Good Food, Good Life, Bad poster site

Here is a sorry example we spotted under London Bridge of how traditional large format paper poster sites can look toe curlingly shabby ... with the creative execution unintentionally designed to amplify the paper peeling inevitability of this over posted site.

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Simply a Skinful Effort

Well-known skincare brand Simple recently launched its ‘Kind to City Skin’ campaign, with the aim of educating consumers about the detrimental effects urban living can have on our skin.

It’s an interesting push for the brand, eschewing the usual skin-type-based advertising in favour of products tailored to lifestyle. Based on the amount of on- and off-line discussion generated, the campaign has so far been performing well.

Simple has set up an ‘Advisory Board’ on their website, consisting of dermatologists, nutritionists and psychiatrists, and is shedding articles providing skin-care advice. This is combined with considerable paid-for media presence on TV and in print, as well as various outdoor formats, with ads and content videos also running on social media.

The campaign has been targeted geographically, with a presence at core high footfall commuter hot-spots, running in free-sheets and across multi-format key placement outdoor sites. It highlights the skin detriments which can result from daily commuting – or, as Simple call it, ‘commuter skin’. With an estimated cool £7m laid down for this campaign, this appears to be a well-rounded strategy, thoroughly considered from all angles. 

Which makes it simply confusing to see that, having chosen to take over the huge 40x3m digital motion site at Waterloo Station, Simple have then decided to run with 4 consecutive copies of the same ad.

Given the size and advertising power of this giant digital surface – and the 17-minute average dwell time of its captive audiences – it seems a real waste to feature 4 repeated consecutive creatives. There is so much that can be done here!

http://www.jcdecaux.co.uk/rail/rail-digital/motionwaterloo

This is even more a pity given generic content of these particular ads in the first place. The irony of using a highly-polished digital surface to advertise a ‘city skin’ campaign could have been used to great effect here, but it appears lost to the advertisers. Lazy, Simple, lazy!

Or was it, perhaps, a touch… over-Simplified?

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Collaboration of Creative and Media

They say "the Medium is the Message" - and campaigns similar to the following for Swansea Bay are illustrative of this.

Headlines such as "Make the call" placed on the side of a phone box indicate a well considered and planned campaign, rich in attention to detail of message and placement that big money campaigns executed by larger brands often don't have.

The creative and media teams have clearly collaborated to construct a tailor-made message to suit the medium delivering it.

Another great example of this (for one of our clients) is Boss Revolution:

An international callling card available to buy in select convenience stores in key areas across the country with certain pockets of international ex Pat residents.

Ads were created to be placed on phone boxes situated in proximity to point of purchase with tactical relevant messaging relating to 'A new way to make International Calls' targeting select audiences by location.

Rather than splashing £100m on a blanket blitz of all media (which is currently being done by BT Sport), smaller companies often work harder to ensure their ads and media selection are tailored more specifically to maximize budgets and resultant effectiveness;

A far more considered approach in terms of cost and creativity. No matter how big or small the budget may be. 

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