Advertising

Advertising and marketing thoughts.

The Enduring Magic of Motion

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

Video drives powerful branding. On air, online, in environment: the power of moving imagery to evoke emotional responses is unparalleled. Today we have more places than ever to showcase moving imagery and attract attention.

That wasn’t the case in 1973, particularly in the gray environment of Leipzig, East Germany. Long before HD flatscreens or mobile video, and years before reunification, two graphic designers created a neon advertisement that has since become a beloved landmark: the “Löffelfamilie” or “Spoon Family.”

At 40′ wide and 23′ high, no passerby can miss the nuclear family gathered around the table to enjoy the delicious products of “VEB Feinkost Leipzig”, a catchy title translating to “People-Owned Enterprise Delicatessen of Leipzig.” The ad copy is not particularly better, translating to “fruit and vegetable preserves, table ready-made dishes, double concentrated soups” (yum!).

The illustrative style is ham-fisted and the animation is rudimentary and relentlessly repetitive. The more than 650′ of colorful twisted neon was updated to more economical LED’s seven years ago. And keeping this relic in repair requires ongoing donations. If you’re in the neighborhood, send a text to 0900-LOEFFEL, which charges you a donation of 3€ to light the sign for three minutes.

Still, the size, colors, and simple motion continue to earn our attention.

For all the enormity of changes in communication, it’s remarkable how this endures.

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#HaveHerBack: From Awareness to Initiative to Action

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

The #MeToo movement and its immediate, widespread adoption raised awareness of the blatant sexism and privilege in Chicago advertising. It was nauseating to learn the firsthand accounts of people forced to deal with everything from institutionalized boorishness to outright criminal behavior. So when Ron D’Innocenzo, a colleague from Element 79 and current ECD at Golin, asked me to sit on a panel to discuss the issue, I agreed. But Ron insisted I first talk to Caroline Dettman, Golin’s CCO and the creator behind this initial #HaveHerBack event.

Caroline quickly let me know I’d be the only white male on the panel and that, while no one was looking to attack me specifically, I would inevitably represent the kind of dirtbags that forced this corrective initiative. Fair enough.

I went, I learned, and I walked away inspired by so many people working to evolve actionable steps to create a better, more inclusive way forward for the industry.

My heartfelt thanks to Caroline Dettmann, Liz Traines, Jewell Donaldson, Kat Gordon, Mary Pryor, and Megan Colleen McGlynn. You make this industry, and all of the people in it, far far better.

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Creativity Will Save Advertising. Again.

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

I know, I know–it’s too late; advertising’s already dead. Digital/social/experiential/big data killed it…

The only problem is this constant, dire drumbeat sounds juicy, it creates alarm, but it’s mostly just opinion or self-promotion. It’s clickbait.

If you want facts, follow the money. In the most recent case, digital entertainment powerhouse Netflix bid $300m to buy Regency Outdoor Advertising.

That’s right, the disruptive, disintermediating, digital content giant wants to buy a billboard company.

Their motivation is fascinating. Netflix noticed that big outdoor imagery stokes social sharing. People posted lots of shots of their “Netflix is a joke” campaign to Instagram which promoted their comedy line-up.

NetflixJoke.jpg

In other words, people share great creative.

These days, $300m might not sound like an earth-shattering number, but it represents the largest acquisition in Netflix history. Imagine; a leading digital giant offering to pay one third of a billion dollars on a oft-declared dying medium…a smart company wouldn’t do that unless they knew it worked.

And that’s a fact.

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This post originally appeared in Screen Magazine.

Score One for MassMutual vs. Russian Trollbots

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

I’m an unabashed fan of films that feature people being nice to people. When all of Bedford Falls shows up to support George Bailey, I tear up. When the ground support team works around the clock to create a hack for the overburdened CO2 scrubbers in Apollo 13 because failure is not an option, I tear up. Heck, when H. I. and Ed McDunnough get caught returning Nathan Jr. to the home where they stole him, only to have Nathan Sr. free them both with a wave of his pistol and the admonishment “Before you go off and do another foolish thing like busting up, I suggest you sleep on it…at least one night“–yep, waterworks. I just like seeing people being nice to people. So you can guess how I reacted to this epic, affirming, inspirational ad on the Olympics last night…

The perfect song and amazing true life stories, all told with many of the people directly involved in them, this ad exemplifies genuine emotion powerfully realized. If you want to read more about all the individual stories, you’ll find them here.

At a time when broadcast networks, self-interested lobbies, and foreign operatives actively work to divide us, this spot serves as a wonderful reminder of America at its best and how we can all do and be better. Mass Mutual, their agency collaborators at Johannes Leonardo, and Radical Media should take great pride in this work.

Yep, I teared up a bit. And I don’t care who knows it.

