Who will be the Digital David Ogilvy?

1696774 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:04:00 GMT

It's been a while since i posted here, been busy in NY helping Dare set up and all that jazz. Anyway, there is an interestng debate going on over these parts about whether digital creativity is up to scratch or not. Randy Rothenberg, president of the IAB no less, has weighed in saying he thinks we are all sub par and will never reach the level of David Ogilvy or Bill Bernbach. Is he right?

Course he's not. Randy's notion that digital creativity sucks is a pretty weak argument. Who is to say who will be the Bernbachs or the Ogilvy's of digital? It's pretty unlikely that there will be *no one* - the odds just don't stack up.

Someone will become that famous, at the time DO and BB were not gods, merely people running their own agencies. They became gods in history. It's so much easier to look back and say there was all this great work but for every 'Lemon' there were a million real lemons - bad press ads, bad commercials, that no one ever talks about.

I should imagine the percentage of 'good' versus 'bad' digital work is identical to the percentage of 'good' versus 'bad' work in every other media in every other era. It just so happens that we are in the middle of a new era so it's easier to scrutinize / criticize.

We can have a sensible debate (if talking about meaningless stuff that sells meaningless products could ever be described as sensible!) in 10, maybe 20 years time.

In the meantime it's always fun to guess though isn't it? So who would you think is the person most likely to be remembered as the digital daddy? At the moment my money would be either on the artist Jonathan Harris or Ben Palmer from Barbarian, with an each way bet on me and Flo ;-)

Has the Dairy Milk Gorilla stopped beating?

1225254 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:44:00 GMT

Campaign suggests that, despite TNS figures showing Galaxy significantly outstripping sales of Dairy Milk we should applaud the Gorilla ad because, if nothing else, it has performed a service to the advertising industry. I'm sure Cadbury's are delighted. Even Private Eye pointed out that while Dairy Milk was breathing new life into Phil Collins, Galaxy was targeting core female chocolate afficionados with a tie-in to the release of Sex and The City.

Far be it from me to suggest that an old fogey like Bill Bernbach has anything to teach the young guns at Fallon, but he did say "Technique for its own sake can be disastrous. Because, after a while, you're so anxious to do things differently and to do them better and funnier and more brilliantly than the next guy, that that becomes the goal of the ad, instead of selling the merchandise".

Although imaginative and lovingly crafted you do have to ask, did the Gorilla sell the product by appealing to people likely to buy it? Was there too much Gorilla and too little brand? In its viral format, did it lead them effortlessly to a campaign site packed full of choccy stuff? Did it capture any data? Or does this Gorilla have no clothes? What do you think?

Search results matching tag 'Bill Bernbach'

Who will be the Digital David Ogilvy?

Has the Dairy Milk Gorilla stopped beating?