rAd

Henry Fortier. Ad fiend. Procuring the things that make me tick. Trying to connect the dots + see the big picture. It's all rAd.

[fortierad-blog]

A quote from Juliet Zulu

"You folks over there," said Max, "you say you call yourselves creatives, is that what you're telling me? And the work you do, you call that the creative, is that what you said?" Jim said that was correct. "And I suppose you think of yourselves as pretty creative over there, I bet."

"I suppose so," said Jim, wondering what Max was driving at.

"And the work you do, you probably think that's pretty creative work."

What are you asking me, Uncle Max?"

"Well, if all that's true," said the old man, "that would make you creative creatives creating creative creative." There was silence as Max allowed Jim to take this in. "And that right there," he concluded, "...That's a use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate."

With that, Max hung up.

Excerpt from Then We Came to the End 

By Joshua Ferris

[wcpainter-blog]

I wanted to come back to Tim and Eric’s marketing scheme for their Billion Dollar Movie (B$M). I wanted to focus on the most interesting part of their campaign, the Billion Dollar Movie Pledge. This was a pledge created by Tim and Eric that asked fans to see B$M if there was an offering theater...

[eradicate-erase-blog]

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25. Takeaways

After spending countless hours dissecting commercials, ad campaigns, and articles on advertising, I’ve realized a few things about the ad industry. By acknowledging failings and rewarding quality, the ad industry can change for the better. Here are a few key points I’ve picked up during this process.

Be Smart

Make sure people want to be a part of your work. Do work that makes sense to your brand. Don’t insult anyone or anything: it’s a recipe for disaster. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Liquidity is Key

Be able to change your brand at the drop of a hat. Don’t be stuck in your ways, it makes you seem outdated. Accept mistakes and change them. Understand that we live in a culture of “now”. Mistakes are only mistakes if you don’t change them.

Relinquish Control to the User

Don’t ever try to control your customers. Do something cool and let them come to you. For internet marketing specifically, don’t ever force someone into viewing your ad. It doesn’t work and people will not respond well to their own lack of control.

Keep some Mystery in all of It

Don’t overblow an agenda. Don’t spell everything out for your customers right off the bat. Leave some room for personal discovery. If you pique a customer’s interest to the point where they now have the desire to discover more about a brand, you’ve succeeded.

Make it Immersive

Campaigns can’t just be about commercials, they have to have substance. Your brand doesn’t want to be cotton candy; your brand wants to be filet mignon. Have continuity throughout your commercials, websites, mobile apps, and social networks. Make it creative, and above all, make it fun.

[fortierad-blog]

24. Toxic Culture

I just read an article on adbusters.org by Micah White that discussed the mental consequences of today’s advertising.  Micah White wrote about the importance of viewing all advertising as a legitimate form of pollution.

White claims that we shouldn’t ever single out ads to criticize because that would be like “using napkins to clean up an oil spill.” So then is the majority of this blog useless dribble? White would probably say so, but I think he’s wrong. To completely disregard advertising or to put down the industry as a whole is elementary-minded. White goes on to mention philosopher Michel Serres, who wrote a book called Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? In this, Serres discusses the importance of acknowledging “soft pollutants” (logos, signs, images, and writings) as an equal threat to humanity as “hard pollutants” (garbage dumps, oil spills, liquid gases). Part of me acknowledges the problem of advertising as visual pollution, but part of me also wants to bash Serres for having such a ridiculous notion.

After thinking about his for a while, I realized that Serres has a point. While hard pollutants destroy the earth, soft pollutants destroy the mind. However, writing off the ad industry altogether would be unwise. Instead, one must invest in the ad industry. It must establish a more transparent identity that is accountable for its actions. Picking apart single ads is a good way to start, because when this is done, one gains insight into the things that are “pollution” and the things that aren’t. Once these boundaries are set, advertising can be a beautiful thing that enriches people’s lives.

You can read the article here.

[fortierad-blog]

23. Google Goggles

Ah, user experience (have I said that already?). Google Goggles is an app that analyzes pictures you take and spits out relevant information on the subject. This idea was implemented into five major brands, T-Mobile, Buick, Disney, Diageo, and Delta Airlines. As shown in the video, using Google Goggles on print ads allows the viewer to explore an immersive digital campaign akin to the print ad. It’s a really cool idea that gives users the power.

My favorite part about this, and I’ve stressed this before in other posts, is the importance of user control. Users have to power to immerse themselves in an ad when and if they want to. They aren’t forced into viewing or interacting with something. Personal discovery is what makes things special for users. Utilizing interactivity, mobile advertising and print ads is the trifecta. It represents how much digital culture has changed the advertising world. There used to be just print ads and Google Goggles makes these ads multidimensional.

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22. An Ad-less City

Holy shit. This is big. Gilberto Kassab, mayor of Sao Paulo, passed a law in 2006 that banned all public visual advertisements in the city. Kassab stated that visual pollution is as bad as air or noise pollution, and this act affirms his belief. What’s been really interesting though is the advertising revolution that has happened to replace the billboards, signs, and posters.

According to Lalai Luna, co-founder of an ad agency called Remix, this removal of advertisements has forced brands to reconsider their campaigns and improve their overall brand strategy. It has also forced companies to get creative with marketing. According to Luna, there’s been a huge increase in guerilla marketing and viral campaigns and people are starting to enjoy these ads in comparison to the overwhelming mass of ads that used to pollute the streets of Sao Paulo.

I’m astonished that this was able to happen in today’s day and age. To create a city without visual ads is monumental, and it seems to actually have a positive impact on advertising as a whole. However, even though it’s cool, I cannot see this happening in a major city in the United States. It’s too radical and too risky for our capitalistic society.

[fortierad-blog]

21. Selinah

Selinah is an ad created for The Topsy Foundation, as TED describes it, “a nonprofit focused on helping individuals infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.” This ad is made to show the profound effects of anti-retroviral medicine. The video counts down from 90 days showing a woman withering away to skin a bones and the final shot if of her taking a pill, only it’s in reverse. I really enjoyed this ad because it fooled me as the countdown was happening. I forgot the days were counting down because the woman would make movements that appeared to be happening forward in time. The outcome of this, for me, was a moment of revelation as the woman was shown removing a pill from her mouth as the video rewound. I can’t say this was the intention of Ogilvy Johannesburg, but it’s a great effect nonetheless.

I also noticed that the viewer is not supposed to know what’s happening for the majority of the commercial. This act of keeping the viewer “in the dark” for a period of time during a commercial is something we discussed while making our PSA’s for Gateway III. It creates interest in the product and outcome of the video. And once again, it seems to affirm the fact that briefness or vagueness has more of any impact than obvious and/or readily-apparent agendas.

View the spot here.

[fortierad-blog]

20. Peta Veggie-Love

Yikes, if you didn’t think Peta was desperate for attention before, you’re probably thinking it now.

Note that this commercial has production value. This isn’t some low budget GoDaddy-esque sex ploy… it’s a high budget GoDaddy-esque sex ploy.

Once again we see a brand resorting to debasing women to get their message across. To me, this message seems really backwards. Peta is willing to degrade women to make a point. What’s really fascinating is that the message is to not eat meat. The top rated YouTube comment for this ad pretty much tells it all: “Ok cool, not eating animals is more important than respecting human women… I think I got it.”

On top of this, the official Peta YouTube channel promoted this ad as “the video that was deemed too hot for Super Bowl XLIII”. The ad’s first tag on YouTube is “hot girls”. I think it’s fair to say that ads which blatantly allude to sex have become passé. There’s also no citation for their claim that vegetarians have better sex. It just doesn’t make any sense as a Peta ad.

[fortierad-blog]

19. The Future of Advertising

I recently stumbled upon an article by Joel Rubinson on Fast Company written in 2009 about the future of advertising. It piqued my interest because it gave a lot of accurate insight into where the market is heading right now. I feel like advertising has gone through a lot of changes in the past three years, and it’s evident that Rubinson was correct in a lot of his assumptions.

Rubinson claimed that mobile advertising is on the rise. While he’s right in the respect that people are transitioning into a mobile media plane of existence, he mentions that text messages are going to be an important medium of mobile advertising. I have yet to receive a text message advertisement, and thank goodness that’s the case. I don’t see text messaging as a viable way to advertise because of the intrusive nature of the medium. I don’t want Old Spice texting me, or any brand for that matter. This is on the same level as “Push Notifications” for the iPhone. If apps send me notifications while outside of that app, I get angry (besides apps like Words with Friends where it’s necessary). I just don’t think hindering functionality of people’s private devices, even if for just a moment, is a wise idea. This is along the same lines as full page advertisements on sites like ESPN that don’t let you navigate the page until you’ve viewed the ad or found the ridiculously hard to find “close” button.

