Zoom: This ad for the Buick Enclave, right, ran as a full-page spread in the NYTimes in November. It caught my attention because the car zooms in from the right, breaking into the "regular copy" and disrupting the news. It broke the (traditional) boundaries, blurring the line between advertising and editorial. In doing research, I found that the NYTimes also ran a full story on the car in its editorial space in September. Which is advertising and are the lines getting fuzzy between paid and non-paid advertising? This is a different form of embedded advertising but, like embedded advertising, you aren't really sure who is paying for what space.
The Dove Ad: A top award-winning ad which you've probably already seen, was just listed as one of USA Today's top ads of 2007 as the best online 'viral' video: Unilever Dove's award-winning 76-second ad "Evolution" turned into a Web video by Ogilvy & Mather in Canada, showing how trickery is used to turn a real woman into a glamorous billboard image. The video, seen more then 10 million times, also generated backlash. Some consumers saw a double-standard by Unilever: promoting self-esteem in ads for Dove women's products as part of their three-year "Campaign for Real Beauty", while often featuring sexy, scantily clad women in ads for its male-oriented Axe fragrances. Resonance: This message pushed boundaries in two ways: one, by disclosing tricks behind techniques used to market to women and secondly, by word-of-mouth viral distribution.
The ad won an unprecendented two Grand Prix awards (including the best-of-show) at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival last summer. Ad Age named it the best global campaign of the year. The agency says that this ad has to have the highest rate of investment in the history of advertising ... "With over 150 million U.S. dollars worth of free media exposure through millions of hits on YouTube and every talk show in North America and Europe singing its praises, our Unilever clients say this piece has to have the highest ROI in the history of advertising."
Dove was looking for something to make the Self Esteem Fund more visible to a larger audience... The client had one idea, but the ad agency, "asked if we could also shoot ‘Evolution’ if we could do it within the budget. We asked because we knew that although ‘Evolution’ didn’t meet the brief, we knew we were onto something."
Just think -- The Dove Self-Esteem Fund's goal was to reach 5 million young women by 2010. By now, it has reached....?
Dove's Evolution Ad:
To me, the Dove ad is both "freeing" and "sad".
Posted by: Rhonda | January 17, 2008 at 09:09 AM
You always heighten my awareness in media, and bring reality up close and personal. I love how you dispel the artificial, and applaud the real, in each of us.
I never leave your blog without feeling enlightened, or uplifted.
Posted by: Bellezza | January 17, 2008 at 07:38 PM