I curate clutter-breaking creative ads and ideas that help address a business problem or opportunity (well, mostly). Occasionally I comment on the business aspects of the ad industry. Here are some ads which caught my eye this past week or so:
Uber Eats: almost almost anything
With a brand name like that, it is a tough ask to convey that the brand is more than just food delivery. A new campaign does it brilliantly by taking a self-deprecatory ‘there are some things we don’t deliver’ approach. The trick is in finding bizarre ‘connections’ to the what can be delivered and what cannot:
Period relief: Yes.
Period Romance: No.
Apes: No.
Grapes: Yes
Agency: Special
Apple: Mother Nature
Everything Apple does tends to have a polarising reaction. This is not a new phenomenon – it created legions of fans and critics right from the Mac vs PC days. Since the rise of 24×7 social media it feels as if both the adulation and criticism is a lot more these days. In 2020, Apple promised to bring its entire carbon footprint to net zero by 2030. As a corporate brand, how can a ‘status report’ be conveyed? The conventional way would have been to put out some statistics in a ‘corporate AV’ type film. Instead Apple chose to personify Mother Nature.
Personification is quite a common technique in advertising bringing alive ‘concepts’ like wind or things like pollen. In this case, I think it was a smart move to have Mother Nature visit Apple to ask for a status report. But I felt the film was a tad too long and when casting real professionals (as against models) results can be uneven as seen in Tim Cook trying to look tense and serious. Having said that some of the negative comments on the film (and I saw a lot of them on X) were needlessly harsh I thought.
Warburtons: mad about the bread
British brand Warburtons has featured its own real-life boss alongside a Hollywood star earlier too. A new spot features Samuel L Jackson as a stand-in ‘Mr.Warburton’ delivering dialogues the way does best. Could have been a tad shorter but a fun ad nevertheless.
Android: iPager
Samsung and Google have taken potshots at Apple for years now. The latest is from Android urging Apple to adopt Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging protocol. It’s a funny ad which paints Apple as outdated when it comes to messaging. But as The Verge points out:
RCS offers several improvements to messaging, including end-to-end encryption, read receipts, and the ability to share high-resolution photos and videos. iMessage offers similar features but only for messages sent between other iMessage users, resulting in Android users being seen as green message bubble nuisances in group messages — a real issue in countries like the US where more than half the population is using an iPhone.
Source
Agency: David, Miami
Specsavers: audiology services
While the brand name is Specsavers, they have an audio service too. A new campaign highlights the joy of ordinary sounds and being able to hear them.
Accompanying static media executions are simple yet intriguing.
Which one was your favourite? Do comment in.
