For Facebook today has become more like some 2am infomercials.
This is a follow-up to my earlier post about Volkswagen’s don’t-text-and-drive ad.
Advertising is full of amazing coincidences. The duplication of an idea isn’t necessarily a ripoff, because all of us are trolling in the same stream of pop culture ideas and images. It is inevitable that people will sometimes hook onto the same thought.
But, having said that, I just got the above student ad from Tom Monahan, who is a legendary creative director and, these days, sought-after creative coach. Here’s what Tom has to say: “Evan Dunn wrote and art directed these. He’s now a writer at Arnold, Boston, doing quite wonderful work. These outdoor boards were part of a pitch he participated in when he interned at agency Duffy & Shanley in Providence in 2009. They took the top student prize at the 2010 Hatch Awards in Boston. I’ve seen other somewhat similar text and drive campaigns since Evan did these. But nothing as close as the VW ad.”
The prize for originality definitely goes to Evan, because texting three years ago wasn’t the epidemic that it is today. However, in the interests of the teaching moment, I’d like to point out the ways in which Team Volkswagen improved on Evan’s brilliant idea.
First of all, advertising is often a game of inches in a literal sense. VW’s larger layout and added white space give the scary idea more room to breathe, thus making it more powerful. (Please keep this in mind when you’re doing spec ads for your book.)
Next, VW’s line more closely replicates what the autocorrect function would do to your text message. That makes the VW version more believable than Evan’s.
And finally, the dry understatement of the VW line makes it more frightening than Evan’s lines, which spell out the calamity. VW allows us to bring our own imaginings to the scene, and our own imagination is the most terrifying place in the universe. As I never tire of saying, the Alien movies stopped being scary once they started showing the whole creature.
Texting Ecstasy 12 on Flickr. “Don’t forget to email that most important message.”
(Source: aroutinelife)
The latest study on Global Mobile Statistics from various Independent agencies reveal some startling numbers. Here are some highlights »
- 30% Of The World’s Mobile Users Live In India And China
- 87% of the world’s population today is mobile equipped
- China Mobile is the largest mobile operator in the world
The stats also revealed that SMS (text messaging or texting) is the king of mobile messaging and “by 2013 worldwide SMS revenue is forecast to break the USD 150 billion mark for the first time, and will continue to grow for the next two years.”
(Source: mobithinking.com)
The SMS to mobile music platform means that fans can text a song’s name with a short code to connect to a mobile music store and tracks can then be downloaded for a price determined by the label or artist that owns it. (via Music2Text Launches Publicly to Spread Music Via SMS)
