IAB blog

Errrrrr... that Alphabeat ad is terrible. And even it wasn't better executed it's a direct rip off of the Axion Band in a Banner ad that cleaned up at every awards shows last year.

www.oneclub.org/.../showcase

Maybe you should do a little more research?

Hi James, I am aware of the Axion ad but this is an example of a campaign that's currently live that I like, I wasn't looking for the first of its kind. Have you seen any consumer research that would suggest it is a terrible ad? Surely if something similar worked for Axion, it will also work for Alphabeat. The entire creative process in advertising is built on learning from what works and what doesn't. I doubt Ford look on in horror everytime Honda run a TV ad of a car driving around with music playing over the top.

There have been literally hundreds of video MPUs, skyscrapers and banners with people interacting with the screen - Axion wasn't the first and Alphabeat definitely won't be the last. Most film trailers in fact have had people tapping and interacting with the screen for years; it's a good way of getting people's attention in a channel with the sound turned off by default.

We actually talked about this in our Movie Marketing Report released in Feb 2008. The ads for the 2007 film Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox story had the main character tapping the screen and mouthing "turn your sound on".

FYI clicking on the links in the Alphabeat ad leads to nothing but 404's

In case you didn't know....

Just sayin !

David,

your post was titled 'Digital Creativity Dead' not effectiveness. In my opinion the Alphabeat ad is creatively terrible - because it doesn't look good and it's not original (criteria most creative people would deem important)

It may work with consumers, it may not, that's a separate debate.

I agree with James - the creative on the Alphabet ad is awful!

It shows nothing innovative or ground breaking! There are many other better examples of digital creative out there.

I obviously can't make you like the ad because taste is subjective. Personally, I liked it because it was simple, silly and fun, which matched the band's image video and album packaging, plus it caught my eye – something not all ads manage to do.

I take your point James, but to me, creative and effectiveness in advertising  are inextricably linked. You can have a beautiful piece of creative that wins awards but doesn't boost brand or sell products - in which case I wouldn't say it was a good piece of advertising creative because it didn't achieve what it was supposed to do. You’re right that this is a separate debate and one that will likely be discussed at length. We should host a debate about it! :o)

Nevertheless, my aim with this post was to encourage more people to show off great work, not criticise other people's. I selected a couple that I liked recently, if you can point me in the direction of more ads that you think are great, I'd love to feature them in a future post.

I'm all for examples of showcasing brilliant creativity. But sorry Jack, that alphabeat example ain't one of them. The idea might suit the bands fun/quirky/accessible persona but just dancing and tapping on the screen is so lazy, been done before and not even particularly well executed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz