Taking white kids from middle class families and putting them on briefs – advertising to kids from the inner city is a bit absurd. Yet that is pretty much the state of the advertising industry and it needs to change. Not just changing the racial mix in agencies but changing the type of people that make up those agencies – can we blow apart the two team art director/copywriter model? Can we bring diversity of all sorts into advertising?
These are really big industry wide questions that are not going to be solved overnight – but I’m really interested that Dan Wieden has put the point across and also that Platform has been created by W+K London to try and find new talent from all walks of life. Starting from September, upto 12 lucky people will work across real world communication problems and solve these with a whatever approach they think can work.
Architects could be clashing with poets – electronics tinkerers forming creative partnerships with sculptors – everyone hands on – learning by doing.
All of these inventive people around an agency could give it an edge in moving into new territories – Perhaps products could be evolved and produced, buildings designed and built – Businesses changed and flipped upside down from their core.
William Bernbach whom I believe was the first to combine art directors & copywriters said this -
A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.
So if we need to change the mix of the creative team so we can do things, then who needs to be in this team?
How many sites have we seen where you can upload your face and it probably dances around the screen. I’m guessing – a lot. How many of them have been great campaigns or at least had some reasoning? Probably one or two – tops.
So uploading your face is so 2008 and augmented reality is so 2009. Again just thinking how many great augmented reality campaigns are out there? – I’ve seen plenty of 3D cars and not much else, so the question is – are we as an industry fixated on technique and technology?
I would answer that question with a resounding ‘yes’ – A lot of agencies need to be seen as bleeding edge so they can claim the scalp that they were the first to use that tech. However, trying to retro-fit a piece of technology into a creative idea is hard – damn hard. Trying to do this and also hit the double whammy of wrapping it in a great insight or business requirement is asking the near impossible.
So whats the answer? Don’t do it?
Absolutely no – Here is the thing. Interactive advertising doesn’t build brands – It doesn’t come up with great strap lines – It doesn’t really exist (!) for long. And thats the point of it. It can just be a bit of fun – so don’t take it to seriously and enjoy it for what it is – a two minute distraction that actually involves people interacting with your brand and not – ‘the big idea’.
The Schweppes – Experience Matters campaign has been running for a few weeks now and was intrigued to see a banner ad for the campaign – The call to action was clear – see more comics at schyouknowwho.com. Sure I thought – I might actually understand what this campaign is about if I visit an experience.
I arrive at what looks like a wordpress blog – with two images. Thats it. Was I expecting an all singing all dancing experience? Not really – But I was expecting to ‘see more comics’ or at least have some level of engagement.
All that media money spent on banner advertising to get me to see two press ads – Not a great user experience in my opinion. I would be really interesting to know if the digital agency (?) or the advertising agency agreed to this strategy.
The wonderful British Gas ‘Planet Home’ advert directed by Guilherme Marcondes is great. It is lovingly crafted and makes me forget that British Gas are not a bunch of money grabbing bastards by selling me their rapidly dwindling supply of natural gas but in fact very very nice people – so nice infact they are putting wind farms on other planets and abusing those instead – hurrah.
What struck me though was just how the ad resembled a certain italian plumbers adventures in the utterly brilliant ‘Super Mario Galaxy’. Probably a total coincidence but it was quite interesting to think there was some influence there. Check the pics.
Interactive installation work is really becoming really interesting of late as more brands commision work and more design studios are born out of the frustration of working in one medium – really blurring the lines between art/architecture/design/interaction. A great way to introduce yourself to this world is with the upcoming Kinetica Art Fair.
Kinetica Art Fair is developed by Kinetica Museum in partnership with P3 and supported by the Contemporary Art Society.
More than 25 galleries and organisations specialising in kinetic, electronic and new media art are taking part with over 150 exhibiting artists. The Fair will be like no other with living, moving, speaking and performing art.
The Fair provides unparalleled opportunities for the public and collectors alike to view and buy work from this thriving international movement and to participate in the programme of talks, workshops and performances.
It’s on from friday 27th -> monday 2nd in London town and the lineup of speakers and performances looks great.
I seriously love the Mr Strings site. Everything is just a joy from the start – There are no instructions to guide through moulding your little avatar, just wacky sounds and a lovely playful interaction. Your little character whizzes into this little world where you can play with little games.
The art direction and sound direction are gorgeous and the level of detail in each screen is beautifully crafted. They did such a great job with the four screens it is a real shame the world wasn’t bigger or there was more of a level of interaction in this world.
A few small criticisms – Some of the games are quite hard to find but I can understand they wanted people to get the enjoyment from exploring. Also there are other little avatars moving in the world and I didn’t understand if these were controlled by other visitors to the site or not – Some interaction with these other avatars would have been great.
My last comment is on the lack of a ‘take-out’ from the site. I created this gorgeous little avatar and he had no way to burst out from the site – No ability to save as a wallpaper (mobile would be been great) – No way to share to a friend as perhaps a little widget or even an email. I hope they add these sorts of features to the site and more screens as right now I have no reason to revisit. They are missing a trick here but overall a really wonderful experience and one that is so subtle to selling product that I enjoyed the ‘product’ more.
Ok you see a stella artois advert (4% campaign which has been running for weeks) and your curious enough to visit the stella artois website. What you get is a un skippable christmas film in a website with a hidden navigation (you have to click on some obscure box icon). You are forced to watch this amazingly – Then when it is finished you can then click through to the main stell artois site – Which I add doesn’t have any information on the 4% product.
It is an interactive installation in our office window where your face gets motion tracked in realtime onto one of 12 slightly bizarre xmas characters. The website then lets you find your face and create a personal christmas card around it.
The face tracking system was written by Joel Gethin Lewis (ex UVA) and written in open frameworks. The behind the scenes system is actually very funny to watch as you see peoples reactions to the window. Overall it is a very simple system which I’m really proud to have helped bring together. Come on down and have a go.
