As TiVo allows me to skip commercials, I’ve yet to see their new Tim Tebow ads on television. Fortunately the company has begun posting the spots on YouTube. And, overall, they’re cute but relatively innocuous — with more lines given to child actors than Tebow and, sadly, TiVo product sees very little screen time. In fact, in the ad embedded above, their in-house crew provides zero exposure to TiVo hardware or interfaces… although we do get a glimpse at the back of both an iPad and flat panel television. As mentioned last week, we believe a more effective approach would be spotlighting the experience – as Apple has done with iPad commercials (and Virgin Media did with TiVo).
Interestingly, with little fanfare, we’ve also learned via these new ads that TiVo has rekindled their prior retail relationship with Wal-mart who will begin carrying the TiVo Premiere DVR and “drive incremental sales.”
From a recent visit to a Walmart in Lancaster, PA we see that TiVo Premiere units are now on store shelves. Unfortunately, the retailer has sullied the TiVo box description with an inventory or shipping label and security device. Further, there’s no nearby signage indicating TiVo’s value-add or, more importantly, highlighting the required additional service fees.