Not too long ago I wrote about an Apple banner ad that I thought was absolutely spectacular (Eeyore At Twelve O’Clock). Unfortunately, it only ran, at least on The New York Times site, for a day or so, but I hope you had a chance to see it. There’s a different one running today. However, if you miss it, you will not have missed much. It’s very ordinary. But it does demonstrate, once again, how wrong McLuhan was–at least when it comes to advertising. The medium is not the message. The message is the message. And when it fails to be the least bit engaging, it fails. Period. Regardless of the medium.
But while we’re on the subject of ads being engaging, can anyone explain to me why the advertising for photographic equipment is generally so banal? Years back, Nikon proved this didn’t have to be the case. Yet here we have these two examples–and they’re hardly the worst of the lot–that miss by a mile. In the case of Pentax, by doing a remarkable job of talking to itself and itself only. (Sure hope everyone in their sales, marketing and engineering departments enjoyed the ad because they’re probably the only people who bothered to look at it. 
And then this one from Sony which commits the cardinal sin of matching a fairly intriguing visual with a headline that tells us exactly what the visual is showing us. (Assuming we’re too dumb to figure that out.)
Lastly, there’s this travesty from DeBeers, which has to be at the head of the pack for the “most tired cliche turned into an even more enervated piece of advertising” award for 2007. Of all the brands out there, you’d think DeBeers would know a thing or two about “engagement”, but apparently that’s no longer the case. During its halcyon days as a cornerstone account at NW Ayer, the brand did lots of extraordinary advertising. And even when it shifted to this funereal art direction JWT chose to give it, the headlines to the ads remained pretty damn engaging. But the only ring this one has is that of desperation.
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