George Tannenbaum on the future of advertising, the decline of the English Language and other frivolities. 100% jargon free. A Business Insider "Most Influential" blog.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The fake boobs of advertising.
A couple of weeks ago the spot posted above made the rounds on the masturbatory advertising "creativity" sites. It's creative. It's beautiful. It's epic.
It's also phony.
Last night, while the TV was on, I saw the "for public consumption" version of this commercial. Horror of horrors, it had copy, supers, a demo. It was commerce not art.
Take a look at the real spot below:
Fake. Real.
Boys and girls, as much as I'm loathe to admit it, commerce is what we do. Seriously, how much do you need to think about the mechanics of skin moisturizing?
I have been banging this drum for a while. Like our society is run by the military-industrial-pharmaceutical-financial complex, our industry is obeisant to the award-show-industrial complex. Agencies, the profit-making awards shows and proto-journalism like Adweek, Adage, Archive and the like are complicit.
If it hasn't run and it won't, it shouldn't be lauded. It's that simple.
I think it's a sad case of a not convinced client wanting to spell out everything they wish to say but people won't remember anyway, making a potentially memorable commercial basically just as forgettable as all other spots in the category. Other than that I totally agree on the awards shows contributing to perpetuate a false image of what our industry really is.
ReplyDeleteYes, but in the world of commerce, we creative people must sell ourselves, meaning our ideas. and we need to show them in their purest form as an example of our 'thinking'. We don't want supers and announcer copy the client wants to sell a product on TV.Look at it this way. It's a TV commercial selling a creative team.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I agree with you. But I think my point is that we have created and we abide by a system where fake ads are the measure of quality. Surely you'll agree there is some perversity to that. It's like prizing an inflatable doll over a woman.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I agree with you. But I think my point is that we have created and we abide by a system where fake ads are the measure of quality. Surely you'll agree there is some perversity to that. It's like prizing an inflatable doll over a woman.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your point in theory but I have to live in the real world. Despite all the complaints agains fake work it seems The One Show and others only respond to the fake work. And Creative Directors are frequently the worst – they demand brilliant work in your book even tho they will never let you produce brilliant work when you do work for them. to quote Thomes from Dicken's Hard Times, 'It's all a muddle'.
ReplyDeleteYay... it's the anti-director's cut.
ReplyDeleteThe saccharin result of a little crowd sourcing, blended with a considerable dose of qual/quant; add too many cooks to the kitchen, and smell that? It's an organized little rack of spreadsheets painted with large neat numbers in gravy.
Nail the director's cut.
Advertising isn't about beautiful prose or glamourous art. It's a serious B2B affair!
ReplyDelete'Creative' used to be an oft-used adjective to describe interesting advertising or marketing ideas that worked.
Somewhere along the way, 'Photoshop' became a verb, and 'Creative' became a noun and an end in itself!