A note from a Junior.
Dear advertising industry,
I’m a junior creative, and I’m here to teach you one or two things about your job.
“Who does he think he is?” I hear you say. Well, I grew up during the last two decades, with a third parent called the Internet who’s been giving me access to a global culture and some liberal ideas. And because of this, I’m part of this enigmatic demographic that you like to refer using a certain “M” word.
For a few years now, you have been telling brands that in order to reach me, they need to make high quality content. That a beautifully crafted video with a bunch of celebrities and a kick ass soundtrack will somehow cut through the noise and pass my ad blockers. But of course, all those things have a cost. Fees fees fees. Bullshit.
What about you listen to me for once (that’s right, your target demographic has attitude) and I will tell you how to make me buy stuff.
The truth is, it’s not just about the ‘content’ you’re creating, it’s also about what you’re up against. When you try to push your ads in my feed, you are competing with the holiday pictures of my crush (and she’s pretty hot), that hilarious meme my best mate just tagged me in and a funny video of a dog dancing in a tutu.You literally stand no chance.
What you need to do is find a way to trick me, to create something that will bypass my anti-ad radar and, at best, make me want to interact with it.Here are a few examples:
#LikeMyAddiction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp81af73keA
It’s not a secret, our generation is very, very vain. The only thing we like more than posting pictures of ourselves online, is to look at good-looking people doing the same thing.That’s how Louise Delage, a 25 years old Parisian lady made it into my Instagram feed. Mine and 65,000 other people in a little over a month.Louise is really attractive, and she posts in the exact same way that most of my female friends do. Indeed, nothing differentiates her from them except one thing; in every picture she's holding an alcoholic beverage. Why?Because Louise ain’t real. She is an awareness campaign made up by BETC Paris for their client Addict Aide, an organisation fighting addictions amongst young people.After more than 150 posts, her last one revealed the hoax and got 160,000 views, generating more than 1,000 comments.So yea, she wasn’t just a pretty face (much to my dismay).
The Hunger Spotter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u3WBNiNgeA
“You’re not you when you’re hungry” is one of my favorite strategies of all time.It’s just a gold mine for brillant executions. This one in particular is a clever use of technology that invites itself into your device without wasting your time.To make this idea, Snickers partnered with Spotify to create The Hunger Spotter, an algorithm that analysed users’ historical and real-time music data to tell you when you were listening to songs that weren’t to your usual taste. It then targeted you with a personalised ad posing as an advert for a new song. But it was actually a Snickers ad encouraging us to stop being hungry and start listening to the music we usually listen to.And this was the first time I was glad for being too skint to afford premium.
L’Eau de Chris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=8t5H-9zqkBo
Last October for World Mental Health Day, Calm released a video starring Chris Hughes, one of the public’s favorite Love Island candidates. He appeared in an attempt to launch a new brand of bottled water, supposedly full of his own tears.The next day, l’Eau de Chris became Ludicrous and the campaign #DontBottleItUp was revealed.The main reason this worked so well was timing. Everyone was watching Love Island (but not me, I swear!) so it got shared everywhere. You might argue that Rankin must have been a tiny bit expensive, but the idea (and the pun) is so well thought out that it would have still worked if shot on an iPhone with a lesser known Chris in the spotlight.
Tomcat: Facebook “Not Live” event
We all know the classic teenage horror film stereotype: Dumb teenage blah’s go to a cabin in the blah where they get brutally murdered by a blah wielding a blah because blah blah blah. This campaign for Tomcat pest control was nothing short of brilliant because it made the mice the dumb teenagers and made you the horror film psycho with a fetish for excessive overkills. But the best thing was, it was all made with little puppets, which automatically makes it hilarious and literally cost nothing. The reason why this idea is not just another annoying ad is that it’s entertaining, interactive and simple. All you had to do was go on Facebook live and vote for which grizzly demise these mice would meet. Now that’s an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist we can all get on board with.
Switch clothes - Switch Account Guarantee
https://www.facebook.com/JungleVT/videos/1559834794158357/
But throwing examples of great work at your face and blaming you for doing things the way years of experience taught you how to would be too easy.
To prove that I’m not just ranting, here is a little example of something I’ve worked on. This was a brief I tackled at a viral content agency called Jungle creations.It started with a quick storyboard drawn in one afternoon. One WIP with the creative directors and two weeks later, it was out there.Yes, it’s just a clickbait video and I had creatives’ asking me who on earth would watch it.Well 4 million people apparently. Want to guess the budget?
So, dear industry, enough with the epic TV campaigns.There is no need to spend that much time and money on super big productions that I’m not going to watch, or forget in the following minute. I know it’s painful, if you can’t bill the client for a Marvel movie how are you supposed to turn a 3 week shoot in the South of France into a holiday? Well, you simply won’t need to, because you will go to bed knowing that the old dog’s got a few more tricks to teach us damn youngsters.
Oh and once you’ve saved up that extra cash, maybe you could do something clever with it. Like, I don’t know, hire me?
Give me shout at lapaczroman@gmail.com