Mobile marketing and advertising is definitely on the rise, but it still needs to allow control to the user. For being one of the most interactive advertising mediums out there, it doesn’t make sense that advertisements are relinquishing user control. Power to the people.

[fortierad-blog]

18. Skittles Touch: Cat

Ah, user experience. It’s a beautiful thing; especially when you want to interact with a product.

Skittles have had some crazy ads recently. Their “Taste the Rainbow” campaign has produced some off-the-wall spots that have thrown me for a loop. As I was investigating this atypical series of ads, I discovered an online campaign I was unaware of: Skittles Touch. This series of spots is dedicated to user interaction. At the beginning of each commercial, the viewer is prompted to put their finger on a Skittle on the computer screen. This Skittle interacts with the video in funny, cool, and creepy ways for each commercial. When your finger is placed on the Skittle, your finger becomes the focal point of the whole spot. The experience is awesome, and can only be executed through the internet.

Considering the current trends of the internet, I wanted to post a cat video. So here’s Skittles Touch: Cat

I can’t stress how cool this is. I can’t remember an ad campaign like this in recent memory. Since it came out in 2011, I’m pretty surprised I didn’t discover this sooner.

For me, the defining point in this ad is when the man dressed in a cat getup looks at the camera. That’s when the user reacts and becomes connected to the commercial. Notice how I said commercial, not brand.

I don’t want to eat skittles any more now than I did before discovering this ad campaign. The campaign is cool; it just doesn’t influence my Skittles purchasing habits.

[fortierad-blog]

17. TED Ads Worth Spreading: Chipotle

I was looking through TED videos the other day and found a page I was not expecting to see. For those of you who don’t know, TED is an organization that specializes in spreading knowledge to the world. This idea is implemented through conferences and events held around the world. Experts in almost every field you can think of speak at these events, which are captured on video and then put online. They have their own mobile app where you can access any video on their normal site, and it’s all FREE. I get a lot of inspiration from TED.

Anyways, I found a page on their site called “Ads Worth Spreading”. I discovered that TED holds an Ads Worth Spreading challenge that finds ads around the world that resonate with their views. Their idea is to compile 10 ads that inspire change. One that stood out to me is Chipotle’s “Back to the Start” ad that uses stop-motion animation to show the progression from local farmers, to multinational farming corporations, and back again. The 2-minute spot is stirring thanks to Willie Nelson’s cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”.

The success of this spot seems to rely on the feeling of sympathy for the animals. Even through this child-like medium of stop-motion animation, emotions ring true as the farmer realizes that this new technological way of farming is inhumane.

Overall it’s a great ad that makes you think twice about where your food comes from. And realize this comes from Chipotle. McDonald’s owns Chipotle. This initiative towards quality local ingredients is awesome for such a large brand.

[fortierad-blog]

16. bAds pt.6 "Salesgenie Pandas"

I really don't want to talk about bad ads anymore. I feel I've exhausted my creativity for describing these mini horror-shows. But I said it would be a six-part series, so alas, I must oblige. 

Salesgenie went full-racist on this one. Pandas in a bamboo furniture store with stereotypical Chinese accents. There isn't a second during this ad where I wasn't cringing.

This ad was made for the 2008 Super Bowl; a time in which companies were starting to make horrible TV spots on purpose to grab attention (GoDaddy, I'm looking at you). Salesgenie obviously went with the trend, somehow conjuring up this masterpiece.

It turns out Vin Gupta, Chief Executive of InfoUSA, the company that owns Salesgenie, pulled the ad off the airwaves because of its racial insensitivity. It's a good thing, too because I can't remember an ad that was this bad.

From a brand perspective, It seems like this trend actually succeeded by increasing  brand awareness. Everyone knows of GoDaddy because of their horrible ads, and according to Gupta, Salesgenie site visits went up after this ad hit the air. So, there's now more proof that it pays to be stupid (Cue Jon Hamm).

Thank goodness that's over.

