von thecod | Apr. 2, 2005 | Blog
Having spent the last couple of weeks working late (and on the weekends) I have had rather unpleasant stress levels. Short timings, insufficient briefings, incomplete teams and a bunch of deliverables. And of course I asked myself the one question: what happens if we (I) fail. But at the end of the day, I calmed myself with the one reassuring thought that every advertising person can and should remember every time things are dire:
We only do advertising.
No one will suffer if we are a day late or if the ads don’t perform quite as well as they should. What is lost if an ad comes out the day after the product launch? No customer will really notice, only the experts. And if the product is supposed to be sold for more than two days, then one day shouldn’t make a difference. It would only make a difference in terms of perfectionism. And for our clients, as they might face a dent in their reputation within their company. This is, for any service oriented agency, a desaster, because the client wasn’t served right, and the agency will also loose reputation.
But honestly. Did anyone suffer or die of the consequences? I haven’t even heard yet of anyone loosing his job because a campaign was done right. I have heard of people being sacked, because that continuously happens, yes. But not because of only one wrong campaign.
A doctor I heard of, does very „routine“ jobs on rather critical parts of the human body and knows how long it takes him: heart surgery: 4h, lung transplantation: 8h. And sometimes he does several of both a day – yes, working up to 16h-20h operating.
This I call relevant stress!
If something goes wrong there, the stakes are high. It’s not only about deadlines and reputation (it’s not even about money). It’s about life and death.
So enjoy the harmless playground of advertising while you can and be happy that you don’t have a job, where things really matter…
von thecod | März 24, 2005 | Blog
Adfreak references an article that announces IBMs new tool which spams the spammers.
It basically sends all spam back to its originator. But, as Adfreak rightly assumes, this will probably just result in a huge trench war…
And honestly, can this program really differentiate between actual sender and possibly faked email addresses? Will innocent people be spammed, because people hijacked their email addresses? This should better be sorted out…
von thecod | März 24, 2005 | Blog
I have been overwhelmed with worked the last couple of weeks. Tight projects with unpleasant working hours. You know what I mean.
But on one of my flights I found this in airport bathroom:
The copy says, more or less: „even more sweatier hands you can get in the new mercedes cls from Sixt“. However, here it doesn’t say „sweaty“ in German, but instead they chose a word which means almost the same but could also refer to the fact that your hands are wet.
Nice placement, nice idea…
von thecod | März 1, 2005 | Blog, Online Advertising
Here is a campaign I like once again: pimpmyburger.com from, well of course, Burger King. And, apparently an agency from Germany.
I like this, because it once again shows, how much better the internet is as a storytelling medium. The TV campaign (if there is one – I haven’t seen any ads yet) will again show only 30″ worth of content, driving to the site, which tells the whole story (some 52MB worth of footage).
von thecod | März 1, 2005 | Ad News, Blog
JWT have changed their way of thinking: they want to „stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.“
While the idea is nice for the consumer and certainly the right approach in todays cluttered, ad-tired world of TiVo & Co, I wonder how they will manage to persuade their clients to fully commit to this path, too. If JWT does this 100%, they will have to deselect many of the traditional media. And change the way they creatively package their messages. Both might lead to doubts among some of the more traditional advertisers.
But then again, maybe JWT wants to acquire different ones in the future. Focusing only on brands that like to take up that challenge.
Second thought. May be the ad industry in the US is already so „desparate“ that this is actually the only way to go?
We’ll see how it develops. I personally favour that move, because that probably means that we’ll see lots of interesting interactive stuff from JWT in the future.
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