Throughout my career i have tried really hard to create advertising that has a legitimate shot of being seen out of choice by consumers. And that legitimately competes with the very best of what’s vying for consumers’ attention at any given time.
That is hard. And has always been hard. It’s hard to create things that really interesting. The path from idea to finished execution can be a tricky one. Ask the Weinstein Brothers!
And there is always a ton of new content to compete with. BUT…the good news is that 99% of it will be uninteresting dreck. So really you’re only competing with 1% of the new content. (I’m making the numbers up obviously, but you get the picture).
And of course the Internet is simultaneously the best thing and worst thing to ever happen to someone who traffics in attention. Lots of new ways for you to engage people. Lots of new ways for them to tune you out.
So it’s kind of sobering to read these statistics… (The audience for online video reached new heights last month, as over 158 million Americans streamed a total of 21.4 billion videos in July according to comScore — both new records for the medium)
I remember ad agencies being vilified in the early years of this decade for trying too hard to use old tricks (video) in the new and interactive medium of the internet. Well, guess what. Turns out video is still the most compelling and fastest way to tell a story. you just have to compete with 21.4 billion other videos.
Not sure if you’re familiar with the youtube phenomenon of unboxing. it’s where people film themselves opening products they’ve just bought and savoring the contents as they see them for the very first time. it’s a bit odd. It’s usually done with newly arrived electronic items, but i’ve seen unboxing videos of people “unboxing” new candy bars and describing the taste to an imagined audience.
This commercial/video for a Samsung phone is the first (and probably only) ad that references unboxing. And whoever did it, did a great job.
We posted our latest OfficeMax work to youtube last week and already we’ve gotten quite a reaction from both the media and the public. 800,000 hits on youtube thus far (We did a one-day youtube roadblock yesterday and are doing another tomorrow). And we got also got a bunch of positive reviews. Some were solicited by us and/or OfficeMax. Happily, most weren’t.
But, for me anyway, one of the coolest reactions has been from the commenters on youtube. youtube can be a double-edged sword. it’s a big audience but it’s a very tough and vocal crowd. and not one that’s not typically hospitable towards advertising. And our stuff is very obviously advertising. There’s no mystery. No complex experiential game involving plastic gnomes with GPS in their hats. It’s retail advertising.
amazingly, there have been several instances of youtubers attacking negative comments about our ads. It usually goes something like this:
COMMENTER 1: WAKE UP PEOPLE. These are not pranks, these are COMMERCIALS. Lame, lame, lame commercials.
COMMENTER2: stfu bitch you say that in everyoone of these vids, noone cares just stfu and go get laid for the first time
..etc…etc
Those are actual comments btw. It’s almost touching in its own uniquely youtubian way.
We’ve been asked to teach a class on viral video by our local ad portfolio school. Which is great. But how do you teach someone to create hits? We’ve had our share of hits, hence the invitation to teach the class.
If i was to say one thing, it would be this: get interested in what other people are interested in. you have to get outside yourself to create hits. you’re vying for people’s attention without the aid of paid media. so your idea better be real interesting to other people. everybody loves kittens, so start there!
there’s always an air of inevitability about hits. everyone can tell a hit when it’s a hit. but how do you know a hit before it becomes a hit? by knowing what people are interested in.
One thing I’ve noticed over my long-ish career is that the things that work best in advertising are frequently, upon analysis, what was staring us in the face in the first place. I’m going to mention Nike, so you can yawn now. YAAAAAWN!!! Anyhoo, Nike’s Just Do It idea is [...]
And please tell me that not a single dime was wasted “researching” this. And please tell me that no better ideas (such as NOT running this) were discarded in favor of telling me that it is now possible to purchase Miller Lite in a wide-mouth aluminum container (100% recyclable variety). This is the very opposite [...]
Legendary New York agency Cliff Freeman and partners just shuttered its doors. And anyone in creative advertising of a certain age shed a quiet tear. Cliff ruled American advertising like a giant in the 1990s. The 90s wasn’t our best decade. It was full of shite, to put it bluntly. [...]
