Skydiving = great education!

November 20, 2007


Saw the following commercial for Dakota State University – a smaller state school about an hour or two north of Sioux Falls - on a random local channel

ANNCR:
The world moves pretty fast.
An adequate education is not enough when it’s time to be a leader.
Dakota State University offers you the edge you need to stay ahead of the game.
You only live once. Make it count!
Dare to do, at DSU. Dakota State University, Madison, SD.

VIDEO:
ANNCR always talks to camera.
ANNCR in suit, inexplicably on top of building, holding arms in air. Cut to shot of ANNCR walking through computer server room. Cut to generic campus shots. Cut to ANNCR sitting behind a random, nondescript desk, pointing at camera. ANNCR gets up, dives through doorway…
…and cut to gratuitous shot of ANNCR skydiving. ANNCR gives thumbs up. Cut to DSU graphic. End.

My questions.

1. Does the degree come packed with as many clichés as you see here? I hope so. This is worse than a half-time interview with Bill Belichick. “We played hard and gave 110%, and we have a lot of respect for those guys, but we’re just taking the season one game at a time.”

2. Do shots of a desk signify your ability to secure a high paying job? Does a computer server room signify the school’s dedication to high technology? Does a shot from on top of a roof show limitless potential? I hope so, and not that these shots came at the whim of the announcer character. “Hey, let’s take a shot on top of the roof! Whoa!”

3. Skydiving? Seriously. What? Skydiving?

I wish you could see the spot. Alas, it’s not on YouTube. Just another reason you shouldn’t rely on your student editors to create your commercials.

——————————–

UPDATE: I seem to have upset someone - I’m guessing someone involved with the production of the spot.

My apologies if I’ve upset anyone. Please contact me in person next time - or at least leave an e-mail address that I can properly respond to.

——————————–

SECOND UPDATE: I realize I haven’t mentioned something - it is obvious by the comments and by people I’ve talked to that this spot wasn’t produced by students at DSU. This was done by an outside agency. So ignore the comment that says “Just another reason you shouldn’t rely on your student editors to create your commercials.” And apologies to student editors for the insult.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Annoyances |

Comments

5 Responses to “Skydiving = great education!”

  1. Proud DSU Student on December 6th, 2007 930 pm

    Wow, what a wonderful production to represent DSU! I Love DSU, and I hate this commercial. I got out a piece of paper and wrote down ten commercial ideas, and the best one was to have a 30 something year old liquor salesman from Sioux Falls be the main character in our commercial! Great idea, right? NO! Are you serious? “Dare to Do” is an excellent tagline. Why not? DSU has small classes, helpful professors, and a staff that is out of this world. You can “Dare to Do” anything here, and the world is your oyster. Now, if you take that pretty good tagline and stick it on Chester the Cheesehead’s Cheesy commercial, you now have a terrible commercial stuck to a good tagline. Let me do the math for you. “Good Tagline” + “Cheap/Cheesy/Awkward Commercial” = equals a tagline that would make you want to jump out of an airplane. Corey, please do not say that any students were relied on to do this video editing. ANY student here would have come up with a much better commercial. I’d bet my tablet on it.

  2. Frozen Trojan on December 7th, 2007 143 am

    To simply put it. I think the commercial is just plain weird. I struggle to understand the connection between skydiving and dsu. I understand the skydiving goes along with the “dare to do” theme, but it seems like there are a lot of other avenues that could have been taken with the theme and dsu. I think its funny that the school won’t put the commercial on the website. What’s that saying?

  3. Embarrased Student on December 7th, 2007 349 pm

    Honestly, the DSU commercial is almost considered an embarrasement. It looks very cheesy and is an extremely poor representation of everything DSU has to offer. Although the logo “DSU” is alright, the commericial does no justice to the school what-so-ever. AND WHO is that GUY!? Does he have any relation to DSU?

    Why not create something like the last commericials…REAL students/staff..>REAL setting…REAL representation of what DSU has to offer!

    For being a top school in technology, I would expect a better commercial show just how much we do have to offer! I really think this commercial hurts DSU rather than attract perspective students. PLEASE remove the ad from TV!

  4. Representing the Blue and Gold on December 8th, 2007 106 pm

    What boggles my mind about this whole situation is how in world does a commercial of this spectacular calibur get to the cable television? Student senate seems to be a pretty active crew on campus, why not take five minutes out of one of their meetings, show the commercial and see what they think. I know they have focus groups to review these kind of things, but it would not have taken that group of students more than five minutes to tell the producers of the piece and to take this one back to the drawing board. These commercials usually go on the fancy Daktronics boards at ball games, but I haven’t seen this one up there yet. I’ve heard whisperings of who the company is responsible for the creation of the commercial, and let me give you two big thumbs down.

  5. EMBARRASSED STUDENT on December 12th, 2007 742 pm

    Every time my friends and I see this commercial we laugh at it. It makes me wonder how this ridiculous piece of work got onto cable television. Who approved this? Who was that guy? As a student I almost feel embarrassed, as well as poorly represented. I can only imagine what people think of my great school now… I don’t think any student could take us seriously now. If I saw that commercial before enrolling here I might seriously reconsider enrolling. Someone please take that commercial and replace with something more befitting of DSU, #1 Midwest Public Baccalaureate College not the “laughing-stock” of the collegiate community.

Leave a Reply