No, really. The Miller Lite banner ad copy is compelling enough, but then it takes you to a site with slickly animated ingredients and product attributes, and that’s all.“The advertising it deserves” is right.
I miss these.
Friday, March 27, 2009
What the hell happened to beer advertising.
No, really. The Miller Lite banner ad copy is compelling enough, but then it takes you to a site with slickly animated ingredients and product attributes, and that’s all.“The advertising it deserves” is right.
I miss these.
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8 comments:
I miss these. I know, but still. When I was little, that Lowenbrau campaign made beer drinking look glamorous.
You know what this really is? A shining example of why digital is not ready to usurp traditional advertising, contrary to all the fools saying otherwise. Too many digital enterprises are nothing more than graphic design studios with basic flash skills. If I had a dime for every time some digital creative presented an animated strategy statement with spinning typography, well, never mind. They don’t seem to realize that if the Word doc isn’t interesting, then no amount of techno wizardry will bring it to life. Indeed, you only wind up with a contrived piece of shit. Digital gurus will be the first to tell you: content is king. Yet digital shops continue to relegate writers to functionality stenographers. Even true art directors aren’t valued as much as a Flash developer. And not a single one of these morons would recognize a concept if it perpetually scrolled on their Facebook page.
Good heavens, Anonymous, that's well put. I raise a glass of beer in your honor.
@anon: True enough, except for one thing....that's not a failure unique to digital. I've seen print ads that, devoid of underlying concept, pile on the technical mastery, and fail. Does that mean print isn't ready? Most of my reel is beautiful, wonderfully edited spots that fail because it wasn't until they got to post that someone asked, "what's the point?" Does this mean television isn't ready for prime time? Of course not. That someone can make a shitty digital ad isn't the fault of digital--it's the fault of what it's always been: laziness and stupidity. Digital is just the new whipping boy.
No, phillybikeboy, you’re missing the point. Yes, there is a lot of bad advertising out there. Always has been. But take a closer look at the digital space. And more importantly, at the digital shops. Clients are lured by all the hype. But the work across the board is devoid of depth and meaning. You’ve got a lot of digital practitioners publishing blogs and positioning themselves as cutting-edge thought leaders. But inspect their work and you’ll find the traditional banners hyping 50% off sales. These shops are graphic design studios – working off of direct marketing principles. Don’t look at Droga5 or RGA. Look at Digitas, Avenue A/Razorfish, Tribal DDB – the places with the lion’s share of work. Scan the creative job posts. You rarely see anyone looking for a digital writer – or even a digital art director. It’s all developers and information architects, at low salaries. Not sure what you were saying about your own reel. If you didn’t realize your spots were pointless until you got to post, well, that says a lot. BTW, I work at one of the top global digital shops. So I do know a bit about what I’m typing here.
Anon, I'm not sure I am missing the point. It's just not all that different in television. Most of the spots are crap.
In television advertising there's a "we'll fix it in post" mentality. Well, I was post. By the time a spot got to me, it was more or less what it was. As an editor I can make it prettier, and give it just the right pace and feeling. If you want wow, I've got that in spades. But if it didn't come to me with a good concept, I had nothing in my bag of tricks that could give it one. No editor does.
For the most part we are in total agreement. I just don't think it's any more prevalent in any particular media. The world is full of well executed, but poorly conceived crap. It's just that every time a new medium pops up, there is always that wonderful hope that this time they'll get it right. And there is always that moment when that hope is dashed. Welcome to that moment....
What's more amazing isn't that pitchmen position themselves as "cutting-edge thought leaders" or use hype to lure clients, but that anyone expects it to turn out any different this time around. No matter what, no matter where, Sturgeon's Law applies. Even when we don't want it to.
phillybikeboy,
We likely agree on lots of stuff, but I’m still not convinced we’re talking the same argument in this scenario. First, thanks for explaining your professional background. It helps clarify where you’re coming from. Yes, I’m aware there are creatives out there who believe their spots can be saved in post. I’m actually more used to the phenomenon in print, where art directors will come back with shots and place the head of one pic on the body of another and change the color of the wardrobe, etc. via Photoshop – versus simply shooting things right from the start. Regardless of whether it’s print or broadcast, I think we would agree the term for these folks is hacks. That is, only a hack operates with such a mentality and ignorant process. But you and I both know the hacks do not define the ideal. I created broadcast for decades, and I never met anyone who deliberately operated from a “we’ll fix it in post” mentality. I’ve always likened broadcast to a relay race. That is, the baton (or concept) is handed to various teammates throughout the race (production); and each member leads and enhances the concept when it’s their turn to handle it. So in most cases, it begins with a storyboard created by the adpeople, then it goes to the director who enhances the concept, then it goes to post (editing, music, voiceover/sound, etc.) who continue to enhance it. It’s a progressive, snowballing process.
Now the reason I went through that long-winded explanation is because in advertising, there is a semi-standard process. Forget the hacks and agencies doing local car dealership work. I’m talking about when advertising is done right.
In the digital field, contrary to anything anyone might tell you, there is no standard process. Hell, people don’t even agree on a standard definition for digital. It’s every man and woman and shop for themselves. The Miller work being discussed here is not just about poor execution. It’s rooted in a total ignorance about the digital space and the way people interact with it. If someone wanted to present the reason Miller tastes so good in the digital space, fine. The possibilities are endless – but they should not include animating the strategy statement. That’s bad print or bad broadcast. And that’s the problem here. Someone made the mistake of thinking the digital space is about running a bad tv spot. It’s like having a mediocre MLB shortstop play NFL quarterback. You’ve got the wrong player in the wrong game.
Additionally, to my point about many digital enterprises being graphic design studios with basic Flash skills, imagine if you were asked to edit spots created by package designers. Not to say they couldn’t occasionally come up with a gem, but it’s not likely, as they have different skill sets. The creatives in digital know how to build websites and landing pages. But they have not demonstrated understanding how to build a brand or even how to create a compelling video for the Web. It’s like when graphic designers try to produce print ads. It’s all pretty, but there’s rarely a legitimate concept.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to criticize graphic designers. But let them be graphic designers, not digital creatives.
“...but they should not include animating the strategy statement.”
This is the main point I think we’re talking about. Forgetting local hack shit for car dealers and the like, there’s basically two types of ads, (no matter what the media either because websites are guilty of this too):
1) The ones which animate the brief or do something ‘cool’ with the product, or the layout is pretty and well-designed. That’s the product of in-house art departments and the majority of agencies. (There’s nothing wrong with that.)
2) Then there are the ones which actually do something with the brief that resonates with viewers on a deeper level but are in the minority by comparison.
Any toothpaste? No. 1. Things like the Coke side of life? No. 2.
The eye candy shit as I call it is just too easy to do. (Sales promotion shops are the big culprits here.) If you’re a P&G or Miller above with insane budgets, I expect that at the very least they should be able to that type of stuff—but I also expect more.
The previous Miller High Life stuff with the Delivery guy Wendel are some of my favorite all-time spots, and it‘s basically the same product features in the spot above, but the difference is his character and performance. Same too the Morris series. That’s the stuff that creates a voice for a brand.
As for fixing it in post, I’ve not run into that from anyone, but I have worked with several people, who, because they were unprepared for their shoot, spent way too much extra time later in post trying to edit together the shit they failed to get on location. (Forget scope creep on a website, how about editing suite creep. Cha-ching.)
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