Real Life is Never a Waste of Time

Advertising on the other hand usually is.

Just a few musings on current state of advertising in my humble opinion.

I find myself asking this question a lot – where has all of the creativity gone? Usually I wait until the “Super Bowl of Advertising” – which is the actual Super Bowl – to weigh in on my thoughts. The past several years have been less than inspirational.

With so much beauty and creativity and passion in this world – how can we be stuck with such tepid advertising to motivate us to buy things we don’t really need?

Could it possibly be the penchant for everyone to be blinded by data, artificial intelligence, bots and machine learning that whatever creativity was left after the Great Recession has been killed off?

Real life is still about real people, right? Shouldn’t advertising allow us to celebrate the best in us?

Some thoughts…

• It’s been two years since I first wrote on the Starwarsification of the planet. And here we go again. I guess when you put the most popular movie franchise of all time within the Disney Company, I guess we can expect this. Nissan has bought into the fun — another step towards the importance of experiential marketing to differentiate companies. But the incessant drumbeat of the movie through a variety of products including even Cheerios (light sabre spoons, really?) have me questioning how different this all can be any longer?
• GM and Chevy has brought back the “Employee Discount” promotion which at its time saved the America auto industry the first time in the early 00’s before the Obama administration revived the automotive companies from life support the early days of the Great Recession.
• Snow globes. Is it just me or does every year two competitors wind up with the same theme? This year it is snow globes. Two auto manufacturers have wound up with young children dreaming of snowy fun for the holidays from their sunny, warm homes. It’s probably random, but I’m sure there are some agency folks feeling a little awkward.

Which brings me to us to the inspiration for the title of this post… the fabulous sixty seconds of Apple’s 2017 commercial. Every year, I actually stop whatever I am doing to enjoy this company’s short-form movie making.

Am I an Apple user? Yes.

Does this make me want to buy another product? Not necessarily.

Does it reinforce while I’m in the Apple tribe? Absolutely.

The back story to the spot will take your breath away Apple 2018 -Sway Commercial

I’ll keep sharing thoughts as long as you keep reading them!