Our brain loves lists and there are 8 reasons for it, according to New Yorker. Towards the end of every year, we see ‘best of’ lists across categories. Advertising is highly subjective – what may be liked by one could be hated by another. But I guess most of the ads in my picks of best ad campaigns of 2020 would be universally liked. Here are some more ads (in no particular order) which were…
It’s that time of the year when ‘best of’ lists are made. I have set out to share my picks of top creative ads of 2020. The first part of the list includes ads from Burger King, WhatsApp and more. Here’s the 2nd instalment of the list: Nike: you can’t stop us In popular culture, substance is always preferred over style. A well-designed magazine may help in breaking the clutter in news stands (it was…
2020 has been a terrible year in many ways for us all. Amidst the chaos and turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the bad news all around, some ads managed to break through the clutter. As with all effective ads, they made us ‘feel’ something – brought a smile on our faces, got us all teared up or simply made us feel good. Here is a compilation of compelling creative ads of 2020 (in…
Every week (OK, almost every week) I try to share a compilation of clutter-breaking creative ads. This week, I came across couple of funny ads for Amazon Alexa and some compelling ads for Nike, McDonald’s and more. Amazon Alexa: ‘Ironing’ and ‘Opera’ Among the basics of advertising is to figure out the difference between ‘feature’ and ‘benefit’. As I have said in an earlier post, effective ads bring alive the benefit of a feature. Sometimes,…
Do brands and enterprises need tag lines? As with most questions pertaining to marketing & advertising, the precise answer would be ‘it depends’. The death of the tag line has been written about in trade portals for years now. The thinking behind this approach could be the need for ‘flexible branding’ – in which they present different identities to express their range or a targeted brand strategy, in which they target specific brand messages to…
A new ad from Nike – ‘You can’t stop us’ released a couple of days ago has gone viral. At the time of writing it had 31mn views on Twitter and 30mn views on YouTube. When you add its views and shares on other social media platforms it can surely be counted as a monster hit. What’s notable is that as with truly popular ads, the creative was not just discussed or commented upon by…
The dictionary defines creativity as ‘the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness’. It also defines ‘art’ as ‘works produced by human creative skill and imagination’. We usually considers literature, paintings and extraordinary writing or architecture as ‘works of art’. In the world of advertising, creative talent – writers, art directors and designers were considered to be a separate ‘department’. They were responsible for generating ideas and creative assets such as, print ads, TV scripts, hoarding designs, logos and…
I didn’t know who Colin Kaepernick was until a few days ago. Blame it on my lack of interest beyond cricket. I saw the print version on social media with the line ‘Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything’. I did not immediately connect with with Nike’s long running ‘Just Do It’ theme. Since I did not know the context, I simply saw it as a nicely crafted line. I then read up…
Every day we are exposed to thousands of commercial messages from brands both in traditional and new media. Most of such messaging goes unnoticed with only a handful catching our attention. Here are a few which caught my eye this week: Nike’s Breaking 2, Marks & Spencer’s #SpendItWell and a few more. 1. Nike: Breaking 2 Nike has set the bar high when it comes to marketing and usage of new media. The ‘Just Do…
An interesting discussion with Lakshmanan Narayan, CEO and co-founder of Unmetric in this week’s Storybard, touched upon the topic of brands sponsoring global events. Specifically, the issue was about how with global events like FIFA World Cup, brands not associated with the event in an official capacity as sponsors are gaining mileage through through brand content in social media. So it begs the question, ‘do brands have to be sponsors anymore?’ Brands stealing thunder from…