Great ad! Too bad it sucked.
I’m hoping you can help me figure out an ad that’s been intriguing me for the past month or so. It runs in The Coast (Halifax’s alternative weekly newspaper) and has a visual of a plump, ripe banana, but the peel has been pulled back to reveal that the fruit inside is battered and bruised. Very interesting visual!
I guess the product might have something to do with food safety? Insecticides? Eating local? Possibly even skin care? I don’t know, because I’m also guessing the art director who did that ad is still in his/her 20s and has never read Ogilvy on Advertising.
You see, I can’t read this bloody ad. It’s four colour with a very dark background and the type, which is in a very small (yet elegant font, I’m sure) is set in reverse. Even with perfect registration (which almost never happens) it’s impossible for me to read. And yes, that’s with my reading glasses on.
Now I know you young’uns out there don’t like to hear about rules and to even bring up Ogilvy is to invite comparisons to Grandpa Simpson, but let’s just take a moment to review one simple thing he had to say about typography:
“…do you think an advertisement can sell if nobody can read it? You can’t save souls in an empty church.”
Sorry banana ad – I can’t read you, and I’m not willing to try. That great visual stopped me in a good way, but then your type stopped me in a bad way. And I bet I’m not the only one.
May I suggest you visit two websites before you design again?
The first has several copies of Ogilvy available at a really great price.
http://www.amazon.ca/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/1853756156
The second lets you play the “Which ad pulled best” game. Always an eye opener.
http://www.gallup-robinson.com/adgameindex.html
Let’s remember – we’re not in this business to create little works of art. We’re here to make the cash register ring.
Thank you again for saying what really needs to be said.
Hey Marg, I have to comment on your insights into the Pur Alternatives campaign.
Brad Dykema an I did that campaign many months ago, and I can’t say I disagree with your comments about the type.
When I did the original campaign, the ad sizes were much larger, and the type was, at that point, very legible.
As you know, once these campaigns are handed over to clients they tend to run them as often as they can, which normally means as small as possible.
This client sells skin care products that are free of the chemicals that most other skin care products are free of. The idea Brad and I cam up with was simply, people don’t realize that the products they use to maintain their exterior beauty, can actually be damaging you on the inside.
Being a seasoned writer, I’m sure you’re not unfamiliar with the concept of metaphor.
The first run of these ads was great. Big and beautiful, readable and clear.
That said, once the original campaign ran, I turned the files over to Trampoline, and I’m not sure if the client is simply scaling down the ads to fit the ad space, but it does seem that no-one is making sure that at a smaller size the type is nearly illegible.
I can’t argue your point about the type size.
But I can say that I unbiasedly believe these ads, in concept, are solid, well thought out, and creative.
As for how they have been reproduced over the last month, since the first run, it does seem less care has been taken to make sure they work a s communicative advertising. The type is lost. Thus the message mute.
So again, given the fact I have not been involved in the production of these ads since the first run, and there are technical problems with the reprinting, and size of the type, I would think you, as an ad professional, would be willing to distinguish between a poorly resized/printed ad, and an ad that, in your words “sucked”.
But I guess it’s fun to trash work.
Lets go find yours now.
Thanks for commenting Mike. As I said in my post, the visual on that ad was absolutely brilliant and had real stopping power. I never saw the ad at full size, but even in the scaled-down version, it was eye catching. And that’s no small feat in such a cluttered marketplace. But in the scaling down, as you said, the readability of the type got totally lost. And I, as a consumer, got totally turned off. It’s too bad that happened, because the fact is, that even a brilliant concept loses the battle for attention when anything about it becomes too much work.
Somebody somewhere should have looked at that ad again after resizing and noticed that the type wasn’t holding up. The client wasn’t done justice if the agency simply sized-up, sized-down, and didn’t consider legibility. The client is paying for impressions and possible conversions and they aren’t getting their money’s worth if all these technical issues are getting in the way. Time for a re-design.
As an ad person, I never forgot the visual of that rotten banana in a beautiful skin. As a woman who has put up with acne my whole life, I am totally interested in any new skin care product. As a middle-aged busy person, if it’s hard to read, I turn the page. And that sucks for both of us, because maybe this product might be the one that really works for me.
I notice that Leard doesn’t say HOW the banana got bruised. I sure hope it was Photoshop, and that no real bananas were harmed. I’m proud to say that, besides causing some necessary damage to a few puppies and kittens for the sake of art, my ads have never had any effect on anyone.