted from my vantage point and their interpretation was obscured by the fact that the letters dissipated quickly. A marketing failure.
ABC should get their money back. I saw part of the wording on the upper east side. It was taking so long to write the letters, that people just stopped paying attention to it. Also, the letters were so big int he sky, that you could only see about three letters at a time. Actually ABC shouldn't get their money back. Whoever thought of this as a promotional tool at ABC should get fired.
Jen...thanks for the explanation, the skywriting was totally unreadable. But on Saturday they had a small plane trailing a huge banner for Wildfire. Interestingly, it came over Roosevelt Island, where I live....immediately reminding us of the Corey Lidle flight.
>A marketing failure.
Not really, you are here commenting on it aren't you? :)
I got as far as "wno w" when I gave up. No idea the second letter was an H. The show itself is quite good, and only occasionally bathetic.
video about it:
video
Are you kidding, its not a marketing failure - you guys are all talking about it. this is a lot more successful than the sky writing you see over Long Beach or whereever during the summer. Success!
Oriented East to west and so far up the island it was probably best read from somewhere in the Bronx. I wonder who their demographic was supposed to be? A google search of the phrase just turns up lots of LA bloggers who saw the same stunt in their skies. Didn't seem to be a success there either.
I liked the old style of skywriting (although I gave up watching after "Who will she c"). Analog skywriting beats that crappy dot-matrix rig they use nowaday.
I liked the old style of skywriting (although I gave up watching after "Who will she c"). Analog skywriting beats that crappy dot-matrix rig they use nowaday.
Skywriting does keep people's attention, but it's usually hard to see.
Who cares
I only saw "Who Choose" today (1/3)...there was no Will She. That would have made WAY more sense.
It isn't like anyone has heard of the show or even the network.
ABC Family was previously Fox Family. Before it was purchaced by Fox it was called The Family Channel and was owned by nutjob Pat Robertson who has a little rider in the sale contract where his daily incoherent ramblings known as The 700 Club have to be aired on the station. When ABC purchaced the network from Fox the rider still was in force so Disney has to show the ravings of a madman.
In my opinion, advertising is only "successful" if it gets me to buy the product. There are plenty of advertisements that caused me to talk about them, but it doesn't mean I purchased them. In fact some advertisements annoyed me so much that I boycotted buying their products. The old navy commercials are a good examples.
In my opinion, advertising is only "successful" if it gets me to buy the product. There are plenty of advertisements that caused me to talk about them, but it doesn't mean I purchased them. In fact some advertisements annoyed me so much that I boycotted buying their products. The old navy commercials are a good examples.