Year after year I'm waiting in anticipation for the commercials during the BIG GAME. And in the last few years, I keep getting disappointed.
Yes, a few commercials last night made us laugh, cry, think. But nothing you can't find on YouTube. Nothing we will remember a year from now. Nothing to tell our children about.
I fell in love with Advertising when I was 14 (1994).
Pre-social media.
Pre-hashtags.
Pre-viral videos.
When commercials and ads were pure creativity - otherwise we would not remember them. There wasn't online channels to carry them on, give them the extra life span. They had to be memorable. Put a stamp in our hearts and minds.
Let me take you back in time to when creativity was alive. I bet you still remember some of these commericals:
Hey kid, Catch, Coca Cola (1979)
Apple (1984)
Pepsi (1992)
Wasssup, Budweiser (1999)
Crazy Legs, Levis (2002)
Baby E-Trade (2008)
It seems like creativity died somewhere in 2008. Right when social media was born. That's when the "Brand Gap" and ability of brands to connect to their people became confusing with content over-saturation and online noise.
As content became controlled by its recipients, and produced by the people, companies started to look at online metrics as their leading force. they took the power away from their Creative Directors and gave it to online reports. Creativity got lost, and can now only be found in hashtags...which every spot last night ended with.
The problem is that brands now try too hard. They try so hard to get attention, that they lost the reason to why they even deserve it in the first place - the impact they make on people's lives. The reason they exist.
Well, I challenge large corporations and anyone spending major ad dollars to bring it back. Use social media to listen to the people - not follow them, but listen to them. And not through online numbers and metrics, but through real conversations. If you listen carefully you'll find that it's not any different from what people wanted back in the 80's - clever, triggering, mind blowing creativity during the Big Game commercial breaks. Everything else they can find online. Including the "wannabe" viral YouTube videos that were produced and aired last night.
Leave these videos to the people -
from ad agencies, we expect more.
Sincerely,
Mad Woman.
