Out of the box advertising

There is still a role for good old-fashioned flag-waving advertising on the web. You know, the sort of messaging that simply demands your attention.

So, while the more eye-catching ideas these days are the big experiential campaigns, every now and then it’s a pleasure to see nothing more complicated than a banner ad done well.
Here are a couple for you, one for Nintendo’s Wario Land and the other for France’s T-Net.
When writing press ads, young creatives were always taught to try to use the medium to best effect.

Get the reader to turn the page upside down. Or look through it. Or refer to the editorial around it. In other words, do something to engage as well as to inform. That principle has been taken online with these two ads.

Have a look and you’ll see. In both the rules of webpage design have been flouted with the help of a flash overlay. In both, the ad spills out of the box it’s supposed to belong to.

Both have acquired lives of their own beyond the pages they were originally placed on and are reaching hundreds of thousands of new viewers by virtue of nothing more than their creativity.

/Patrick Collister/