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Three Minute Happiness

Lessons from The Dark Side 

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Last week I went back to London to judge the online adverstising bit of D&AD. Set in the deepest darkest depths of snowy East London (just so you know it's 26 and sunny here today!) I think my main take out is that banners are well and truly dead. Meurto. Kaput. F**ked. 

Now, if this was a proper blog I would be able to link back to a post I made last year saying the same thing but you'll just have to take my word that I've said this before.

This by no means that digital is dead, oh no. Carl, anomaly main man, just got back from a meedja conference in Venice and said the only thing he really took out of it was that if you don't have your digital strategy sussed by now you may as well pack up and head home. So, no, digital is not going anywhere. But, banners - banners are going nowhere. Weird that if something is going nowhere that's a bad thing but if something isn't going anywhere (essentially the same thing) that sort of means it's good and staying. It's Friday I'll let you ponder that one. 

There was some great work on show at D&AD especially from Tokyo. But for me there were no good banners, not one. As an artform (and we are talking creative awards here) they are just too limiting. Everything that has can be done has been done. Sure, there will be the odd nice, thing, good line, nice visual but peeps - 'let's move on, cos it's time to groove on (hear the drummer get wicked!').

I'll make a little wager with you. No banners will win any awards at Campaign this year. Number of entries in all awards across the board to go down at least 50% over the next 2 years.

That is all.

Published Apr 18 2008, 08:52 PM by James Cooper

Comments

by Katrina Doran
April 21, 2008 1:34 PM
 
So any suggestions to replace the banner format? K
 
 
by Katrina Doran
April 21, 2008 1:37 PM
 
So any suggestions to replace the banner format? K
 
 
by Adam Cheesman
April 21, 2008 2:29 PM
 
I find it very hard to agree that banners are dead - although I do agree that sometimes it does seem like it is getting to the stage of 'seen one seen them all'. Surely it is just highlighting the challenege that banners need an injection of creativity to make them stand out?
 
 
by rowena james
April 21, 2008 7:26 PM
 
Banners like any ad format have good and bad. Good ads will always appeal whether they are in a banner or embedded in content. Audiences don't want intrusive ads the same as they don't want commercial breaks. Playing a banner animation one or twice is enough, repeating it is annoying!
 
 
by James Cooper
April 21, 2008 10:12 PM
 
From a purely media point of view I agree there is still a case for banners. But in the same way that when I first started doing digital stuff and I was the copywriter I was asked to 'write' search terms - in other words list the specific words that would appear in a spreadsheet for some wonk at Google or MSN to look over. It's all necessary and on occasions highly effective - it's just not very creative. And I believe good creatives will find their skills are better implemented elsewhere and that will only continue. Banners could all get a bit radio...
 
 
by david mcnulty
April 22, 2008 2:47 PM
 
Agreed... but what I still can’t work out is how we ever let them become a (creative awards here) art-form in the first place. They don't really serve any use... other than to agencies who get paid to make them... oh... and clients who think they are making effective use of their budgets. [Is there a point to be made here about vested financial interest binding up creative ideas which don't fit into a "recognised", format?] When I first crashed into this crazy world, I thought at times I'd stumbled into a farce ....attending meetings where people would actually get excited about a 0.57% Click-through rate on pan-European deployed MPU. WTF? Surely that's telling us where we're going wrong to start with. We've got the most intelligent, interested and aware audience in history... and yet we're still thinking in terms of how does our 48 sheet message work on a 160x600 space for under 2MB. Throwing digital advertising budgets at Banner ads seems to me like making one pixel wide silent nano-films to play on a 40" Bravia with surround sound. If I had a Porsche, I wouldn't go out of my way to fit a 5mph speed limiter to it - something the current online creative community continually seems to be doing to its self.
 
 
by James Cooper
April 29, 2008 3:44 PM
 
You said it Dangerous!
 
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