David Ogilvy did not like funny television commercials. He said, “No-one buys from a clown.”
He liked to construct rational messages which drew people in with charm and wit, yes, but which persuaded them to part with their hard-earned cash by giving darned good reasons for doing so.
The trouble is, human beings aren’t really rational.
Ask any husband about his wife. Or any wife about her husband.
People do things for reasons they often can’t explain even to themselves. Often this is because there has been a huge emotional response to a situation; to a person; hey, even to an advertising message.
Coca-Cola was the first mega-brand to tap into this when it got a United Nations of teenagers to sing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” way back in the 1970’s.
That was advertising with a big mushy heart.
But advertising can work just as effectively when it’s just plain funny.
A commercial that makes you laugh out loud is a brand saying, “We’d like you to like us. And we know we are interrupting you here so we’ll try to be as neighbourly about it as possible.”
So here are a couple of recent neighbourly ads. One from Doug Agency Toronto for the Canadian Short Film Festival and one from Forsman and Bodenfors, Stockholm, for Tele-2.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Spam on the pavement
We’ve seen more and more advertising take to the streets in recent years. Literally. Guerilla marketing, experiential communications, call it what you will, it is basically what happens when you create some sort of a branded stunt which, you hope, will get the punters to notice you, talk about you and maybe even try you.
Few products come as far down the scale of ‘important to my life’ than kitchen towel. Is it possible to establish a brand in such a low-interest category?
Brawny, another big US kitchen towel maker, had a damn good go with brawnyacademy.com, a series of reality TV documentaries which aired online. And now here’s Bounty trying to create a bit of a stir in New York with a giant cup of coffee spilled and in Los Angeles with a massive melting ice-lolly.
There’s a terrible danger that as agencies pursue what are now called ‘engagement strategies’, all they really do is make a nuisance of themselves.
Even if it’s intended to be playful and fun, if an idea isn’t both relevant and branded it is no more than street spam.
Anyone for tennis?
Technology isn’t just making possible completely new ways of communicating with people, but new ways of making brands become useful friends at the same time.
Take the iPhone app.
Kraft’s iFood application got into Apple’s Top 10 apps at the beginning of the year. Not bad, given that they were charging 99c for it in the USA.
Imagine that, people actually paying to interact with your brand?!
Okay, it’s true that the iPhone has 98% penetration among advertising creative directors and only 4% penetration of the total American mobile market but what Apple did was to force the other cellphone manufacturers into seeing that apps are going to be as important to their businesses going forward as texting was.
So here’s IBM and their agency Ogilvy London creating a stunning new app for visitors to this year’s Wimbledon to download to their mobiles.
As you wander through the crowds, you hear a noise. Point your phone and IBM Seer tells you why the crowd roared, what’s happening, who’s dropped a set etc.
Want to know where the toilets are? Seer shows you the way, helpfully telling you there’s a half-hour queue at the ladies’.
It pulls in all the twittering of the players and the pundits so you can join the debates. Is Federer on his last legs? (No) Has Andy Murray got what it takes? (No) Is this a really cool tool for tennis nuts to use, which will make them think both admiringly and fondly of Big Blue? (Yes)
Take the iPhone app.
Kraft’s iFood application got into Apple’s Top 10 apps at the beginning of the year. Not bad, given that they were charging 99c for it in the USA.
Imagine that, people actually paying to interact with your brand?!
Okay, it’s true that the iPhone has 98% penetration among advertising creative directors and only 4% penetration of the total American mobile market but what Apple did was to force the other cellphone manufacturers into seeing that apps are going to be as important to their businesses going forward as texting was.
So here’s IBM and their agency Ogilvy London creating a stunning new app for visitors to this year’s Wimbledon to download to their mobiles.
As you wander through the crowds, you hear a noise. Point your phone and IBM Seer tells you why the crowd roared, what’s happening, who’s dropped a set etc.
Want to know where the toilets are? Seer shows you the way, helpfully telling you there’s a half-hour queue at the ladies’.
It pulls in all the twittering of the players and the pundits so you can join the debates. Is Federer on his last legs? (No) Has Andy Murray got what it takes? (No) Is this a really cool tool for tennis nuts to use, which will make them think both admiringly and fondly of Big Blue? (Yes)
What do they know in Cannes?
TV may be fragmenting but it is still capable of delivering massive audiences. Sport, for instance, still gets millions of us tuning in for the big (and even the not-so-big) matches.
Rather than buy an expensive 30-second spot in any of the major Euro 2008 soccer games, what Robert Boisen did for Puma sportswear was to steal those audiences to sell Puma’s X-Ray collection.
Four top players – Mauro Camoranesi, Freddy Ljunberg, Nicholas Anelka and Alexander Frei – were given ‘tattoos’ to wear when they went out to play. Curiosity did the rest. Fans began to notice the tattoos of bones and started searching online for explanations.
Soon they found xrayplayers.com where they were able to get under the players’ skins, literally, finding out hidden stories about their lives and their careers.
Just as the X-Ray range was designed with the inside on the outside, so the idea was to do the same with the stars. Get to know them inside out. More than just a nice bit of brand building, the website was also transactional. You could click on any item the stars were wearing and get a price for it – and buy it online.
A cool idea that turned four players into mobile posters in front of an audience of at least 100 million at a fraction of the cost of a standard TV ad.
So why didn’t it win an award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week? It certainly deserved to.
Probably because, these days, to get a Gold at a major advertising show, your submission has to be a brilliant bit of advertising in its own right. At Cannes, you now have to provide a short video explaining the problem, the idea and giving some indication of the results.
Robert Boisen seem to have put all their effort into producing a great campaign for their client rather than into producing a great video for themselves.
Rather than buy an expensive 30-second spot in any of the major Euro 2008 soccer games, what Robert Boisen did for Puma sportswear was to steal those audiences to sell Puma’s X-Ray collection.
Four top players – Mauro Camoranesi, Freddy Ljunberg, Nicholas Anelka and Alexander Frei – were given ‘tattoos’ to wear when they went out to play. Curiosity did the rest. Fans began to notice the tattoos of bones and started searching online for explanations.
Soon they found xrayplayers.com where they were able to get under the players’ skins, literally, finding out hidden stories about their lives and their careers.
Just as the X-Ray range was designed with the inside on the outside, so the idea was to do the same with the stars. Get to know them inside out. More than just a nice bit of brand building, the website was also transactional. You could click on any item the stars were wearing and get a price for it – and buy it online.
A cool idea that turned four players into mobile posters in front of an audience of at least 100 million at a fraction of the cost of a standard TV ad.
So why didn’t it win an award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week? It certainly deserved to.
Probably because, these days, to get a Gold at a major advertising show, your submission has to be a brilliant bit of advertising in its own right. At Cannes, you now have to provide a short video explaining the problem, the idea and giving some indication of the results.
Robert Boisen seem to have put all their effort into producing a great campaign for their client rather than into producing a great video for themselves.
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