Adult Swim's unique approach to bumper ads

Back in September 2001, Cartoon Network (owned by Time Warner) started Adult Swim as a Sunday night program block. It has since expanded into a six night block from 11pm to 6am. When they began, ads were totally inappropriate for their audience (they have a warning that goes up every hour that viewers should be over the age fo 14) for things like diapers, kids toys and other advertisers that would normally be seen during Cartoon Network's regular programming.

Filled with adult cartoons like Futurama, Family Guy, Harvey Birdman - Attorney at Law, SeaLab 2021 and good dose of anime, Adult Swim has taken over the ratings for their time block for basic cable with the highly coveted 18-34 year old male audience. Ads now reflect this older demo.

But even more interestingly is how Adult Swim uses their bumpers to incorporate advertisements.

First off, Adult Swim has a very distinct look and tone to their bumpers. For anyone who hasn't seen them, they are white type on a black background, enjoy the use of [brackets] and have a sarcastic and witty tone. It provides a great branding vehicle for their programming block, which they've also turned over into advertising space.

Scion - Adult Swim - On Your Mark

Scion - Adult Swim - Tricked Out

And at top-spend, advertisers can get original themed promo spots with characters from Adult Swim's shows, proving a modern twist to the old-fashioned "live commercials" of TV's early days. These ads incorporate characters from shows like SeaLab 2020 and Space Ghost.

1-800-CALL-ATT- Sealab 2020

Quiznos - Space Ghost

Dr Pepper - Space Ghost

Or a combination of their bumper style with characters like this spot for Big Red.

Big Red Gum - Adult Swim - This Isn't Exactly Bold

And even further tie-ins include using the Adult Swim Williams Street animators like MC Chris (who also does guest voices on some of their shows) for the GameBoy Advance.

Cartoon Network / Adult Swim - Nintendo Gameboy

Not enough? At the beginning of the year, Adult Swim and Burger King joined forces for a promotion to run Adult Swim for a day, and "have it your way". All the promos for the contest were done in the colors of BK and in the style of AS bumpers.

With all the hoopla about the death of the 30 second commercial, the death of TV advertising, and ideas like Garfield's Chaos Scenario, perhaps Adult Swim has found a creative and effective solution. True other channels have incorporated ads in their bumpers but they tend to be the dull and boring "sponsored by" or "brought to you by" dull type of messages. The way in which Adult Swim melds their style and humor into these ad bumpers shows that they understand the audience they are advertising to and what they like about the programming they're advertising on, which is something that many other networks and cable channels do not do.

Related articles on Adult Swim, if you're interested:
+ Chasing Away the Clutter: Cable Networks Are Opening Doors to New Digital Advertising Opportunities
+ Press release on ratings
+ Midnight Munchies with [Adult Swim] - a chat with some of the [AS] crew.
+ An article on [AS] and their ratings - Back in March, Adult Swim became it's own network for ratings purposes in a move to improve Adult Swim's appearance in ratings comparisons.