Smirnoff

The digeratii say the great thing about the internet is it encourages
Everybody to be creative. Make a video and post it on YouTube and
you too can become a web-star for a day or two. Now sites like
revver.com are telling Everybody, if your vid is a corker, we’ll share
the advertising revenue from your page fifty/fifty. Be creative and
kerchinggg!



Everybody has recently made a commercial for Doritos that ran in
the middle of the Superbowl. She also made a commercial for Dove
that ran in the first break of the Oscars. The trouble with
Everybody is that in 99.9% of cases, he (and she) is utterly,
unredeemably talentless. Most of the home-made movies on
YouTube are dross.

It hasn’t put off the Department of Transport, though. Rather than
ask an agency to help them create noticeable advertising to warn
kids to look out when they cross the road, they’ve gone to a bunch
of teenagers. One has written an ad showing the ghosts of kids who
didn’t make it. Ghosts? Gosh. How original. Well, back in the 18th
century, maybe. Certainly something of a cliché by 1994 when the
DoT spent £2.5m on the same idea.

It’s mad. People don’t much like advertising at the best of times so
why serve them up commercials that are even tackier than the ones
the professionals make? It takes ten years at least for the best
people in the best agencies to acquire their skills.

Having the idea is only half the battle. Then it has to be executed in
such a way it impresses itself indelibly on the mind of the viewer.
Just to show you what adland’s finest can do, when encouraged to
do their best by those few clients who value their agencies, here’s a
Smirnoff commercial.

Everybody could not do this. Not ever.

/Patrick Collister/