Something interesting came up in class tonight. We were discussing the citibank campaign with the slogans telling you how money isn’t the most important thing and that they seem to be a kinder gentler bank.

Please note that I am not talking about their recent identity theft campaign, which is brilliant. Particularly the TV, although the print isn’t bad either. I am talking about the stark simple print and outdoor campaign.

My current ad teacher hates it. My previous ad teacher loved it.

There are admittedly some brilliant lines in the campaign, although they seem to be getting worse lately.

The idea is also a good one: position the bank as friendlier and less huge and corporate. It is the bank for people who aren’t obsessed with their money and just want their bank to work. It says that they understand that their customers have other priorities.

That idea is also the problem. Why exactly should we believe Citibank? The enormous corporation, parent to, among others, Solomon Smith Barney (via here). My current ad teacher has an account with Citibank and doesn’t find them particularly friendly.

I know. Citibank was there first. They made the claim so now people associate them with it. This actually works for the previously mentioned ID theft campaign. Other banks offer similar services, but Citibank was the first out with the ads highlighting it. Other companies will now seem like followers. But does it work with the other campaign. Citibank has, to put it mildly, a credibility problem.

It would be one thing if they genuinely tried to make the bank friendlier. In class a story was told about a store (Harrods I believe) which put out an ad campaign promising friendlier service. But they then backed it up buy holding their employees more accountable for being friendly. Citibank doesn’t seem to have made any changes to its large corporate business.

A couple of good lines make for some interesting ads, but the idea isn’t effective. I am not the only one who thinks so.

It is quite interesting how differently ad professionals can think.

Maybe more on this later. I have had no sleep recently and am running on fumes.

I have made quite a few additions to my main retouching site.

First of all: I added a new image, the lemonade shot(also seen here) to the layered image section.

It has six layers. Displaying every layer permutation would have taken 64(!) images, so you can only toggle each layer on or off. But you should still see how the image is put together. The original contained quite a few more layers of course.

An image of Katie Brown, just taken and retouched. Added to the People category.

The image that Colin, Phyllis and Delores (no link) used for their christmas card. They were styrofoam balls and I had to make them look wetter and more like snow cones.

An agency needed an image of a vanilla flower for an ad. We couldn’t find one in NYC in the middle of the winter. So I had to make one from other flowers based on nothing more than images found via google.

Speaking of J. Brown, here is another ad I retouched for them and Danon. Obviously copy has yet to be added.

Two images done for ads for FCB and partner for a Drug Free America. In prepping the image I am amazed how different the mug looks.

Another image for another ad. This one for Intercontinental hotels via the Zimmerman agency.

Which explains why this post is in the advertising category. I am advertising myself and most of my clients are ad agencies.

Cool Visual. Only OK ad. I would love to come up with a better ad to use such a striking image. Luckily I am still an ad student and can do stuff like getting an image and finding a client and strategy for it. Not that I have thought of anything.

I just got done with the second session of my new ad class after a little adventure.

So I went to the open house, met a professor I like and signed up for his class. I then show up last week for that class. No one was in the classroom. I stick around for a bit. Still no one. So I call the registration office.

The class was cancelled.

No one bothered to tell me, although they were supposed to. And my second choice was already full. So I walked over to the registration office in the snow (uphill both ways), and sign up for another class. Then I walked back, 4 doors down from where the other class was supposed to be, into my current class an hour late. But it was the first class so it didn’t really matter. I got my first assignment: an ad for clothing that has SPF 30 sun protection (those links are to the actual product we were advertising).

So now I just had the second session of class. It certainly wasn’t as good as my previous class. There are two teachers, one of whom I think is a lot more interesting than the other.

The other different thing is that this is my second ad class, so I know more than the rest of the class, most of whom are in their first class. This isn’t to disparage them; my first ads sucked too. But it worries me a bit; I hope that I am as challenged to make great, not just good, ads. This isn’t too unusual though. While there are a few more advanced classes, most people take several regular classes first to build their book. I don’t quite feel ready for the more advanced classes yet, but I still want to be challenged.

All I can say is that we’ll see.

I waited to talk about the Superbowl ads until I found a good, free view them. (Here is a good, but not free source).

