Absolutely winning at Facebook

Absolut Vodka is a dream client for me. They’re not that big into human truths or insights they just like to make pretty stuff. I honestly believe that that is what they say on the briefs they give to their agencies “Make me something pa-retty”. They’re print ads normally hold as much sustenance as an episode of the Kardashians, but they are B-E-A-utiful. Their latest campaign by Native, Absolut ZA, is no exception.

Their goal was to establish themselves online and they’ve done this through a campaign on Facebook. They took four artists and got them to design beaded sheaths for the Absolut bottle and then invited designers to submit their design for the fifth bottle on Facebook.

To launch the campaign the four artists they chose to all launched a short Youtube video explaining who they are and their designs. Obviously the Cape Town artist, Athi, was the most lovable creature describing his work as “high camp”. These videos are all short and well edited and they make for some nice quick viewing. The artists that they’ve chosen all come off really well on camera, laughing and joking. They also chose relatable artists from different areas so everyone has their sort of “area ambassador”.

The Facebook page where you can submit your own designs has a great layout. Very easy to use and stylish, which is nice to see as Facebook pages are normally bog standard boring. They also have a design tool which works exclusively on Google Chrome. This is the one area that this campaign falls flat for me. Google Chrome? Come on! I am not going to go and download a new browser just to enter a competition. The act of actually entering a competition has to be incredibly easy (this is why “share and like” competitions are all over Facebook). There is such a fine line between what we will and won’t do to win something. If you actually have Chrome the app is incredible. So much fun! You upload your photo and it then “beads it” and gives you effects to customize it. A procrastinators dream. It’s also incredibly easy to use which means everyone can use it.

The agency behind this campaign, Native, focuses on online work and their portfolio is very impressive. They’ve expanded the online platforms of Isuzu and Jamesons both in an innovative way. They preach, “brands are co-owned by their customers” on their website. They are definitely bringing that mentality into their work. Thoroughly looking forward to what they do next.

Greek Mythology meets Multivitamins

I’ve got a super awesome insight for everyone: Feedings kids things that taste horrible is hard. Wow. Genius. Tricking the children makes them eat the yucky healthy thing. What?! Yes, it’s true.

Hopefully you managed to gather my intensely sarcastic tone there. Vital multivitamins for kids have decided to use one the most obvious insight ever and the take an equally obvious metaphors for their latest campaign. The Trojan horse. Only they’ve taken this ancient Greek story and applied it to what looks like medieval England. Very, very strange.

“Why have they applied it to medieval England?” you might ask. “Why not Greece?” I literally have no idea. It could be an art direction choice, what with castles being better looking buildings. It’s also possible that the advert was just misnamed. Admittedly if I had seen it without its name I might have just assumed it was catapult or something, and then the advert would make absolutely no sense.

Maybe over analyzing it is what has ruined this advert. It is very pretty with a wonderful illustration and on first glance it kind of makes sense. Page flip and done for most people. For me, who has squinted trying to understand this thing for close on ten minutes, it is the most jumbled mash of nonsense I’ve ever seen.

Apart from the visual, I really struggle to understand the copy. To me “delicious gets the good in” is just a random selection of words strung together. I understand how it makes sense in the case of the sweetie-vitamins but as a general statement it’s just wrong. 99.999999% of the time delicious gets the bad in. When linking it to the visual it still makes no sense. I may be going too far into the metaphor here but are they saying that the soldiers inside the horse are “the good”? Because that is just historically wrong.  I guess in some sense the vitamins are sneaky soldiers but “good” is just the wrong word.

I don’t expect lyrical genius from a company whose tagline is “Good Health is Vital”; I just expect it to somehow stick to basic sentence structure.

Over all this is one of the most confusing adverts I have seen in a very long time. None of the elements are working together or explaining anything. As I have said however, at a quick glance this could be very cute and memorable.