[fortierad-blog]

15. Music In Advertising

The musical choice made in ads has a lot of effect on the experience one has with those ads. To me, it seems ad campaigns usually don't have a lot riding on their musical choice. Selecting something appropriate for the mood of the ad is important, but it seems the greater effect occurs with the artist whose work is used. In some ways, the feel of the ad normally unaffiliated with the musician rubs off on the musician's reputation when their music is used.

While snooping around my favorite new music site We Are Hunted, I discovered a song called Too Close by Alex Clare that I had heard before in a spot for Bing. I made this connection instantaneously, and what's interesting is that even though I liked the song, I didn't actually enjoy listening to it. There was always this thing in the back of my mind saying, "yeah, but it was in a commercial." It's reputation preceded itself. Here's the ad.

But then I started to think about other songs in commercials and what I've thought about them. One commercial came to mind immediately: the Lincoln MKZ commercial with John Slattery.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite ads of all time. And it's all because of the song. Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto Remix) by Massive Attack adds a sophisticated depth to Slattery's monologue that wouldn't be there otherwise. The song gives you a taste and leaves you wanting more, while the aforementioned Bing commercial doesn't do anything to leave the viewer wishing for more. It's a little more blatant and in-your-face, while this Lincoln commercial is more subtle.

However, the reason I enjoy this song and not the other is still mystery to me. I know it has something to do with the selections played in each commercial, but there's something else to it. I'll keep thinking.

[fortierad-blog]

14. Just Doin' It

Since 14 is the number I wear in soccer, primarily in homage to Thierry Henry, I want this post to be all about soccer. Specifically, the new Nike ad for Euro 2012. My goal for this post is to just name all of the professional players Nike got on board for this epic 3-minute spot. In order. Consider this a personal challenge.

Gregory van der Wiel

Wesley Sneijder

Hugo Lloris

Pep Guardiola

Kevin Strootman

Rafael van der Vaart

Mamadou Sakho

Yann M'Vila

Franck Ribery

Cristiano Ronaldo

Mesut Ozil

Mario Gotze

Chicharito Hernandez

LeBron James

Andres Iniesta

Gerard Pique

Laurent Blanc

Neymar

Alexandre Pato

Jack Wilshere

Epic. Just so epic.

[fortierad-blog]

13. bAds Pt.5 "Everything Made By GoDaddy"

GoDaddy is a web hosting company and internet domain service. If you haven't seen their commercials, it's probably a good thing.  But let's face it, few of us are that fortunate, and the truth is that for these 30-second atrocities, we just have to grin and bear it. 

This kind of epitomizes all of GoDaddy's ads: Throw out a bunch of attractive women in skimpy outfits and have men ogle at them. It's an advertising formula that's transcended time, but GoDaddy has made it into the most passe and chauvinistic thing possible.

First of all, there's NO premise. Just a couple guys being confronted by Danica Patrick and being led to "heaven", or some silly recreation of it. It doesn't enrich the viewers experience whatsoever. It might as well be a bad soft-core porno because overt sexuality is the only thing it has going for it.

GoDaddy needs to get creative. It doesn't need to be something crazy, just something other than this. I would have loved to sit in on the brainstorming session that created this catastrophe.

[fortierad-blog]

12. Street Ads: Where Creativity Takes Off

A well executed outdoor advertisement can make a huge impression. I think they're one of the best ways to show off a creative mind because of the number of mediums that can be used, the materials that can be used, and the way they interact with the customer.

After a little research, I found three street ads that really spoke to me.

First is the Tryvann Ski Resort ad in a bus stop in Oslo, Norway. 

(Courtesy mentalfloss.com)

This ad features a clear wall that dumps snow inside the glass every time it snows at Tryvann Ski Resort. The idea to have it snow in time with the ski park is one thing, but executing it is another thing entirely. This means there had to have been some connection to a network or server that would tell it when to snow. A little more complex than a basic poster ad. I'm curious to know if they recycled the snow particles. My guess is yes, because I doubt there was a tube that fed these flakes into the ad.

This McDonalds ad only appears at night. The reflection of the single arch creates the McDonalds logo. This, to me, is really smart because it appeals to me. I rarely eat fast food, except for late night inebriated binges. And since I'm likely to use public transportation during this time, the placement of this ad is wise.

Stop Child Abuse Now created this ad to make it look like a child was taped over by an ad. The company used mannequins to actually have physical objects to paint over. Powerful and effective.