Days ago the camera brand Leica announced in a statement/advertising campaign the return of the Leica M6 to the production line, which was a huge news and celebration day for photographers all over the world. For those who are not familiar with the M6, it´s a film camera. A new film camera in the age of megapixels and mega-zooms. What news! The return of the Leica M6 marks something that most photo enthusiasts always dreamed of but do not really like to speak out loud, but there she is in all her beauty.
I´ve been part of this “analog Rennessince” since I bought myself my first analog camera 2 years ago, and I can fully get into this hype. But even before the announcement of Leica, there was a growing community of people willing to buy into this kind of photography although knowing that none of those cameras can match the details of today’s autofocused, megapixel full-format pieces of high-tech. “But why?” you may ask. The answer is (at least for me) pretty simple. They value the process of creation at least the same way as the result itself.
The same I think can be related to advertising. I had the chance to watch some TV commercials yesterday since I saw linear TV for the first time in months. And honestly, I was more or less shocked at how bad TV commercials in Germany have become. Cheap looking, cheaply produced, loud, and at the end, it was more like the feeling to put each of those products on my “no-buy” list. Why the hell did those commercials become so poorly executed? Do the agencies run out of ideas? Do Marketers have too much influence that something like this is the output? I don´t know. I think it´s a mix of both…but it wasn´t always that bad. TV commercials can majorly impact consumers if they are done properly. Example needed? Here you go:
This TV commercial was done by RAM 9 years ago for the Superbowl and to this very day, it´s my most loved TV commercial of all time. I don´t know how many times I have seen this commercial but it never gets boring because of the stunning quality and the perfect execution. It has no big effect if the brand name is yelled at the consumer. The opposite is the case. The brand name was only mentioned once at the very end. But it tells a story and goes straight into the mind and hearts of all people that feel connected to the product and brand. No artificial lights, no actors…just real people like the people that are supposed to buy this pickup.
Blog Inspirations
Is another example needed? Let´s have a look at the very classic 18/1 ad. One of the masterpieces I personally enjoy seeing (and read) is the long copy ads done by Jack Daniels. Their little stories always invite the reader to stay a little while in front of those ads and get this interesting piece of information about the company, the product, or the people of Jack Daniels. Those ads are years old and the last one I personally saw, was in London more than 10 years ago.
So what´s the purpose of this blog post? Well, I think I´d like to advocate a little bit on some basic skills we advertisers have that maybe marketers might not have since it´s not their original job description: We can create stories that are timeless. And that´s what I would call good advertising. Advertising I can pull out years later and that still catches people is something that I´d like to see way more often. In Germany we had a “tiny” comeback of one ad by “Allianz” Insurance was quite amusing I have to say….they pulled out one of their old commercials and made a more “2000th” look-alike version of it. I have to say: It put a smile on my face. Not only because they re-told the story more “female”-style but they managed to get that good feeling back to everyone that know their original campaign. Simple but soooooooo effective.
In these days when we come up every 6 months with some new kind of “marketing”, such advertising is a small reminder to us advertising people and to the people in marketing that you don´t need big data XYZ marketing to create good advertising that stays in peoples brains (in a positive way). Sometimes you just have to go back to the things you already had, and that worked! Happy to discuss this. #justathougt #justmy5Cent