I often have a hard time explaining to clients how modern identity work can be multi-dimensional and dynamic, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a great job of it. But this little video announcing a new logo for the Science Channel is about as good of an example as I can think of.
Tag: Video
How Does Such a Pretty Wife Make Such Bad Coffee
The video’s creator took a series of coffee commercials from the 50’s and 60’s, and pulled together all the moments when the guys were being real jerks.
What’s interesting is that this message was such a common one for coffee brands at the time. It makes me wonder what conventions we’ll find in today’s commercials.
Gymkhana FOUR: The Hollywood Megamercial
This is a stunning video that really obeys the rules of trading entertainment for advertising (see the advertisers screen below). Fun starts at about 1:27.
Facebook Fan Fail
A great litte video that pretty accurately describes how many companies approach social media: begging you to ‘like’ through a megaphone. The whole series can be seen here.
Rom Chocolate Case Study
A compelling advertising case study featuring national branding, social media, and challenging youth. Not much else I can say, you just need to watch.
Branding Diverse Organizations
I’ve worked on branding projects for companies that have a diverse product offering, and it’s a real challenge to come up with a way to bring everything together under one succinct tagline that has any meaning.
That’s why I’ve liked GE for some time. They came out with their “Imagination at Work” tagline, and it’s done a great job of describing the proposition of the GE brand. This video is a pretty recent brand awareness spot that explains the GE brand in the simplest of terms.
Nike Promotes Addiction
This is a great spot from Nike that is, in typical Nike fashion, tremendously inspirational. Not many brands can build clear, aspirational brand values like Nike can. This is a great example of how they do it.
Ameriquest Understands
I won’t comment on how these commercials impact the Ameriquest brand; they’re several years old and require a lot more context to fully appreciate. But it’s clear that these would have been really fun for the ad agency to produce, and they do a good job of providing entertainment in exchange for the commercial message.
Vivident Gets a Little Weird
While advertisers like Skittles have employed the method (successfully) for years, I think Old Spice kicked off a fad amongst ad agency creatives: they all seem to love the idea of the bizarre storyline in their ads. The worst offender, I think, is Dairy Queen, who doesn’t seem to understand the how or why of this method of storytelling, but instead comes off like a 4 year old kid try to tell a dirty joke they don’t quite get.
Vivident does a good job of tying the concept back into their brand promise to make the whole effort worthwhile.
H2Oh! Tells a Great Story
Terry O’Reilly talks often about the implicit agreement that exists in advertising: viewing an ad is payment for entertainment. Put another way, advertisers are responsible for entertaining the audience they advertise to.
H2Oh! shows that they understand this reciprocation in this ad. This is the kind of work that the audience will actively seeks out. It’s unfortunate that we rarely see this much effort put into entertainment outside of the Superbowl.
One last thought: notice that you’re not hit over the head with the product placement. The soda makes subtle appearances throughout the spot, and each one feels natural.