Advertising as Art or Creative, Creative

By Barry Garbarino

As I rode home on the train last night – for some strange reason and old jingle from a telecommunication company popped into my head from thin air.  I think it went something like, “second class phones, their making, second class phones, phones you can’t hear though, phones with no tones...” I have an idea who the company is, but I don’t want to point any fingers.  I guess what really jumps out to me is that the creative jingle stuck with me after all these years (normally, I would post the ad creative in this blog, but sadly, it isn’t available online as of yet.)

Classic ad campaigns like, “Where’s the beef” and the ever popular “Meow Mix” jingle (which I believe some ad genius ran during morning news programs, so the annoying catchy song would get stuck in all of our heads.)  have left a void in the current mix of creative execution in the broadcast medium.




The perception that some advertisers have today is that every commercial they produce must have broad-appeal content that reaches multiple demographics.  While other cutting edge marketers are blazing new trails with edgy, dare I say, controversial commercials.  Take the recent “Whopper Freak-Out” campaign that Burger King ran.  The scrappy burger joint, removed their famous menu item, the Whopper, from one location for one day.  The results were not only dramatic, but also shocking and quite amusing for the viewing public.  

Take a look at this daring social / marketing experiment below.

The Initial ad creative spurred many a social media parody (most I can’t post on this blog as they are even too edgy for me…) My suggestion would be to look some of these up on YouTube.

The bottom line I guess is that with new innovative shows coming this fall, marketers need to raise the bar when it comes to their advertising.  Shows like “gLee” on FOX, give creative marketers the opportunity to step up their executions and borrow from the excitement (and musical numbers) of the

show.

 
Times are always changing and the viewing public expects to be more entertained or they will just fast forward with their DVR’s and leave the expensive advertising in the dust.