My opinion:

They sucked

Maybe it is just my hyper-critical ad student mind but I thought they were much worse than in previous years. Come on, this is supposed to be the time most people actually want to watch advertising.

Lets start out on a positive note though. I liked the previously mentioned. I also found the Budweiser ad amusing, fairly creative and well targeted. I should mention that neither are great ads, such as I would want in my book.

I also didn’t hate the FedEx alien ad, or the Pepsi Bear ad. I also thought the Shards ’O Glass anti-smoking ad was one of the better “Truth” ads, which are normally incredibly annoying. This one made its point clearly in a fun way without driving me nuts.

Now on to the crap. Like the talking monkeys. I know bad adolescent humor is key to this category, but this is bad and obvious adolescent humor. Also, how many monkeys have we seen in Superbowls? Worst of all, you don’t end an ad with a talking monkey with the word “real”.

The adolescent humor wasn’t funny the AOL? Your new “high speed” service works only on the internet as you say, so why does it make the various bikes and cars go faster? It might have been funnier and made more sense if the vehicles fizzled comically. Maybe its since I am a techie and I wonder these things, but what exactly makes the new 9.0 faster. Its still dialup, limited to 56K.

And Pepsi? Just making shit up about a great man’s development doesn’t convince anyone. Talk about borrowed interest. More like stolen. Pried out of the hands of a dead man no less.

However the game was fairly exciting. It was the first football game I had seen since last time the Patriots one. It ended the same way, with the same guy kicking a field goal at the last minute to win the game.

Oh and Survivor afterward kicked ass.

.. the point in this article. He talks about Travelocity’s new campaign using a stolen lawn gnome sending back pictures of itself on vacation. He says that this mostly British idea will be lost on American viewers.

While lawn gnomes aren’t very American, the idea didn’t come from the British, but from a french film Améile which was quite popular here, particularly among the crowd Travelocity seems to want to attract. Recognizing that relatively obscure reference is part of the fun of the idea. It is also very relevant to the brand.

That being said, I am not terribly fond of the commercial.

This is an exception for Garfield. I love reading him each week and he is usually spot on.

Studio 360 did a radio show on advertising this week. The most interesting piece was one on advertising jingles.

For anyone who has ever had a song stuck in their head, it is certainly easy to see how jingles can be effective. A jingle can act as sort of a audio logo, making you think of the product and its benefits whenever you hear it.

The radio program points out that jingles were repeated over and over again to be effective. They explain that the reason you don’t see a lot of them now is that advertising is a lot more cluttered and diversified. You used to be able to play an ad on the three networks and everybody saw it. Now people not only go to the bathroom, but often change the channel or use TiVo. An advertiser also has to buy a lot more time on a many more diverse channels. The public is frankly more fed up. Jingles can get annoying and no one likes to have a song stuck in their head.

Now when advertisers use music, they tend to use an already popular song, borrowing interest. Sometimes this is used effectively, as with Chevy’s appropriation of “Like a Rock,” but usually this falls flat. How many commericals used Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman”? It’s kind of like using a celebrity; It can work very well, and certainly gets more people to pay attention, but if it isn’t relevant it falls flat.

There are still examples of “audio logos,” although they tend to be much shorter. NBC can be recognized by their classic 3 notes the way Nabisco can be recognized by its color red. You just see very few full fledged jingles anymore.

The show also has a great interview with George Lois, where he talks “I want my MTV” and how the idea came from an old ad slogan. They also discuss how MTV was in a way nothing but ads for the music.

You’ve probably seen Apple’s original 1984 Macintosh ad, shown 20 years ago. The ad is now considered the greatest commercial ever made. Apple celebrated the anniversary with a new version. The woman is wearing and iPod, and the screen now says 2004 instead of 1984.

The ad has a very interesting history. (via this slashdot comment). Apple’s board at the time almost killed the ad.

Here’s another article about the ad. (via yet another slashdot comment)

And one of the print ads for the original Macintosh. There isn’t anything creative about this ad, but it is interesting to see how they had to explain what a mouse and a GUI was. No one had ever seen anything like it before. (Via another slashdot comment)

(As you might be able to guess, I got this from a slashdot article on the original Macintosh).