Monday, November 28, 2005

Diamond advertising stupidity

Perhaps you've seen the ad with the guy trapped in the airport. It's quite obvious based on exterior shots that the airport is closed and will not be opening that night (happens to be Christmas night) and the guy has a gift of a diamond necklace for his wife/girlfriend. At the end of the commercial you see the guy running out of the airport and are directed to go to a website to see what happens -- sort of like the Go Army commercials, but not nearly as cool and very reminiscent of BMW Films.

Unfortunately, 20 minutes later from seeing the first ad, I see an ad of a guy pulling up in a snow plow in front of a house -- same guy, same diamond necklace, same Christmas night. Turns out that I don't need to opt in to going to the website; actually it makes it really easy to opt out because I already know the ending. I don't really care what happened in between -- obviously guy leaves airport, does some stuff, winds up in a snow plow, and gets home (if you haven't seen the ending, feel free to save yourself the trip to the website).

My wife says that the ad worked because I'm talking about it. Wrong. The ad did not work -- I'm talking about the ad because the execution is poor. Obviously the advertising firm was trying to emulate Go Army or BMW Films; trying to get people to opt in is a very powerful thing. At some point someone got worried about whether or not people would actually visit the site, so they gave away the ending. Perhaps the ad firm thought they were being brilliant by giving the beginning and end and hoping that we would all be inspired to find out the stuff in the middle. Instead they wind up with more interruption advertising that provides little incentive to opt in to their site.

So if you want, visit the link below which will give you the middle of the story -- feel free to opt in after you already know the ending. Personally, I'm opting out.

Link

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