Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [91]
“Advertising is so clearly an international pursuit now,” said Jamie Barrett, senior vice president and creative director at one of America’s most consistently creative agencies, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. “It feels almost provincial to be talking about work in a regional or even national sense. To have any real context as a creative person, or any real inspiration, you need to know what’s going on around the world. And to get that sense, the best place to go is Cannes.”
Perhaps this is why this year more people from more countries than ever have come to Cannes. They want to find out if branding yet to come is indeed all about interactive, where seemingly only the whim of public opinion can make the difference between a branded cultural phenomenon watched and shared and commented on by millions and just another piece of orphaned video in the YouTube ghetto. They want to know who or what will rise up and save the industry and justify their expense reports and find the brightest, shiniest new way to sell a world of goods to our globalized, brand-obsessed, logo-saturated planet. They want to know what we all want to know, always: What’s next?
I was tempted to ask our unsettled friend in the street. But I’d come to Cannes to find out for myself.
Plus, it’s only Sunday. Make that Monday.
The Future of Advertising, Apparently, Will Have Nothing to Do with Advertising
Consider these early prizewinners at the festival: the first involves a minute-and-a-half video featuring either a very talented gorilla or a human in an incredibly convincing gorilla suit playing drums to a classic Phil Collins song (“In the Air Tonight”) and ends with a picture of a Cadbury milk chocolate bar and the tagline “A glass and a half full of joy.” The gorilla “ad,” created by Fallon London, began innocently and traditionally enough as a 2007 British TV spot, but it took on an entirely new life online. According to the Cadbury gorilla’s very own Wikipedia entry, it received more than 500,000 views in the first week it was posted. Current online view totals are estimated at more than 10 million. In addition, hundreds of parody videos, many also viewed more than a million times, began to appear online. So, in essence, a piece of viral online branding claimed a Grand Prix in a category that was historically the domain of the best television commercial in the world.
The drum-playing, Grand Prix–winning ape was only the beginning for a festival that would become, after years of so much bullshit, skepticism, and hype, online/360/viral/interactive advertising’s coming-out party. For instance, another Grand Prix winner, for McCann Erickson’s campaign for the Halo 3 video game, revolved around a series of mind-bending, imagined documentaries about the futuristic Halo 3 universe, as well as one about the making of a twelve-hundred-square-foot battle diorama, a monument “created in the year 2607” and dedicated to those who died “in the greatest battle in human history.” Oh yeah. There were TV ads for the Halo 3 launch, but none won anything at Cannes.
Yet another Grand Prix went to an Orwellian interactive mystery that included scavenger hunts, cryptic clues on T-shirts, and planted USB drives in concert arena bathrooms for, of all things, a new album titled Year Zero by the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. The combination of the Cadbury, Halo 3, and Year Zero wins had made a definitive statement: the age of inflicted media (traditional TV, print, radio, and pop-up ads that bombard consumers) has given way to an era where the consumer controls the interaction with a brand. And if the message is not compelling, immersive,