Mobas' Creative Lead Greg Bryant explains why creativity shouldn't be locked out during lockdown.
Ok, so we're in lockdown and we still don't know when we'll be back to whatever 'normal' is. We're also now being hit on TV with a clump of ads that are specifically designed for lockdown and were no doubt dreamt up weeks ago at the start of the pandemic.
The rationale is clear, make 'real' ads, shot on Teams, Zoom, or whatever your preferred platform is, with real people letting customers know that a service is still there. Great.
They worked, working from home was a novelty and brands needed to be seen to be in this with us. It put real faces to brands and we got to see their real employees. But now, two months in, I see people all day every day on Teams while I work, so I don't really want to look at people in ads doing the same thing, giving me a simple 'we're still here' message.
What I'd love to see is some creativity now, how can brands do something clever with the video call platforms, what can we see them doing that keep it real, but is something we don't see in our everyday work. Whether its passing something from person to person, sending something through the post to form a relay and watching each person do their bit with it or creating a full person with different body parts of everyone in each quarter, we need to see something different, something clever.
It feels like 10 weeks ago, everyone had the same idea and rather than explore it further, there was a mad rush to get the ads out there, which is totally understandable, and now we have a range of ads that are doing the same thing, with the same message. The problem with that is, you might not remember the brand itself, or if you can recall a brand, it might not be the right one.
So I'm hoping there's another wave coming, where this time it's the creativity within these platforms that's unique and stands out rather than just using the platform itself to tell a practical message. It's a massive opportunity for brands to do something memorable and really stand out in their marketplace. The exciting thing is, these are unprecedented times and we're working on platforms that are growing and developing with us, so it's almost a blank canvas to be creative with. Let's treat it as an opportunity to be memorable, and get creative with how we use it. Stay safe everyone, but perhaps not in our advertising ideas.
