At bigger agencies we get too caught up in budgets.
How much money will it take to support a campaign, a certain number of insertions, points for TV schedule? Oh its a small budget? Oh what a pity, we won’t be able to do very much. Sigh.
But maybe if we were just a little scrappy and a bit more accepting of small budgets it would allow us to me a more creative. My four years at UConn certainly showed me that silver spoon kids are the least motivated, perhaps the same is true for us agency folks….Or maybe I just want a reason to include a line item for Panda costumes in my next media plan.
I saw the above banner and was horrified, so obviously I clicked. Then I arrived at one of the most entertaining sites I’ve been to as a digital marketer in a while. I just wish I knew who did the site or what real company it was promoting…PointRoll is mentioned once but that’s it.
I’m not going to spoil the fun, go check it out here. Make sure you browse the site a bit for some awesome quotes like:
“We have 100% delivery. Sometimes you don’t even need a computer!”
“Our motto, “Keep it in the box,” (you know, the banner!) ensures our staff of talented clickologists never strays from what we know works: The highest standard for the lowest common denominator. It’s what we were founded on. It’s what works.”
Media planning seems kind of boring to most outsiders. When I tell people I’m in advertising EVERYONE assumes I’m a graphic designer…they always get all the glory.
Its the ad you remember not necessarily in what spot break or on what channel. But, if we had not created the perfect mix of reach and frequency, if media planners didn’t know your media habits and you preferred media consumption times; if I had not plugged the creative in front of your eyes just so, then you would never see that spot that made you laugh or run out and buy the product. According to this ad in Redscout’s ‘Spur’ series we are the smart ones.
BooneOakley also launched a new site this week that’s causing some buzz as its completely in YouTube.
They utilize YouTube’s ability to have clickable portions within videos to create the buttons that take you to different “pages”. Very much like Modernista’s unwebsite (that Skittles later copied) and in keeping with their agency description “BooneOakley is a full-service, out of the box ad agency.”
Frank Duffel is a guy I could see my dad being buddies with – a bit of a hard ass but simple and straight forward. While he puts the “no” in innovation, he somehow ended up with a Facebook page, a youtube series and his own website, but my guess is that the overly ambitious June is responsible for that (see episodes 4 and 5).
Mr.Duffel is the President of The Post Shredded Wheat Co. where they’ve done nothing to change the cereal since 1892. After two two huge achievements, adding milk to cereal and make Post Shredded Wheat spoon size, Post Shredded Wheat has not changed a thing. To fully understand Frank check out his speech on Progress…good stuff.
Well done Ogilvy! It’s incredibly entertaining, sociable and still delivers a powerful message. Heck, I bought a box at the grocery store today and I don’t even eat cereal.
On the new bsuiness squad I think a lot about my dream accounts to land. Some are on the list because I absolutely love the products, some are on there because I geniuely think they’d be fun, some purely for the challenge, some because I think there are so many creative and innovative ways to advertise.
Charles Schwab commercials have been using the rotoscoping technique in their ads since about 2005. These ads have always annoyed me. I can’t stand the use of animation purely for the sake of using animation.
Advertising Rules #72 – In commercials targeted towards adults (especially middle aged adults), animation should only be used if real live people could not execute the story line more effectively.
Esurance commercis are a great example of when animation helps the message and the spot. There is no way those storylines could be executed with the same tone, message and slickness if real people were used. Charles Schwab, on the other hand, really doesn’t need to animate people’s faces as they sit on a bench in front of a camera and bitch to you. Real live people could pull that off just fine.
But then there’s Charles Schwab who is trying to sell itself as an upstanding and reliable finance company. Do the cartoonish characters really support the focus of the campaign? The use of less smug and REAL people would be so much more effective.
Talk to Chuck is such a great line and its completely laid to waste after a viewer sees the douchy characters rotoscoped to ultimate creepiness.
Charles Swchab recently put its $100M media into play, with incumbent Omnicom’s PHD, Universal McCann and Aegis’s Carat all being invited to pitch. How about you put creative into play too? Your media buy is going to remain ineffective so long as your creative is this terrible.
I couldn’t find a recent spot as an example, but this one from 2008 looks exactly the same as the one from this month.
Based on the youtube comments, I guess I’m not alone in my distaste for rotoscoping…
Subscribe to my blog using RSS