I’ve noticed a trend in advertising over the past few years: A lot of agencies are going to a lot of trouble to create "advertising that doesn’t look like advertising."
What a wonderful idea. Let’s create advertising that looks different. Advertising that people are actually going to want to see. I know: Let’s make commercials that look like a home video of my nephew Howie’s bar mitzvah.
Am I exaggerating here? No. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the work that’s entered in—and winning—a lot of advertising shows.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, "But, Brian, if it’s winning awards, it must be good work."
Wrong. If it’s winning awards, it’s probably really strong conceptually. But I’m not talking about concept here. I’m talking about execution. And I contend that a lot of really strong concepts are hobbled by inadequate executions, simply because the people who come up with them are more concerned with making them look different than with making them look right.
Let me explain something: Different does not equal better. Different equals different.
Okay, back off. Don’t jump down my throat. I am not advocating creating advertising that looks exactly like every other ad out there. What I’m saying is that what makes an ad different needs to be relevant to the concept.
Unless there’s a reason to be different, all you’re accomplishing when you make something different is that you’re making it different.
Let me put that another way. If all you try to do executionally is make your ad not look like an ad, one of two things is going to happen: Either you’re going to fail, or you’re going to succeed.
If you fail, your ad will look like an ad, only an ad that’s trying not to look like an ad. So all you’ve done is draw attention to the execution of the idea, and because the execution isn’t relevant to the concept, by definition you’re drawing attention away from the concept. If your concept is strong, why would you want to do that?
If you succeed, your ad won’t look like an ad. Which means that people are going to look at it and think it’s something else. Like maybe a bar mitzvah video. Is that better than having them think they’re looking at an ad?
Well, yes. Unless they might actually be interested in the information you’re disseminating.
"But wait a minute," you say. "People have walls up. They’re resistant to advertising. We have to do something to get past that, so that they’ll allow us to deliver our very compelling message."
Right.
Remember the last time you got a spam e-mail that promised, in the subject line, "an answer to your question"? If you’re anything like me, it was—let me see—14 minutes ago. That’s an ad, masquerading as a personal message.
When I get one of those, I don’t even open it. It goes straight into the trash.
Every once in a while one of those mass e-mails will slip through my radar. I’ll open it up, thinking that maybe I’m actually hearing from a long-lost high school friend or something. And when I find out it’s from a porn site, how do I feel?
Okay, bad example.
When I find out it’s from a site hawking the ability to find anything about anyone. …
Oops. Another bad example.
When I find out it’s from …
You know what? Never mind. Maybe we ought to make ads that look like spam.
