Between bookmarked sites, Twitter and RSS feeds which showcase advertising, I come across many new creative ideas every week. As with advertising in real life, only a handful are memorable. Here are my picks for the week ending 10th June, 2016: Air Canada, Gillette and more.
Air Canada: Test Drive Canada
A lot of Americans said, ‘If Trump wins, I am moving to Canada’, jokingly or otherwise. There’s even a site monitoring Twitter mentions for such pleas. In a clever marketing move, Air Canada has created a digital film asking Americans to ‘test drive’ Canada, tongue firmly in cheek of course.
Agency: JWT, Canada
OutOfHoMedia: ad block
The advertising & marketing industry is grappling with the problem of adblockers which have become ubiquitous. Some say it is wrong on the part of consumers to block ads thereby depriving publishers of an income source. But the advertising & publishing industry is part of problem since they generally don’t place a premium on user experience and cram any screen with intrusive ads. The problem is real – use of adblockers has risen 16% while it has gone up by 94% on mobile. An out of home ad company in Denmark made great use of this topic by creating an ad which dramatises the advantage of an outdoor ad.
Agency: Co+, Copenhagen, Denmark. Via.
Gillette: Ask Dad
As Father’s Day ads go this one is different. Usually brands ride piggyback on calendar events such as Mother’s Day with tactical ads with some tenuous link to the brand. Gillete’s new ‘stunt’ set up 3 teenagers with questions they pose on the internet only to have their dads give better answers.
Agency: Grey
I thought the insight was good (based on real human behaviour) but the execution follows the typical format of having just a bunch of people go through a ‘surprise’ without really impacting a large number of people in terms of change in behavior.
Anything else? Ah, perhaps the Nike’s 5-minute film in which Cristiano Ronaldo swaps lives with a kid.
