Wild ADimals

Watch how a passionate storyteller, word whore, and marketer discovers ads in the wild, that are themselves rather wild and untamed, and attempts to civilize them.

[wildadimals]

I would say that's a failure in package design. Or a win... Depending on who you talk to.

[wildadimals]

Now THIS is some smart work. Props to Wendy's for making ads that look like the rest of trolling goodies we roam through on the internuts. Give me a good laugh, and make me feel like we're on the same team. Yeah, that makes sense.

[wildadimals]

All I have to say is, "know your place." I really, REALLY hate when lower brow, extraneous consumer goods, especially alcohol, push worldly and inspiring stories. You are selling product, NOT trying to change the world. And I personally consider it an abuse, affront, and insult to use stories of this magnitude for the purposes of selling drunken frivolity.

[wildadimals]

I love, love, LOVE, an iconic piece of advertising that requires no copy. (Yes, yes, I'm the rare copywriter who actually hates copy. No, I don't hate copy, but I value a good message over good copy). This is so beautiful, so smart, so engaging. It's not necessarily quick, but that's what's compelling. It takes a minute to understand what you are looking at, and in that minute, you get that pow reaction.

My only worry is that it might not resonate with younger audiences. I mean, do today's 20-and-unders (who very well could be an audience for this message) even know about this game? (The 23-yr-olds in my office (an N of 3) say, yes THEY know it, but they too doubt their younger counterparts would). Food for thought, I guess.

[wildadimals]

At Sprint, Everything's Important - "Totes McGotes" Commercial

[wildadimals]

The 60's called and they want their ad back. This thing is like one of those pictures they used to put in a Highlights magazine (remember those? Ah the good old days!) where you had to look for all the mistakes hidden in the picture. I can't even begin to count the ways in which this is a testament to design failure. 1. Now I know I've only taken one design class in my career, but I can still say that a little copy/art integration would have been welcome. 2. Who in the hell is reading all that? Yes I see that it is a pharma ad, which automatically adds a level of suckiness to the whole experience, but this is an example of not even TRYING to write a compelling an succinct story within the means of the brief. 3. Personal grievance, but the serif has GOT to go. 4. Lastly, those pastels and call out bubbles add just the right amount of retro chic that I could almost think the decision was a conscious one...almost. Got anything else to add? Is Waldo missing his hat somewhere? P.S. I REALLY hate passive-toned CTAs.

[wildadimals]

Wait, what? You know those annoying Facebook ads we've been having to deal with lately? The ones that start hitting you with ads AFTER you just bought something? And you want to scream at them, "You're doing it wrong!"? Well this seems to be a chip off that same block. A person who clicks on a link to learn about the movie "5 Broken Cameras" is typically a person who is pro-Palestine. You're kind of hitting the wrong audience by pushing a "Learn Hebrew" ad on them. Just sayin'...

[wildadimals]

This is less an advertising gripe, and more a design gripe, but still valid. I've always been a stickler for consistency, and the devil is in the details. The team who created these book covers obviously worked diligently to create a seamless image across the spines of this trilogy, but they didn't care too much to create alignment between its copy elements. And what's more, it looks like they made a weak attempt at alignment in the first two and somehow gave up on the third. I'm not sure how that happens, since they obviously had to be designed together in order to execute this vision. So how did the header and footer get placed on totally different baselines from the other two? Why is the title card not running edge to edge like the other two? And this on the basis that the other two are aligned to each other, which they are not. What makes this truly problematic in a design like this is that it INVITES people to examine the details, to look closely and say, "wow they really did create one perfect image across 3 spines." If you are going to invite that kind of close inspection, every single element in that view needs to be pitch perfect. And frankly, hodgepodge title cards and footers really destroy the intrigue of it all.

[wildadimals]

This one is admittedly older, but I've been meaning to comment on this for a while now. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture the image in real time that I wanted, but you'll understand why based on my grievance posting this.

I believe this is a great piece of creative. It's simple and evocative. And the imagery is just whacky enough to force you to take a closer look.

Where I have a problem is seeing this ad plastered across an NJ Transit bus. Is it really that logical to put an ad promoting SAFE DRIVING in a place where it will be seen by DRIVERS on a HIGHWAY!? It's like the creatives were told to promote safe driving, and the media people were told to promote rubber necking and tailgating. You can understand I wasn't able to grab the picture while sailing up the New Jersey Turnpike.

[wildadimals]

My apologies for this being superbly blurry. This was a billboard I caught walking down 8th Ave in midtown Manhattan. It reads, "GIST doesn't make me rare...my smile does."

I've found so many things wrong with this, but after visiting the site in the CTA, therare13.com, I've decided to narrow down my argument. The campaign, as showcased by the site's video, in and of itself, is actually pretty clever. So where I take fault in is two things: 1. a media strategy based solely on a mindlessly large budget; 2. a failure on the part of the writer to write to the medium.

A billboard in NY, even a small one, is absurdly expensive. And this company decided they would like to invest that money on a RARE condition. Being that it is RARE, not only will most people looking at this ad not know what GIST is, but my best bet is they won't even know that this is a pharma ad! (Anyone care to consider that gist is actually a word?!) This is just an example of a big budget coming smack in the face with the glamorous thought of a "New York Billboard."

And if you watch the video on the site, you'll understand that their campaign is around the fact the GIST--a stomach cancer apparently--is not nearly as rare as statistics would like you to believe, and that 13 people a day get diagnosed with it, hence the Rare 13. This is clever. That cleverness is not showcased on this billboard. This writer (and I will disclaimer that the writer may have had some great ideas that got shut down along the way, but I'm just going to use the writer as the scapegoat for these purposes) didn't seem to take the time to consider the audience that will be seeing this. That, really, most people looking at this will not know what GIST is. And they will not get the message that "GIST is not as rare as you would think..." Why would anyone care about the fact that some thing called GIST doesn't make some lady on a bike rare, but rather that her smile does?? Okay? And?

A billboard like this should slap a person in the face and ask them to question what they know. For starters, how about, "Do you know what GIST is? You should." Or, "More people get diagnosed with GIST per day than [some more well-known thing]. Maybe it's not that rare..." Again, the bigger problem is that a condition and campaign like this has no place on a NY billboard, but if it has to be there, let's at least talk to the people who would be looking at it, not ourselves.

And on a side note, they also blew their budget on a fancy-looking website that has glitches that cover up the headline and slows down your computer. Whoop.

[wildadimals]

I'm going to keep the inaugural post of Wild ADimals straightforward. Simply put, don't copy. It ain't cool. And it never works as well. Here we see how SOAP.com completely knocked K-Mart's super smart "Big Gas Savings" and "Ship my Pants" campaign with it's weaker little brother. The headlines read: "One fast motherhelper" and "holy ship." You can also find such gems as "Say no to drug...stores" and the epically lame, "Get stuff done."