I haven’t had a flick through the pages of Campaign magazine for a while, but I’m sure they still do ‘Ad of the week’ and ‘Turkey of the week’.
Well, I’d like to put forward my own version, based on what I’ve seen this week.
Might as well get the bad out of the way first. Here’s my ‘Turkey of the week’:
At first, I actually read this as your average punter, rather than someone who looks at the finer details of adverts.
In doing this, I read ‘Can the wings’ as a question, as in; ‘Can the wings?’
This lead to another question – in my head; ‘Can the wings do what??’
It was only when I read the body copy, which said ‘And unlike energy drinks…’ that I realised ‘Can the wings’ meant ‘get rid of the wings’, and was a terrible pun based on Red Bull coming in a ‘can’ (geddit?) and claiming to ‘give you wings’.
Then I realised the ad had done something else I dislike: tried to hammer the competition, rather than sell their own product.
Then again, even ‘Fast energy?’ doesn’t really make sense. What’s ‘fast energy’?
‘Need energy fast?’ makes sense.
Meantime, this is supposed to be an exciting new energy-providing product – a great alternative to Red Bull – and what do they show?… a boring lab technician in a white coat, holding a pack of the product.
Nothing about the ad says ‘energy’ or ‘energetic’ or ‘dynamic’.
It’s awful. I don’t know how it got signed off.
However, ‘Ad of the week’ goes to this (rather long, but worth watching) funny film from Ikea:
It’s a clear p*ss-take of Apple’s marketing, but done in that effortless, cheeky, sweet Ikea tone.
Put it this way, I even think top brass at Apple would nod at it and find it funny.
I like Ikea’s tone in general, across all marketing, and this is them at their quirky, irreverent best.
Oh, and apart from being hilarious, the ad also gets across the message that the new Ikea catalogue is out.
It’s brilliant.
And that’s me done. Happy weekend, people.