Crap Advertising

Brendan Leary wrote in the latest Saturday Star of what a fine job The Jupiter Drawing Room have done with their new ABSA account. Errr...no. I bought both the English and Afrikaans Sunday papers this weekend, and only once I came to face to face with what can only be described as a fullpage 'footsun' in the second newspaper, did I bother to look at what it was about. It took a while to spot the Absa logo, and I certainly didn't bother to read the loud scrawl radiating around the page. It doesn't work because it is too loud, too overwhelming, too confusing and worst: what the hell does a foot of many colors say about a bank?

I tested this theory by holding up the page and saying, "What do you think this is about?" Long blank look. "Okay, at least tell me what brand this is promoting." Long blank look. Eventually I had to say: "Errr...the logo is at the bottom..."
"Absa?" A surprised, somewhat disgusted, very confused look. And that, your honor, concludes my opening argument.

I don't doubt that TJDR is creative. I do doubt though that they particularly care about selling more stuff. They're often guilty of what I call 'self-conscious' advertising. The execution is great, award winning. But do you even remember the product all the glitz and glamour is for? And therein, lies the rub. In this case, it chafes.

I believe we are in for a new era in advertising. The functional characteristics of a thing are going to be endorsed (as we did once upon a time) and reliance on the touchy feely, on image, and defining yourself through a brand or product, will be important, but less important. But wait, there's more.

Red Bull needs to rethink their latest ad, featuring a bunch of rowers. Okay so it gives you physical 'vitality' as well as mental vitality, and the latter is illustrated because the guy who offered Red Bull to the rival team only offered it to rowers on one side. Brilliant? Well, if Red Bull made you so smart how come 5 or so oarsmen rowed in a circle? How come having consumed Red Bull they didn't come up with some sort of clever solution? See, the logic breaks down. Redo from start.

Final gripe is with a VW radio commercial. It's amusing. It features a chick thinking of different ways to break up with her boyfriend, and then grosses him out in the end with a finger trick. Then it makes a huge leap. From the boyfriend/girlfriend thing it moves to cars, and that in life we have a lot of choices. It took a while for me to realise this commercial was to advertise VW, and I still haven't made the link between the concept 'choice' and whatever cars they were advertising.

Sometimes a little bit more boring is a lot more effective. Think about how effective 94.7's Bucks or the Box is. Incredibly simple, incredibly effective.

SASOL Springbok AD (TJDR VIDEO)

AdAwards

Spot on advertising means tickling the consumer in the right place

When you’re in an advertising agency it’s easy to feel pressured into thinking up a light storm of entertaining and groundbreaking marketing. But all that’s needed is a touch of magic, a tickle of inspiration in the right place.

Rocks

The Jupiter Drawing Room is very good at instinctual communication that scratches exactly where it itches. They’ve very accurately portrayed this with SASOL, and increasingly SASOL is becoming a heroic brand for South Africa.

They’ve cleverly used the platform of SASOL’s Springbok sponsorship to build and grow a public sense of pride in the brand. (Remember green muscles Boks in the 300/Hulk SASOL campaign?)

SASOL has a crucial role to play in South Africa’s energy future, and has recently announced massive profits once again.

Because SASOL is a powerhouse of ingenuity (a world leader in its field) linking this best feature to a more generalized sense of ‘being imaginative’ and ‘what if’ is really effective. This is tickling the consumer where it counts, and still being congruent to what the brand really stands for.

Tickling the consumer, but being irrelevant (the Wimpy ad comes to mind) to the brand, dilutes the message.

The Jupiter Drawing Room did the same on their MTN campaign. They knew the message was inherently: MTN = yellow. In this sense it was a powerful campaign, but I would suggest taking it one step forward: what does yellow mean? Beyong community, yellow symbolizes…?

Another commercial that deserves kudos is the Pepsi ad that takes on the challenge from Cokes ‘world-inside-a-vending machine’. Pepsi responds with a hard and rebellious spoof, showing their vending machine smashing through the various levels of a building. Good, but perhaps a copycat version of the Motorola Razr ad (based on the same floor crashing theme).

A radio ad that does a brilliant reverse psychology tickle is Twin Savers. A man orders food from a Indian restaurant asking for the hottest curry possible (in order to spend as much time as possible on the toilet, using Twin Savers toilet paper). Meanwhile, God is like TwinSavers: he forgets you not.

Huh?

First National Bank is a brand I love to hate, and their ugly green/orange/purple advertising is always open to abuse. Their TV ad featuring a bank customer in various situations with a bank security guard in tow (bizarrely carrying around a security scanner everywhere they go) is an example of a tickler that misses the spot completely.

How does having a nuisance security guard (or car guard or anyone else) following you around say anything good about the brand?

Rubbish

The Tempo ‘Power Your Beat’ ad almost gets it right. The play on the word makes sense, but the actual music doesn’t have a discernible tempo, even after the tenth listen.

The various street sounds do organize into some sort of structured noise, but not enough. No one would want to download the Tempo advertising jingle as a ringtone. And this ought to be the goal; to musically produce a bit of viral song and dance around the Temp theme. The current Tempo ad falls far short of this goal.