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Talking Super Bowl Stuff with Wendy & Bill

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

Every year, I look forward to this day and my annual Super Bowl commercial recap with WGN 720’s Bill Leff and Wendy Snyder. Aside from being pants-wettingly funny, Wendy and Bill always bring their own fascinating, non-advertising-centric perspectives and I walk away thinking about things a bit differently. Good conversations have that effect.

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On a side note, if your city ever gets an opportunity to host a Super Bowl, do it. It’s a lot of fun and brings a ton of energy to the downtown that more than makes up for all the visitors and their unimaginative “but it’s so cold” whining. Even better, if your city planners can install special lighting around the venue, maybe you too can create something half as amazing as this…or you can do it in post, whatever.

Prince

Almost two years gone and Prince still owns this city. Remarkable.

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Video: Evolving Beyond Selling

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

So yesterday, I was lucky enough to present for the West Michigan Content Strategy Meetup’s first-ever lunch and learn webinar.

Of course, being that it was ‘first ever’ and involved warring Apple and Google technology platforms, it was a bit of a car wreck; dropped signals, video blackouts, etc. But happily, like all things digital and video, you can fix it in post. So we did.

My thanks to my old friend Scott Smith and the charming and redoubtable Laura Bergells for making this a terrific experience, technical difficulties and all.

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Today’s Example of How Creativity Pays

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

Ad agencies struggle to convince clients to pay for creativity, mostly because we gave it away for years, trusting television’s healthy margins to more than cover the cost of development. And so we inadvertently devalued our industry’s one core asset that spans medium and format: the idea.

Which is why it’s so fun to hear the story of Max Lanman, who recently decided to help his girlfriend sell her car online. Actually, he used her old Honda to produce his idea of making a luxury car commercial around a junky car. Her vehicle was one of a whopping 382,298 Accords produced in 1996, but now, twenty one years and 141,000 miles later, her “Greenie” shows its age…

The thing is, this spot’s fun but not especially hilarious. A similar used car ad spoof featured on this blog back in May used outsized visual effects to far more hysterical effect. Yet the simple fact that Max took the time, made the effort, and did something delightfully unexpected in a tired, uninspiring venues made his work shine.

It also paid off handsomely. Kelley’s Blue Book values the Honda at just over $1400. After posting the spot on YouTube last Thursday, Max and his girlfriend listed the Accord on eBay for $500.

By the weekend, the bidding hit $150,000, and eBay took the listing down, understandably concerned about “illegitimate bidding.”

Now it’s back up and bidding currently hovers around $4300: almost ten times their initial asking price and well above the Blue Book value. All because of Max’s creative idea and approach.

Listing

eBay also released this statement: “Mr. Lanman is a talented filmmaker and we’re pleased that the eBay platform brought us together. We’re hoping to work on some creative video projects with him in the future.”

Wow. Nice work Max. Well played.

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Why Video Content? It’s Simple Neuroscience.

/ Dennis Ryan / 1 Comment

Seriously. Our brains process video imagery differently than text.

While researching this piece, a number of remarkable statistics popped up repeatedly. A particularly amazing one claimed we process visuals 600,000x faster than text. The problem is, like so many things on the internet, this claim wasn’t corroborated by any credible sources. Actually, they were compellingly argued against here. Oh well, live and Google. And Google again. Repeatedly.’

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A Nine Page Argument for Video Content

/ Dennis Ryan / 1 Comment

“He Shares His Slides On SlideShare.” Try saying that three times quickly…

Or just take a look at this short deck. It asserts the critical relevance of video content, as our marketplace continues moving away from text-based communications. It’s intentionally short because apparently, all these modern digital distractions have left us with the attention span of tree frogs.

For years, I loved making television commercials. Today, I’m genuinely excited to make all sorts of other video content for all sorts of other platforms and audiences. It is, in the words of the immortal Sammy Davis Jr., ‘a gas and a giggle.’

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Photo credit: Ray Hennessy

Five Reasons Why Every Brand Should Be Using Video…Presented on Video

/ Dennis Ryan / Leave a comment

Okay, so it’s a wee bit longer than sixty seconds, but the points remain…

For anyone who prefers written lists, here they are:

  1. Four times as many people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. Source: Animoto
  2. Viewers recall over 90% of a message after watching it on video, as opposed to 10% from reading text. Source: insivia
  3. Embedding video on landing pages can increase conversion by 80%. Source: Eyeview  (Self-imposed time constraints prevented me from sharing the other big number: video makes your site 53% more likely to show up on Google’s page one.)
  4. Visual content–particularly video–is forty times more likely to get shared.  Source: Buffer
  5. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users.  Source: Aberdeen Group

As you may have noticed, I’m particularly fond of number five. That’s basically a mic drop for video…

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Photo credit: Jakob Owens