Anything Nick Offerman is the VO for, I like. #ronswanson
Let’s talk about the Super Bowl advertising and celebrity appeal.
The top three ads in terms of “earned media” (who knows how they actually calculated this) all had blatant celebrity rip-offs. The top two: a Ferris Bueller knock-off and a Seinfeld knock-off show that maybe this really was a year of zero creativity in terms of Super Bowl media.
With stuff like GoDaddy’s trash, Kia’s “Let’s put everything we can possibly put into an ad that people like” Michael Bay homage, and even an Eminem follow-up by Clint Eastwood, all of the ads that we spent the year waiting for disappointed.
Is it sad that so much of this advertising is trash? Not really. What’s sad is that we, as agencies, spend millions of dollars producing the trash when we have amazing ideas that cost a tenth of it that get scrapped every day.
Ideas for web apps, for platforms, for new ways of generating revenue. These out-of-box (and when I say box, I mean TV advertising) ideas take more push. They take more work. When you want to do something someone has never done before, it requires actually doing something. And that scares people off. Let’s just remake Ferris Bueller instead. The TV-ad formula is so well internalized that it’s become a reflex.
Even in previous decades of TV advertising, there were stronger integrated ideas. Stuff that the Super Bowl ad amplified. Here’s the thing: if you’re going to spend $3M for a :30s national media placement, you’d better do it with purpose larger than entertainment. Your brand’s purpose should be the idea. Not “Hey, what can we do to make people click on this a bunch of times.” Because honestly, what the hell does Ferris Bueller have to do with a CR-V?
Coca-Cola’s live polar bear feed was a pleasure here. The interstitial ads weren’t much and didn’t do much but give you a smile, Coke’s brand purpose. They were understated— which in a sea of over-the-top, Motley Crue bullshit, was appreciated.
The point here is that we as a country have sanctioned these ads. Year after year we’ve built hype around the Super Bowl advertising, forcing them to be the KIA ad we all saw and hated. In the search for the king of all epic content, we have jumped the shark. (And I won’t even mention Flava Flave.)
Next year, I hope that we as agencies can think about what we’ll do for the Super Bowl a little more rationally, a little more strategically, and most of all, a little more like the smart, creative people we are. We are allowing hype to let us forget our responsibility of making really cool shit, not just what the focus group says it wants.
@72andsunny proves again and again they are badasses when it comes to making content.
There’s something about a level of imperfection and humanity that brands seem to miss…
(via helloyoucreatives)
72’s new Call of Duty work. #iwannabuyit
But if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to hold back the develop of interesting, provocative, distinctive work, it’s the fear that it will ‘alienate’ a brand’s existing consumers.Mr. Weigel is at it again…
Engagement- Fashionable, Yet Bankrupt, by Martin WeigelViews and interactions on their own are but an indication that people came into contact with our content. Yet the way some people speak, you’d think that audience contact was the endgame. Not merely the beginning of something…
We need to get our heads round the fact that the real battle is not for loyalty but scale. And in that battle being mentally available - known, famous, salient, top-of mind - and physically available - findable, recognizable, and accessible - are marketing’s key levers for success.
Customer acquisition should be the primary objective for brands. Our ultimate audience therefore consists of people who are not devoted zealots, who do not think about us all the time, and who don’t have an exclusive relationship with us. If we focused a little more on how brands actually grow, we might be a little more careful about throwing around that ‘engagement’ word.
Why we should define problems first- a thought starter I created. #inspiration
Fetishising insights treats them as a thing, rather than a process, a way of looking and thinking about problems. It encourages us to get our knickers into a twist debating whether something is ‘merely’ an observation or a piece of information or whether it is a bone fide Insight. The fact that the majority of men’s bodywash is actually bought by women, not men would fail to fulfill the insistence that it evoke an exclamation of “ah ha!” There’s no profound wisdom here. There’s no deep psychological revelation. Yet this understanding has undoubtedly helped unlock growth.Who else but Martin Weigel? #fanboy
Amazing work for Dirt Devil.
by jay julian cohen
