The commercial break is on life support.

There is no shortage of people pontificating about the “death of TV advertising” these days. One can seldom attend a conference, client meeting or scroll through a marketing website without someone pointing out how TV advertising doesn’t work, is no longer relevant to generation X/Y/Z or is, in fact, dead. Let’s face it, DEATH SELLS! (If you’re one of those “TV Death Sellers,” you should probably stop reading this and get back to working on whatever it is that media grim reapers do all day — I assume it involves a dart board with media and ad-agency CEO faces on it.)

Although many of the arguments about the decline of TV have some merit, I believe we are still far away from TV (and TV commercials) going the way of the dinosaurs. Yes, the medium is definitely changing — there’s a truly ridiculous number of channels/ad breaks, less real-time viewing, more time spent with on-demand programs, people on Facebook/YouTube/Snap/Instagram…blah blah blah. Rather than argue these points to death, I hope to inspire a new conversation — one about the actual TV commercials and ad breaks they appear in. For over half a century, countless brands have created billions of dollars worth of shareholder value from what one could argue is the greatest advertising medium ever created, and if we’re not careful, we are going to be the generation of marketers that really screws things up.

After a holiday vacation filled with watching more TV than I would like to admit, a sad truth began to sink in — the average two-minute commercial ad break is a god-awful mess of extremely uninteresting, convoluted, vanilla-flavored spam that no one wants to/should have to endure. Just like global warming, we are the polluters and the deniers — pumping out more and more spam emissions every second and pretending it’s not someday going to jeopardize the stability of the entire ecosystem.

Let’s do a quick experiment to illustrate the point. For all my marketing/advertising/media friends reading this, please take a second and write down on average how many two-minute commercial breaks you watch on TV each week. Be honest! My guess is <2 for the great majority of us. We are the ones making all of this stuff, but when we go home and sit on the couch, we find it as unbearable as our target consumers do to actually sit through. Now, rather than just continue to let the consumer weed out this spam from their lives (DVR isn’t going away, nor is channel flipping, getting up to go to the bathroom or watching commercial-free on-demand programs), we need to rethink what the heck we are putting in front of people’s eyeballs and dramatically raise the creative bar. Failing to do so will only result in the continued spamification of the medium and eventual fade into irrelevancy. (Woohooo!!! Let’s get a slow clap going for the TV Death Sellers.)

Before we get into solution mode, though, let’s take a little detour to reflect on just how significant TV commercials are to our culture in America. Not only have we created an entire day to celebrate commercials (yes, there’s also a football game that happens at the same time), almost all of us can list our favorite spots over the years; ones that made you laugh, like Direct TV’s “Get Rid of Cable,” ones with jingles you could hum along to, like “Fresh Goes Better with Mentos, Fresh and Full of Life,” and ones that literally made you want to go out and buy the product the next day, like the original iPod “Silhouette” work. If you haven’t done so in a while, take a second and think about some of your favorite spots of all time — it will help remind you why you got into this business in the first place and why it is worth protecting this great advertising medium. Commercials are as much a part of the TV landscape as the shows they run between, and the entire broadcast system would not be what it is today without them. Okay, the romantic TV commercial reflection period is now over and we will return to our previously scheduled programming…

So, what can we do to raise the creative bar on TV commercials? I certainly do not have all the answers, but below are a few ideas for us to kick around (remember, there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm).

1) Study Up

How much time do you spend watching TV commercials (not your own) each week? Try blocking out 30 minutes a week to watch and capture what you think of the work out there (good/bad/ugly). What percentage of spots are testimonials? How many use celebrities? Of all the spots in a particular two-minute break, which one was the most memorable? What do you think of the production value? Does it make you want to buy what’s being advertised? Check out resources like www.ispot.tv to track the latest spots on-air.

2) Disrupt the Status Quo

With so much TV work going through pre-market testing like Millward Brown and Ipsos, it’s easy to see why so many of the spots on TV look and feel the same. We’re all applying the same principles to try to get good test results vs. fully appreciating the context that someone will be watching the ad (i.e., an annoying but somewhat tolerable interruption that must be endured as they watch a highly entertaining TV program). Instead of doing what everyone else does, try something different. All the great spots we envy are memorable because they were remarkably different from everything else on TV (see “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” for some inspiration).

3) Lead with Emotion

As much as we love to think it’s all about selling our products and services, we can’t achieve that goal if the audience isn’t willing to actually watch our ads. Given that we will continue to see new innovations for people to skip through our ads, it is more important than ever to give people a good enough reason to want to tune in. I believe the easiest way to earn someone’s attention on TV is to give the viewer more of what they want — something that makes them laugh, think or cry. If we don’t establish BIG emotion as an entrance fee to earning the viewer’s attention, we will continue to lose the audience.

4) Say One Thing

As simple as this sounds, we are all guilty of trying to tell viewers every single thing about our product or service in our ads. There simply isn’t enough time, and viewers can’t remember more than one really simple thought (especially when there are four more ads running in the commercial break with your ad). I always go back to the original “1000 Songs in Your Pocket” launch work for the iPod or the “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” work for Snickers when I need some inspiration. There were 50 things that Apple and Snickers could have said to sell us, but they picked that one benefit and left everything else out of their spots — making it ridiculously simple for the viewer to take away the message.

5) Invest in Production

With all the money you save by not doing testing, you should be able to afford higher production values. The programs that our commercials interrupt are better acted and better produced than ever before, and our spots need to match or even exceed that level of polish. Too many of us are showing up to a black-tie event wearing jean shorts and Tevas.

6) Networks Need to Speak Up

For decades, the networks have barely weighed in on commercial content, even though it’s the backbone of their entire business model. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube are spending millions to run studies about what works best and establishing guidelines (e.g., not being allowed to have more than 20% text on FB ad images) to preserve their integrity. I find it a little odd that the networks are remaining silent while more and more people are tuning out of their commercial breaks. Given that they are the one party that controls what spots will be in each two-minute pod, I think they need to do their part to help program ad breaks that people will be more excited about. The Super Bowl established a high bar for creativity — why shouldn’t that bar exist on the other 364 days of the year?

7) Buy A and Z Pod Positions

Although this one isn’t about raising the creative bar, allowing your spot the A or Z position (first spot of the break or the last spot before returning to the program) gives you the best chance to capture the viewer’s attention. The networks generally charge a premium for these placements, which is exactly how you know they are more valuable than being in the middle of the break when everyone is busy checking Snapchat or grabbing some more nachos.

I hope that this article will start a conversation and bring about some much needed change in the industry. We need to raise the collective creative bar and stop thinking of TV as a place where you go to “buy impressions or eyeballs.” The eyeballs might be there, but each of them is connected to a brain that makes a decision whether or not to pay attention to the ads we put in front of them, and if we are not careful, we will prove the TV Death Sellers right. Let’s continue to do everything we can to earn the viewer’s attention and curb the spam emissions in 2017.

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