I love Halloween. Besides the candy and utter pointlessness of the holiday, every adult woman’s costume is preceded by a “sexy-” and that includes The Pretty AE’s take on Little Red Riding Hood (yes, she is a sexy-Little Red Riding Hood). It looked a lot sexier on Saturday night at the bar than it does today in the office, but I am still a fan.
A big fan.
She is so damn good looking, costume or not.
Anyway, Adfreak thinks that it’s time the 18% of us adults in America who dress up for Halloween to grow up. I say that, beyond the plus that is eye candy for sketchy bloggers like the daily (ad) biz, dressing up and celebrating silly holidays reinforces the idea of a creative environment – it forces everyone to act silly, do things they wouldn’t usually do and think creatively.
In an agency environment above all, dressing up and having fun should be encouraged.
Especially when costume ideas take from famous ads, as my “cat herder” cowboy does from Fallon’s famous ad for EDS:
“When you bring a whole campaign in and you haven’t lost a-one of your executions…there’s no feeling like it.”
A blog that I like a lot, Scamp, by a copywriter at BBH London, is always a good read, but particularly on Tuesdays when he gives an (always insightful) tip to members of adland everywhere.
This Tuesday he talks about creatives presenting work to clients and, contrary to how everyone I know here in America does it, he says that it’s a bad idea for a number of reasons, the fifth being my favorite:
“The more time you spend with a Client, the more you will get to know their business problems, their day-to-day concerns and all that malarkey. This is not always a good thing. You’re a Creative, and you need to sit outside that. You need to have a general understanding of it all, and yet sit aloof from it. How else can you give them a fresh perspective?”
A lot of me agrees wholeheartedly (working, as I do, with a client that likes us so much that our team, including creatives, spends significant time in their offices). Another part of me disagrees.
I (partially) disagree with Scamp because I think that agencies can expand their service and add value beyond telling the story of the brand. They can, and should, influence product design, supply chain decisions (not a good idea to source fabric from a sweat shop when you’re positioning yourself as socially conscious, for example…ahem, Gap), and more. That requires deeper knowledge of the client than most agencies get, let alone most creative teams.
One could say that it is the account team that should dive deeply into the client’s business and tease out strategic insights from that to brief the creative team with.
I love account people. But, on specific businesses at least, I would really like to get involved at a deeper level…without them screening me.
Just in time for Halloween, DDB Milan has come out with a campaign for Garmin that takes spooky mainstream. Not that spooky was their point:
Granted, the photography (by Winkler and Noah) and art direction (by Francisco Fallisi) are striking…but the women in the ads look like waifish city nymphs that may or may not be alive (and, as such, may or may not be about to steal my soul if I were to follow their directions…though, depending on how things went before the soul stealing, I might not mind). They properly scare me.
I like the simple copy, but am not sure what, exactly, “a seductive navigator” means with respect to a GPS system. Its design is nothing special. It doesn’t make driving any more silky than any other GPS. Perhaps it gives directions in the waifish scary city nymph voice.
There are elements here to like, but I don’t know what it is saying.
I have been talking a lot recently about viral marketing – specifically how it always sounds great in a brainstorm, but is rarely something that consumers would actually be interested in.
This afternoon, I actually pitched a campaign that hinges on a strong viral component…and I think that the viral idea is going to work. Nay, the idea is going to fucking work. Yes, there is a lot of competition in the viral space. Yes, viral is hard to predict as a sure-fire winner. Yes, this brand is lower-engagement than other brands. But this idea has one thing going for it that most others don’t: it’s really, really funny.
Sort of like this classic ad for the Chevy Colorado:
This idea that I pitched is also perfectly on brand, driving home the messaging and call to action the brief asks for almost perfectly.
In fact, it’s so good, it’s only a matter of days before it gets killed.
Though Adrants gives this site leeway because “[personal hygiene ads] walk this terrific moral and social line that’s bound to result in lots of misunderstandings and wince-worthy ads,” it still makes the Daily (Ad) Biz’ bad advertising list.
And not just because the site failed to re-size to my laptop’s screen size and the load time was excruciating.
Nor because Weiden is able to do great work on Old Spice deodorant (different target, yes, but still a deodorant and you tell me which work you think is stronger):
And not even because Stinkon Heights is awful similar to this Filthington.org idea by Drew Shaman that won a Merit award in the Student One Show awards last year:
Mainly I don’t like it because it is too obvious.
The eye-watering color-scheme, the teeny magazine copy, the faux-Blair Witch expose (still can’t do the thing over the “e”) of Stinkton Heights…as if anyone would want to expose something like stinky people.
