Kick Ass Creative (Take One)
Some pretty cool online advertising was presented by seasoned interactive creative directors at the Kick Ass Creative session. I won’t describe the more than a dozen campaigns for Adidas, Chrysler, 1-800 Flowers and Miller, among others. We’re savvy Internet hobos and marketing junkies; we’ve probably seen them all before on our online peregrinations.
Better yet, we’ve experienced them. And that seems to be the point coming from the four presenters at the panel – Brooke Nanberg, ECD at Avenue A/Razorfish, Mike Yapp, EVP at Carat Interactive, Dorian Sweet, CD at agency.com and Colleen DeCourcy, ECD at Organic Inc.
This isn’t advertising as usual. In fact, there really is no such thing as online vs. offline. Everything is everything. And when it comes to online creative, the past is the past. As Brooke Nanberg put it, “Captivate new experiences. There is a heart in what you create in an online experience.” That heart is the ability to surprise and delight the consumer
According to Yapp, the way to do this is threefold:
1. Make the online creative cinematic.
2. Make it non-linear.
3. Make it fun.
Online creative is not just an afterthought to traditional TV advertising as well. The days are waning when agencies just hand off some video to their online creative with the simple directive to “make it interactive.” Nowadays, it is a collaborative effort, and the way to get to remarkable creative is to build close relationships with the clients, which in turn breeds trust among all parties involved. Then some truly breakthrough stuff can come out, like using IM and ICQ to make the experience even more interactive and personal. In Europe, the adidas site saw its IM functionality receive clicks from 23% of all visitors. A piece of creative is that much more compelling if you can share it with friends.
And at the end of the day, please don’t create anything annoying.
