What Does It All Mean?
A live ad that generated huge coverage here and lots of brickbats. I felt short-changed because regardless of the skill involved I was expecting a much bigger team of sky-divers simultaneously spelling out the Honda name. I then started wondering why the chutes weren't branded so as to reinforce the sponsor in my mind in the frankly boring last thirty seconds.
Now, many people will rightly point to the undeniable expanse of free media that resulted from this "event" , but there's clearly a danger that such a media cicrus leads to the heinous sin of under-delivering. If I'm being this picky, does that mean it's a bad ad? Does it mean that I wasn't wowed by something that had been over-promised. Is it all about the advertising industry and not much about Honda?
Addendum: Couldn't they have spelled out Honda with canopies along these lines?
posted by john dodds @ 3:04 PM
4 Comments:
The marketing and communication industry is so obsessed with 'future' that they often end up doing things for their own ego than for the commercial value of the client they are working for.
I can just about see how this ad [and that's all it is] works for the Honda 'Dreams' positioning - but I'd love to know what the specific client brief was, because this feels more a 'brand' execution than for a specific product.
I'm all for pushing boundaries, but too many in the industry seem to do it for the sake of doing it - and while it does often generate tons of free media, that doesn't equate to commercial or corporate success.
But hey, I still think Fallon's Cadbury's ads are over-rated so what do I know - especially as everyone I meet tells me I'm obviously mad and blind for not recognising their brilliance.
For me the primary issue is that it could have all gone wrong. Which is exactly the opposite of ad frequency. Is it brilliant creatively? Probably not. Is it pushing the envelope. Yes.
Rob - the initial idea for a "live" ad apparently came from Channel 4 creative, so the brief followed that I'm guessing - though, to be fair, it was the launch point of a larger campaign that will follow next week.
Charles - point taken, but in the event of bad weather preventing the jump, they had already filmed "one they'd one earlier" to be broadcast in the place grey skies. Whether they'd have played that into the coverage if something had gone wrong is perhaps what we call a moot point.
Is a Moot point something a Cow does under water?
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