Yes it does!
It excites and is memorable by being the first to employ the handiwork of Google's "spy car cameras" to personalise the ads right down to the street or even house where you live. UK residents can just ping in their postcodes and there is a big, shiny 777 coming along the street past their front door. So far, so great and it will be an ad industry award winner for that reason alone. Courageously breaking moulds is what this and many other businesses should be all about. Visually this ad certainly does that.
It perplexes though because the message is strange and sounds a bit strangulated. Viewers will scratch their heads wondering if they've missed something in what they will want to assume is very clever, leading edge, advertising psychology. Nobody wants to appear dumb. This one is still scatching.
The UK version seemingly urges viewers to be patriotic and stay at home to support the British team rather than treacherously buying a ticket to go and watch the events on wide screens in sports bars dotted around the world. "Don't fly. Support team GB " it says. The non UK version even more brow furrowingly urges "Don't fly,- Stick with the Olympics", presumably in the worldwide wide screen sports bars now to be devoid of Brits. If all this urging were succssful, presumably BA's flights to and from anywhere would be empty. It's all very well taking one's responsibilty as a corporate sponsor seriously but when that means trying to persuade people to lay off one's own products for several weeks is it really sensible?
Possibly some clever talking by the ad folk while presenting the notion of "You must be the first,- the world leader in using Google's latest cleverness for advertising" managed to obstruct the now salivating client from focusing on the small problem that to use it meant in this case risking a highly unorthadox, even convoluted, proposition. Maybe nothing else fitted so it was a case of use the hi tech first or lose it. Maybe the "Wow, yahs" drowned out any nervous voices of reason. The latter tend not to do well in the heady world of ad agencies and marketing departments once an idea like this takes wing . They risk being noted down be advised on the merits of possibly "seeking new opportunities" at their next performance review. It's something all but the very brave seek to avoid.
The marketing and financial outcomes will be interesting to watch but for now BA must be seeing very high hit rates on its websites and the ad folk will be saying that's what matters and that the brilliance will be remembered long after questions about why the planes could have flown fuller during the games have been forgotten. There will be lots of awards for the former and plenty of other excuses for the latter.
Footnote: Maybe there is something in the notion that people pay almost no attention to the content of an ad. They just remember the brand or product name if the way it in which it is presented is spectacular or even just good. The rest they auto discard and delete from memory.
It excites and is memorable by being the first to employ the handiwork of Google's "spy car cameras" to personalise the ads right down to the street or even house where you live. UK residents can just ping in their postcodes and there is a big, shiny 777 coming along the street past their front door. So far, so great and it will be an ad industry award winner for that reason alone. Courageously breaking moulds is what this and many other businesses should be all about. Visually this ad certainly does that.
It perplexes though because the message is strange and sounds a bit strangulated. Viewers will scratch their heads wondering if they've missed something in what they will want to assume is very clever, leading edge, advertising psychology. Nobody wants to appear dumb. This one is still scatching.
The UK version seemingly urges viewers to be patriotic and stay at home to support the British team rather than treacherously buying a ticket to go and watch the events on wide screens in sports bars dotted around the world. "Don't fly. Support team GB " it says. The non UK version even more brow furrowingly urges "Don't fly,- Stick with the Olympics", presumably in the worldwide wide screen sports bars now to be devoid of Brits. If all this urging were succssful, presumably BA's flights to and from anywhere would be empty. It's all very well taking one's responsibilty as a corporate sponsor seriously but when that means trying to persuade people to lay off one's own products for several weeks is it really sensible?
Possibly some clever talking by the ad folk while presenting the notion of "You must be the first,- the world leader in using Google's latest cleverness for advertising" managed to obstruct the now salivating client from focusing on the small problem that to use it meant in this case risking a highly unorthadox, even convoluted, proposition. Maybe nothing else fitted so it was a case of use the hi tech first or lose it. Maybe the "Wow, yahs" drowned out any nervous voices of reason. The latter tend not to do well in the heady world of ad agencies and marketing departments once an idea like this takes wing . They risk being noted down be advised on the merits of possibly "seeking new opportunities" at their next performance review. It's something all but the very brave seek to avoid.
The marketing and financial outcomes will be interesting to watch but for now BA must be seeing very high hit rates on its websites and the ad folk will be saying that's what matters and that the brilliance will be remembered long after questions about why the planes could have flown fuller during the games have been forgotten. There will be lots of awards for the former and plenty of other excuses for the latter.
Footnote: Maybe there is something in the notion that people pay almost no attention to the content of an ad. They just remember the brand or product name if the way it in which it is presented is spectacular or even just good. The rest they auto discard and delete from memory.
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