Advertisers strive for memorable holiday spots

Got your Stompeez yet?

If not, it's too late.

The rainbow-colored children's slippers, shaped like puppies, unicorns, or alligators, with mouths or eyes that open and close, are sold out.

That's a fact that Sherri Hope Culver, a Temple University scholar who studies the impact of advertising, regards with a certain professional admiration.

The endless holiday rotation of Stompeez TV commercials apparently did its job, enticing kids to crave an odd, previously unknown sort of footwear and parents to plunk down $19.95, plus postage and handling.

"That's a slam-dunk success," said Culver, director of the new Center for Media and Information Literacy at Temple. "There's a reason advertisers spend the millions of dollars they spend."

Yet even the purchase of something as simple as a pair of Stompeez holds complication, she noted.

"From the advertiser's perspective, the goal is to sell a product," Culver said. "From a parent's perspective, and a kid's perspective, it's about choices. If you have five pairs of slippers in the closet, and you're buying another pair, maybe that's not right for you."

Ho, ho, ho.

'Tis the season to move product, slippers, shoes, and everything else, so red-and-green-hued commercials are dominating the airwaves.

Holiday sales - the 61 days in November and December that cover Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa - accounted for 19 percent of total retail-industry receipts last year. For some companies, it was 25 percent or even 40 percent, according to the National Retail Federation.

This year the federation projects holiday sales to rise 2.8 percent, to $465.6 billion. That means that in two months, American consumers will spend a sum roughly equivalent to the gross national product of Norway.

To get their share of that money, companies strive to create memorable ads.

One of the best-liked spots this year is the Hallmark commercial in which a soldier, far from home, unwraps a recordable storybook - and hears the voice of his young son reading a Peanuts Christmas tale.

The soldier chokes up - and so does everyone watching.

One funny spot is the HBO ad where an elderly woman unwraps a gift from her teenage granddaughter - a complete-season set of the show True Blood.

"It's this show about this crazy town in Louisiana filled with sex-crazed vampires," the girl excitedly tells her puzzled grandmother.

The tagline: The perfect gift for almost everyone.

On the other side are commercials that are memorable for the wrong reasons.