It's so hot, it Burns

Yesterday, as I was perusing through my twitter feed, I came across a retweet, by a good colleague of mine Digital Tonto (if you're not reading his stuff, you're doing yourself a grave injustice), of a blog post from the Ad Contrarian called "Why Is Advertising So Crappy?"

The blog post title pretty much sums it up, and I always ask my self the very same question.

Here's a few a things that he said:

Despite all the witless proclamations of new age marketing gurus about the death of advertising, advertising isn't just growing, it's metastasising...

You can't swing a dead media planner without hitting an ad.  And while advertising has gotten bigger and bigger, it hasn't gotten much better.

The reason most advertising (and artistic endeavors) are lousy is not that people set out to create crap. It's that creating something good is really, really hard. And there are very few people who can do it.

I loved that the Ad Contrarian wrote this because it reminded me of a post I wrote a year ago to date. In it I discuss how Lee Clow believes every brand touch point needs to be treated as if it were an opportunity to seduce an audience and how he feels that "when advertising is done well, I think it can become a part of our culture. When it's done badly it becomes visual pollution."

A couple of weeks back I came across a very cool video (and marketing campaign) for an energy drink called Burn. After seeing the video I then went to their website. What I liked about it is that I know the site is advertising for the drink, but it soo doesn't feel like it.

It's definitely advertainment and branded content, done well.

Often brands look to converge with culture, but this effort is one of the best I've seen. One of the reasons is because the focus is on the culture, and the participants and creators of the culture. They let you get engaged with the story and connect on some level with the characters, without being hit over the head with cameos of the product. Well done Burn...well done.

Enjoy...

burn presents Ride feat Steve Berra (OFFICIAL HD) on Vimeo from Prodigo Pesquisa on Vimeo.