I certainly don’t think that it deserves the vitriol that George Parker sends its way, but I do think that too often ho-hum ideas get through agencies and clients on the back of being executed via “New Media/New Technology.” An interactive microsite is a tactic, not an idea. Online videos? Quizzes? Advice columns? MySpace? Also tactics, not one of them an idea.
And I don’t think that Stinkton Heights is a good idea.
It’s The Pretty AE’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Pretty AE.
She has invited me to drinks with her and some friends after work and, as you would guess, I am planning to go. She is not a girl that a guy like me would say no to…at least not willingly. The issue, of course, is that I am fully convinced that I will not leave work until sometime after midnight at which point it will be too late.
Usually this would not be an issue for me, I would do what it takes to be there, but I am also fairly positively convinced that she is just not that into me. So I am tempted to blow it off…
But I feel guilty. I also feel like life gives you breaks if you’re in the right place at the right time and, for whatever reason, the office is not the right place.
Last week on Thursday I was late getting into work and parked illegally. Not as illegally as this parking spot tantalizingly outlined by Bates Y&R, Copenhagen (and used by my Mom on multiple occasions during my childhood), but not defensible to a police officer either.
I like this ad because it is quintessentially Jeep. In this day of even BMW making SUVs, Jeep should embrace and defend their heritage as the “go anywhere” vehicle. Even if you’re in urban Copenhagen. And will never, ever go off-road. It’s all about aspiration, right?
My aspiration is to be able to park illegally just once without a ticket or a security guard forcing me to move my car (while letting others get away with). That, or have said ticket-writer or security guard be hot, young and blond and willing to write up her number instead of a fine.
“We, in the urban upper middle class, have access to good doctors and a world of specialists. But people outside out world don’t…These [pharma] ads help alert them to the kinds of treatments that are out there. Let them know that there are options beyond what they’re being offered.”
He makes a good point, one that I would not disagree with. That said, the very fact that a bulk of advertising money is spent on medicines with very unattractive side effects (however unlikely those side effects may be) makes it by nature less prone to resulting in great work than something like car, cigarette or liquor advertising where the focus is on image and lifestyle. Image and lifestyle around a product that is, by and large, fun and more fetile ground for award-winning work.
Even though pharma advertising serves a purpose (all advertising does, right?), it doesn’t result is as much creativity of execution because of topic and government restrictions on what can be said.
That said, why has advertising changed so significantly since the Mad Men days?
Again, the Toad has (and readers) have a solid opinion: the advent of the holding companies. Having worked at an agency owned by one of the big holidng companies, I can testify to the short-term thinking that drives the holding companies. It’s all about the numbers, no matter how bad a decision driven by short-term thinking may be in the long run. But advertising is not the only industry facing similar pressure to make quarterly numbers.
My supposition, and I welcome thoughts, comments and the like on this, is that the industry’s inability to adjust to new compensation schemes since the loss of the 15% commission on media spending is the real issue. The failure to adjust has two key consequences. First, it has resulted in a price war among agencies based on standard commission models that has driven down prices and commodified creative, making agencies and inidividual talent seem less singular. Second, the loss of the commission has driven down salaries and perks with the predictable loss of talent to other industries. Why work your ass off at an ad agency for peanuts when you can work your ass off in Silicon Valley and become rich, famous and, against all odds, irresistible to the opposite sex?
One of the reasons that great advertising is so hard to come by these days is that pharmaceutical companies run so many ads. And, though I like this ad for Rozerem…
…most ads are very much NOT like it. In most drugs spots there is no narrative and no creativity. They are eminently forgettable:
In addition to being forgettable, all pharma ads – including the Rozerem one – are creepy. These spots have 20 seconds dedicated to listing possible side effects! No wonder people don’t like advertising. When I see these spots, I don’t either.
Though boring and uncreative, I did like the Mirapex one…but only because it made me laugh. Intense sexual urges as a side effect? If this whole RLS thing turns out to be a smaller market than anticipated, Mirapex could always be marketed as a Viagra-killer.
The worst part is that somewhere some drug exec is thinking the exact same thing.
It sort of redeems this year’s World Series, which, beyond the free taco that Jacoby Ellsbury won for America in the second game, was completely NOT enjoyable. I am going to stop cheering for teams that I want to win, as those teams always seem to lose.
At any rate, this is a fantastic promotion. Not even the very thin Pretty AE can eat just one Taco Bell taco, meaning that they will be driving significant traffic and trial through a simple loss-leader. I know that when I go to Taco Bell to get my free taco I am also going get something like eight gorditas so I don’t leave hungry, and alone could make Taco Bell break even on this promotion.
