I've worked as a marketer for most of my career to date, and I know how long it can sometimes take to bring a great creative idea to life.
The ideations, the presentations, the revisions, the approvals, the execution, the bookings... argh! The process can be challenging, to say the least.
Perhaps that's why I have a soft spot for great "opportunistic ads": when companies and their agency partners quickly identify a cultural moment and capitalize on it in a way that makes sense for the business.
Like this IKEA Canada ad, for instance...
Created by agency rethink, this simple, playful, clever ad capitalizes on a situation I wrote about last week, where soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo removed two Coca-Cola bottles placed in from of him during a press conference (for an event sponsored by Coca-Cola) and encouraged people to drink water instead.
The fast response from IKEA Canada and rethink? An ad for a reusable beverage container named "Cristiano", in keeping with the well-known, foreign-sounding nomenclature for IKEA products.
The pièce de résistance, of course, is the fact that the ad specifies this particular bottle is to be used, "for water only".
Brilliant.