stealing ideas

Like Vacation Days, Digital Creative Strategy Doesn’t Carry Over

“It’s as simple as this. You don’t put a logo in

first frame of TV so you shouldn’t in online.”

This was a comment @schmogel heard from someone likely grinding up next to her on the packed, hot elevator ride up to the 32^nd floor at one of the nation’s largest, most reputable ad agencies.  It was Twittered almost immediately after she heard it with a sarcastic note before it saying, “Wow.  Logic overheard in the elevator.”

I read her Tweet as I was stepping onto the Red Line from the Belmont platform and half-smiled while letting out one of those laughs where all you really do is blow air out of your nose.  What do you call those?  A smirk, maybe? 

Anyway, it got me thinking about all of the bad logic that’s been carried over from the traditional staples of advertising.  The stuff that has ridden the coattails of traditional marketing, brand strategy, and advertising into the digital space.  The stuff that makes brands look so incredibly clueless in the digital realm, to savvy and not so savvy people each and every day. 

I quickly came up with these two examples – what I think are the most prevalent offences – of flawed, carry over advertising logic:

PowerPoint Ads.   You know – those display ads that use all of the 15 seconds allowed them by most online publishers to slowly, rotate through 189 characters of copy, and finally revealing the call-to-action (and brand logo) at the very… very… end.  And then use all 3 loops.

In a world like TV where people are theoretically sitting there letting ads wash over them like waves every 15 to 30 seconds, this makes sense.  In print, where people are theoretically taking a break and reading, they might also read through all of your boring, self-righteous copy. 

But “in online” (gag) where a recent study suggested 17% of web pages receive 4 seconds or less of users’ attention and most users will read at most 28% of the words on any given page on the web… the “it’s simple, we do this in TV/Print/Radio…” logic is flawed to the point of failure.  Unless you don’t care about wasting 17%+ of your client’s budget, you better figure out how to get your point across in 4 seconds or less (so a logo on the first frame might not be a bad idea).  Or get to know the user behavior metrics on the sites and site placements the ads will be running on and tailor the messaging and sequencing of the ad appropriately (maybe you’ll get 6 seconds).

Video is video.  Let’s just repurpose our TV spots online.

I hate this one.  It makes me mad to type these words even.  Would you repurpose your print insertion on TV?  Would you repurpose your online ad in print?!??  Nope.  Well at least I hope not.  So what on God’s green earth makes people do this online? 

The medium is fundamentally different, the user mindset is different, the user expectation is different, almost everything that should inform your media and creative strategy is different in the digital space from what it is in TV – and yet budgets, laziness, and pride have collaborated to ruin one of the most beautifully misunderstood ad opportunities of the 21^st century – online/interactive video.

If I sat around for a while and thought about it, I’m sure I could come up with a dozen more examples of carry over logic that is ruining brands in the digital space.  But what’s the fun in that?  Tell me in the comments what carry over logic annoys you most “in online.”