Walk down any street. Open any magazine. Watch TV. Do these people have any idea what they’re doing? They get paid for it. Why?
This little masterpiece is at North End Road Market, Fulham, famed for its distinct shortage of overpaid executives.
On a toilet door. Selected, no doubt, by one of those clever media agencies. Clever at getting clients to “optimise” their spending. Optimise meaning spend more.
Few ideas in marketing have done more damage than splitting the creative process up from the selection of media. But hey, look at the money you’re saving.
Doesn’t really matter that much because few people in ad agencies know the barest scintilla of a damn thing about what makes advertising sell. Luckily for them neither do their clients.
Thus we get the absurd confection you see above. Hard to read. Ugly. Illiterate – no question mark after #4GEE – whatever that means to the average market shopper.
And drawing the most bizarre and irrelevant of analogies.
Wherever you look you see this visual garbage.
An ad for Chrysler showing two of their unremarkable cars says “Prepare to be noticed.” How? Will people wonder why you lack the taste or money to get a Mercedes or Jaguar?
An utterly hideous ad for Jupiter Unit Trust says “Never mistake lack of certainty for lack of opportunity”.
They belong to the HSBC school of advertising, which confuses vapid generalisations for ideas.
The online community are no better. I just got a hideous email addressed to Margaret and headed “Don’t let us down” from something called Confex.
Well, neither Margaret nor I give a s**t about letting you down, Confex.
We don’t know why we should waste so much as a minute of our precious time with you.
We don’t even see a clear statement of what the hell your bash is about
But we so see that Piggy John Prescott and Janet Teeth Porter are speaking. So we know to keep well away.
This has to be the same genius that puts the ads inside the toilets? Motorway services, an ad above each urinal. Fair enough, gives you something to look at and you can’t be accused at looking at the bloke next to you. But wait, we have to put on the latest gizmo … the QRCode. So am I now supposed to pull out my camera phone in the middle of the gents urinals and start filming the poster now? The great irony of these ads that they are an accident prevention campaign from the Highways Agency. I guess there is some logic there as I won’t get back to me car to have that accident. The trucker standing at the next urinal will beat the crap out of me because he thinks I’m shooting a movie starring his knob.
Absolutely brilliant, Ross. I often reflect on such matters as I dribble away … shooting side-long glances at the tattooed monster next to me. Not really; but I do suspect quite a few people are pissing away money on these ads. Sorry, never can resist a dreadful joke – which is what that ad is. Research in my household reveals that tbney nhave these ads in the ladies, where I guess they work better,
Just when I thought advertising couldn’t sink any lower, it has, and in one of the most appropriate places. A public loo. Blackberry must be elated.
One of your finest Drayton. Keep them coming!
Come on Drayton, name and shame the agency that have not even got the wit to include a QR code so that people do not have to bother to remember the link to Blackberry’s site. I would have thought that it would be more useful to put the ad inside the lavatory where it might be read at leisure by those going about their business.
Here is something that I received this afternoon that we are obviously missing completely;
“One term being bandied around the marketing sphere a great deal at the moment is thought leadership. Every business wants to be seen as a thought leader.” Really?
Any idea what or who a thought leader is? The email goes on to explain;
“Effective thought leaders tangibly advance the creation and exchange of ideas by putting forward actionable, new points of view, often supported with research and usually commercially relevant.”
Presumably something along the lines of “Bugger off you spiky haired youth so we can save ourselves tons of money” would fit the bill. This is actionable, is a new point of view requiring minimal research and is commercially relevant.
I don’t know the name of the agency. If I bothered finding things like that out I’d have no time to have a drink. I do know that whilst most advertising has always been bad, it is worse than ever now. I do not blame the people who create it. I blame the idiots who employ them, and are too cheap and short-sighted to teach them. This begs the question, teach them what? The blind leading etc.