Pistachios, pistachios, pistachios…the Wonderful Pisatachios Super Bowl
spot won the night. If you haven't seen it... click here
For a while now, I have been working with agencies and watching TV
wondering if our industry is truly creative or is it simply following a set of
rules laid down by our advertising forefathers. There is plenty of work that is incredibly creative but sometimes I feel like the work is being bogged down with outdated rules. The two rules that I question the most are branding colors and calls to
action. The pistachio ad brilliantly
lampooned both creative laws in two, perfect 15 second spots.
Regarding branding colors, I get that you can own a color by constantly
reinforcing it. Coke owns red, T-mobile
probably owns pink. But if you are not
spending buckets full of money, it can look ridiculous. The first Redds Apple Ale spot that I saw featured
a guy in a red (really more like watermelon) colored hoodie. I am guessing that they had to custom make
that hoodie because no one where a watermelon colored hoodie. I watched the spot and immediately thought
that the agency was selling the client on the fact that the watermelon colored
hoodie was what branded the spot.
Perhaps if they spend another four-hundred or five-hundred million
dollars per year, for the next ten years, they will be the second most popular
drink trying to own red. It is as if the
client and agency somehow felt that plastering a spot with red and spending a
few million dollars was going to get it done.
I understand that they had to make the hoodie some color, so why not
make it red. But all I was left with was the
thought “what kind of tool wears a watermelon colored hoodie. I wouldn't want to drink the beer he drinks.”
The next rule of creative that I am not sure applies anymore
is the call to action. I imagine for direct
response work it is a good idea. But
saying talk to your doctor about Crestor doesn’t make much sense to me. A call to action implies taking action
now. Unless I am seeing this spot in a doctor’s
office, I am not going to speak to him now about Crestor, so what is the point of
the call to action. Calling GEICO now,
makes sense. Telling me to pick up a box
of Monkey-Chow next time I am at the grocery store, doesn’t make sense. There is too much time between the call and
the action.
I understand that there are tons of people and issues
influencing the creative work. Let’s
just consider which rules we want to keep and which we want to eliminate. Once we are no longer bound by so many
creative shackles, perhaps we can create new best practices that new generations of
ad folks will have to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment