Monthly Archives: July 2008

This ad features an image of a deadly snake coiled around a phone called the LG Dare. The headline reads:

Dare you to touch one.

Call me cowardly, but when someone dares me to touch a poisonous snake, I usually reply, “Are you f-ing crazy?” Then I run.

I’m not sure this is the reaction that the folks at LG and Verizon Wireless were going for.

The message: Children’s Zyrtec works on indoor and outdoor allergens.

Could this ad be more perfect in communicating the message?

I might have used the product name in the headline. But even without the name, your eye is directed from the headline, diagonally down to the image of the product in the lower right corner. The image is a good size and the name of the product is legible.

Notice how the designer used the colors of the packaging in the ad. The red carpet and green grass mirror the red and green of the product package.

This one works.

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, Toyota comes along with this ad, as if to say, “Don’t be jaded. We will show you things you will not believe.”

I must admit, when I first saw this ad, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I spent about twenty-odd minutes (and they were odd minutes) studying the ad, trying to find the meaning. A strange glowing sphere, the headline:

Make Tuesday a Saturday.

Then it hit me. Time travel! Toyota is showing us that the Toyota Sequoia can be used to transport time machines.

The ad features two large photos, and then four small photos at the bottom of the page. We’ll read the images like a comic strip to try to decipher the meaning.

In the first photo, we see a glowing sphere in a field, throwing out what looks like sparks. The headline tips us off that this is a time machine.

In the second photo, some contemporary-looking humans are seen rolling the time machine. There’s something inside, maybe aliens, or time travelers, or alien time travelers. The humans rolling the time machine appear to be helping the time travelers. They look happy that the time travelers have arrived safely.

Then there’s some copy that reads, in part:

…Sequoia allows you to see a weekend where others see a weekday.

This is clearly a reference to the fact that the Toyota Sequoia can help move time machines, as we will see.

The next panel shows two time machines near a Toyota Sequoia. This is followed by an image of the Sequoia alone. It looks big enough for the job. The next panel shows the time machines in their deflated state, ready to be moved into the Sequoia for transport back to wherever one stores time machines. My guess is San Francisco. The last panel shows the time travelers and their helpers preparing to leave the scene.

There’s a subheadline that says:

ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY.

I agree. Nothing about this ad is ordinary.

For the most part, I like this ad from Audible.com. It’s well-designed, the copy does a reasonably good job explaining the product, and there’s an offer for a free product.

The headline:

Bookshelf.
Without the Dust.

The problem is that after reading the headline and looking at the image, I thought it was an ad for electronic books, the kind you read on a reader. I had to read the copy to understand that this is an ad for audiobooks.

If your ad gives the reader the impression that it’s for something other than what you’re selling, you have a problem.

Imagine an ad with the headline that says: Good Eatin’. The photo shows a kid eating a big juicy hamburger in a fast food restaurant. Naturally, you’re going to think that you’re looking at an ad for a burger joint. The copy says:

Good eatin’ can be messy. New Moisty-Wipes cleans kids’ hands better than the leading brand. And they have a pleasing scent that kids love. Moms love them, too.

Nothing in the ad prepared you for the fact that it’s for moist wipes. You had to shift gear and reframe the ad’s message in your mind (if you bothered reading the copy at all). Once you made the shift, it was too late; the advertiser lost you.

There’s also the matter of the device shown in the ad. It looks like an iPhone. Are Audible’s audiobooks only for iPhone users?

I searched the company’s web site to find out. I had to dig a bit but eventually found that audio can be listened to on hundreds of AudibleReady devices, including the Apple iPod, Creative Zen, SanDisk Sansa and several popular GPS devices.

Why not say that in the ad? Then say: To check if your device is compatible, visit our web page at… This gives readers an additional incentiveto visit the site. Once the reader has gone to the site to check on their device (after all, they’ve been offered a free audiobook), Audible can focus on signing them up right there on the spot.

Makes sense to me.

In this ad, British Airways tips its hat to Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte. The text in Magritte’s painting, The Treachery of Images (shown below) translates as:

This is not a pipe.

In the painting, Magritte tells us that we’re not looking at a pipe. We’re looking at an image of a pipe—a representation of the object, not the obect itself.

In the ad, British Airways uses the headline:

This is Not a Plane.

The copy tells us that we’re not looking at a plane, we’re looking at

…part of a complete travel experience designed around you. Blah blah blah blah…

It’s a plane. Or a picture of a plane—a picture of a plane above a headline, that’s above some copy that no one will read. 

Here’s what the reader sees:

A plane, this is not a plane, open skies, turn the page.

British Airways paid a lot of money to create and run this ad. Not only won’t the reader of the ad get the message, they won’t even know what company the ad is for. The words British Airways appear once, in tiny print, as if it was an afterthought.

Here’s a surrealist riddle:

Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: A fish.