ADdicted: An Ad I Hate to Love

You don't evaluate creative work on whether you like it or not. If you're not the target audience, you can absolutely hate it... and it can still be a fantastic, effective piece of work.

You evaluate creative work based on how well it delivers on the creative brief. Full stop.

I wrote those sentences in a November 2021 blog post aptly titled Evaluating Creative.

And this week, I found a great example of an ad I wish I didn't like so much.

This ad was developed by Ogilvy Germany for DB German Rail.

Everything about this ad, from the "camera off" images that appear instead of people's faces to the "Meetings should be meetings again" tagline that appears at the end, reinforces the idea that people who attend meetings virtually aren't really attending the meeting. They're not paying attention, they're busy doing other things.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that a company like DB, which likely lost significant revenue during the COVID years when people weren't travelling daily between their homes and offices, wants companies to believe "work from home" isn't effective or sustainable.

A very good friend of mine feels the exact same way; as it happens, she's a very senior executive at a global commercial real estate services firm.

But the idea that virtual meetings are automatically wasteful is just as ridiculous as the idea that in-person meetings are automatically valuable.

I have attended thousands of in-person meetings throughout my career, literally, and for far too many of them, my time would have been far better spent doing yoga

In fact, this ad may have provided three great examples of when virtual meetings can be more effective: go back and "watch" the ad again, only this time, close your eyes and pay attention to what you hear.

"... I'm really excited to share our new corporate structure..."

- heard while the man is ironing

"... For business year 2023, we're aiming for a substantial 14% increase in sales"

- heard while the woman is doing yoga

"In the next slide, you'll see the results of the study..."