Sunday, February 17, 2008
Esoteric ads
You ever see an ad in one of those advertising award magazines like Communication Arts or Lüerzer's Archive and it looks really really cool, super art-directed, interesting, etc, but you barely get what it's selling or the point? Or you get it but it takes you a lot of time to get it... And that ad won an award or was considered so good it got put in a trade publication. If I didn't get it and I'm hoping to be in advertising, it makes me wonder how someone stupid could possibly have understood it. And if advertising is to get masses of certain people to perform a certain action (like buy something), how would that ad acomplish that? Maybe I'll go through one of my magazines and put an example up of what I mean... not today though.
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2 comments:
Most of my experience with award shows is that those are all the cool, concept ads to help gain notoriety for individuals and creative directors, and also to help the client feel like they're letting the agency do cool work.
The most "effective" ads don't often win any awards. They're too busy selling product for their client. It's hard to balance the two, but a good read for either side of the battle is
"The Copywriters Handbook" by Robert W. Bly for the production you want out of your ads
and either one of the following for the cooler, idea-driven, award winning ad stuff
"A Whack on the Side of the Head" by Roger von Oech
or "The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy" by Tom Monahan.
Good luck with whichever route you find yourself most often. We'd all love to be successful and rich and doing award-winning work that everyone loves, but not everyone gets to be that person.
Thank you for the very constructive advice! I will definitely check into the books you mentioned. Also, I appreciate you putting the award shows and the funky concept ads into perspective.
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