Friday, December 09, 2005
IMDb for Commercials
IMDb makes it easy to cross-reference actors with movies and television shows. For example, if you look up the name of an actor, it will list all the movies he's been in. If you look up a movie, it will list all the cast and crew. Everything's connected to each other.
Unless you've been living on another planet, chances are you know all about IMDb. The reason I'm explaining it is because that's the kind of functionality that would be great for commercials.
The best thing I've found so far is, well, IMDb. Every person in the database can have a list of "Other Works" that includes things such as television commercials and music videos. Adrien Brody has a few good examples.
In the Other Works section the phrase TV commercial is linked to http://www.imdb.com/SearchBios?TV%20commercial, which brings back every biography that has the phrase "TV commercial" in it. While that's not specific enough to be useful, you can add keywords to the search to narrow down the results.
What all this lacks is an actual page for each commercial. If movies, television shows, and video games can have their own pages, then why not commercials?
Update 2006-10-06 - We here at mredkj decided to launch a site that's like IMDb for commercials. It's called splendAd.com, and it's just getting started, so take a look.
posted by Keith [12/09/2005 01:37:00 AM] - permalink - 4 comments
4 comment(s):
wrote:
Greetings earthling
Posted [12/20/2005 11:55:00 AM]
wrote:
Commercials do not have common names. I have worked on several and there ARE working titles, just like for movies (i.e. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi had the working title of "Blue Harvest"). Unfortunately, it would be difficult to make one title for each commercial that would help in a comprehensive search. Granted, this is an easy obstacle to overcome, but most people just don't care about commercials enough for any organization to create a website about them.
Posted [10/09/2006 08:00:00 PM]
Keith wrote:
Anonymous wrote...
Commercials do not have common names.
I appreciate feedback like this, because it provides some insight into the advertising world.
I welcome you to visit our new site, splendAd.com (linked above). We tried to deal with the fact that people won't search for commercial titles by focusing on the companies and products.
Posted [10/11/2006 07:56:00 PM]
Krisengo wrote:
Probably way too late to help, but I also have been looking for the commercial IMDB, or ICDB. Just so you don't feel alone in the world. It Could be organized by product. Although many times these days we remember the commercial not for the product, but for the commercial itself, the actors, the memorable lines. I can't remember what fast food chain used the old lady for "Where's the beef?". Was is Wendy's or Burger King? Anyway, just offering support.
