One of the simplest ways to get beyond ordinary advertising is to start off by questioning all the mandatories that typically go into an ad. Helmut Krone, for example, was notoriously resistant to putting the sponsor’s logo in an ad because he believed the entire look of the ad should be its signature. Something he–and precious few others–ever managed to pull off with any regularity.
Another advertising “best practice” (sic) sometimes called into question is the headline. I mean, who says an ad has to have a headline? No one, as far as I know. (Heck, it doesn’t even need a sponsor to enter it in most award shows.) However, to make this work the body copy has to be extraordinarily good. Which is hardly the case here.
The Merrill Lynch ad is visually striking, I’ll admit. But no one’s going to labor too long under the mistaken impression that Jim Riswold wrote it. Same with this Quaker ad. Hand such an assignment to David Fowler (back when Hector was a pup) or Mark Fenske (if he’s in the mood) and you might have something. As it stands, what you have is pedestrian copy, with the Quaker ad also featuring the words I circled, which by virtue of their size create a sort of “stealth” headline. And a lamentably ordinary one at that.
Finally, there’s this Hyundai ad, which may or may not belong in the “headless horsemen” camp depending on whether you call that single line of text a very short piece of body copy or a headline set in the most demure point size imaginable. In either case, two things worry me about this ad. Thing 1: The imagery is getting perilously close to the Infinity “rocks & trees” launch campaign of years ago, which sank like a stone. And from a message standpoint, it smacks of that Subaru advertising, circa 1990, which came to an equally ignominious end.
None of which rules the approach out. It merely suggests that before people lose their heads, somebody might want to check and see if Janet Champ or Neil French is available to write it.
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