Re: The Power of Persuasion

I tend to purchase more store brand products than name brands, especially after I've looked at the labels and found that they include the exact same ingredients. You'll find all kinds of up&up in my stuff, which is a perfect example of my tendency to be more engaged by the ads for the store:

And Target's Youtube Channel. And Target's Instagram. Even though I kind of feel like this is too easy as an example of strong campaign work, I have to say that I'm consistently impressed with Target's branding--somehow I find their advertising consistent and still fresh at the same time, and this always feels true, year after year. The "Expect more. Pay less" campaign seems particularly effective to me because it says exactly what Target wants to be known for--higher quality than competitors with lower price points and lower prices than competitors with similar product lines--and (based on anecdotal evidence anyway) has come to be known for in the last decade or so. While I may not always agree with the messages sent in their ads, I always find their ads visually engaging and memorable. 

Part of the reason that I'm not particularly convinced by campaigns for products is that very question of message--my whole background is in analyzing texts (what up, English lit majors!), and in teaching other people how to analyze texts (what up, English teachers!), so it's difficult for me sometimes to take ads at face value without recognizing unintended irony. So, like Jasmine (that plastic bag campaign is great) and Sharmia (the air pollution and--much as I hate to admit it--the McDonald's arches from light both stood out to me), at least from a design and communication standpoint, if not from a consumer standpoint, I react most strongly to ads that are clever, have some interaction/recognition of their placement/environment, and/or are unusual and unexpected.

Here are some campaigns that I remember being impressed by when I saw them or heard about them:

A WWF video that uses the shadow of an overhang to illustrate its point:

An ambient/installation advertisement for Nationwide at the company's headquarters during its "Life comes at you fast" campaign:

An ad for HBO's Game of Thrones's third season premiere that took over a spread in The New York Times, and earned as much digital media attention:

(HBO has some incredibly creative advertising--the vampire rights posters they put out before True Blood first premiered were clever, too.)

The Darth Vader commercial for Volkswagen, which is probably only interesting to me because it's cute and connects with some nerdy nostalgia though that does show some awareness on the part of the brand of a shift in culture in the early 2010s toward this kind of nerdy nostalgia (and I think this ad would make an interesting discussion of how gender is presented/interpreted here):

The Oreo ad that came out via Twitter minutes after the Super Bowl blackout, listed here as one of the most memorable ads of 2013:

So, I guess what's consistent in my taste is that these are clever ads that key in to cultural trends, or react to events of interest to the desired audience, occur in unexpected places and in unexpected ways, and that's what really gets people's attention. It's the surprise of seeing the shadow of a dragon flying overhead cast onto your newspaper when you turn the page (they did it against the face of HBO's building in LA, too) and the knowledge that many of the readers of the NYT will see that and make the connection to the show ad in the bottom corner because they already watch, but also that many readers of that paper might not have watched the show because it's fantasy, a genre not particularly associated with NYT readers (perhaps erroneously). And then, the next question is, now that you've got someone's attention, does that translate to the audience doing what you want them to do? And to me that's the more difficult step--it's rarely a question of knowing what we should do, but what is going to make us actually change a habit and do it? Full disclosure--besides watching GOT (of which I was a fan before this ad came out) and generally wishing I had more money that I could give to charities like WWF, I haven't been moved by any of these ads to purchase their products. [Though perhaps there is something to be said about being bemused by a brand's ads in terms of creating a generally positive reaction to them...?]

In looking for links to these ads and where to borrow the images, I came across a couple interesting ideas that were new to me in this kind of unexpected advertisements--one is reverse graffiti, which is where a company power washes the sidewalk with a stencil so the ad reveals a clean sidewalk until it gets covered up gradually in grime. This idea might be especially interesting as a way to rethink sustainability and the impact of advertising on climate change and waste. But, like anything else, it has to make sense for the location/context and the product and the audience.