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Sometimes the most creative ad—isn’t really an ad.
The 2019 Clio Awards are here. What do you suppose some of the most celebrated and awarded advertising campaigns have in common this year? Aside from being original, inspiring, brave, bold and innovative? What else could some of these gold winners from around the world possibly share?
Some of the winners aren’t ads. Not in the traditional sense at least.
They don’t look, sound or feel like ads at all. So, what are they? I’d like to call them really interesting selling ideas. In fact, they’re living proof that the less your advertising looks and sounds like an ad, the more likely your audience will spend some quality time with it and separate your brand from the thousands of ads your customers are bombarded with daily.
Now without further ado, introducing a new creative advertising award category I’d like to call, The RISIs (Really Interesting Selling Ideas):
Wait…A coupon for Burger King…That sends you to McDonald’s?
FCB’s ‘The Whopper Detour’ campaign promotes Burger King’s new mobile ordering. You can get a Whopper for a penny, but only if you open the app at McDonald’s. Check out what others have said about it in the video below.
Reviving the “Battle of the Sexes”
TBWA\Chiat\Day produced a campaign for adidas which promoted the re-release of the shoes that Billie Jean King wore when she beat Bobby Riggs in the 1973 ‘Battle of the Sexes’ match. The video spot focused on the background of the story and the client’s repainting of U.S. Open attendees’ shoes with the blue-and-white style.
Instead of doing a 30-second Super Bowl spot, how about a 30-minute Broadway show?
DDB produced a campaign for Skittles that was about as risky as it gets. ‘Broadway the Rainbow’ was a 30-minute Broadway Show, complete with its own advertising campaign, to promote Skittles. The show called attention to marketing manipulation with an original score of songs like “Advertising Ruins Everything” and fake ads in the play bill. It really worked. The campaign earned $50,000,000 in earned media and Skittles experienced a 5.6% increase in sales.
Watch a company staff meeting on workplace safety that you will never forget.
McCann pulled no punches in making ‘Generation Lockdown’—a public service campaign for March for Our Lives. You won’t believe what you’re watching as an elementary-school-aged child leads a training seminar on self-preservation and what to do in the event of a lockdown.
How do you help empower German women to convince their government to eliminate an excessive 19% tax on tampons?
Write a bestselling book about it . Scholz & Friends Berlin created the genius idea as part of a campaign to bring international attention to taxing tampons. Since the campaign’s release, the book has sold tens of thousands of copies, the Change.org page dedicated to getting Germany’s tampon tax revoked, earned over 175,000 signatures, and female German parliament members are pressing for the issue to be discussed in the German Legislature.
How do you teach kids to appreciate cultural diversity in one of the most homogenous countries on the planet?
R/GA Tokyo’s touching campaign focuses on pluralizing ‘hada-iro’—the Japanese word for skin color. The campaign was an attempt to change the Japanese opinion that skin color is a single tone. Shiseido, a Japanese personal care company, created a set of crayons that were produced by scanning the skin color of Japanese school children. The box set of crayons features numbered colors that are named after the child who was scanned.