Karen and I went to the Battle for the HeArt last night in downtown Minneapolis and it was great. It was all about defining a new type of creativity because what was working, no longer is. People are blocking ads on the internet, switching channels during commercial breaks and not really paying that much attention to advertising. So, a new way of creating advertising is being created.
What it all boiled down to was interaction. If it’s not interactive, it’s not going to work as well.
One of the keynote speakers was Chuck Porter who has worked with BMW Mini, Virgin Atlantic, Burger King and many others. He showed ads that took traditional advertising to the next level and it was amazing. One advertising campaign he worked on was for Google. Since Google doesn’t advertise, it wasn’t supposed to be traditional advertising. It had to be creative and different . The idea they came up with was to create billboards and put them outside some of biggest technology colleges in the country. The billboards gave a technical question like: “{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits e}.com.” If you took the time to figure it out, you go to the answer website and you’d get prompted with another question. Chuck said there were like four questions or so and if you figured them out you’d be prompted with Google application. The advertising was creative, had a specific target and interactive.
The other main speaker was Joseph Jaffe who talked more about the new definition of creativity and that interactivity is everything. It’s all about letting the user take control. Everything from TV spots that you can order ‘fake’ products (marketing pieces) or internet ads that allow you explore and interact with an advertisement without ever leaving the page you are on. Some of the examples were so good it made me want to turn off adblock.
Over all I really enjoyed the evening and the speakers. It’s interesting to see the things that some of the best advertising people are doing and why. It’s not black and white and the internet is now playing a big roll in all advertising. It’s more about getting the viewer involved and letting them feel like they are in control.
