Good commercials

I am a great fan of good marketing communication, better known as commercials. So much so in fact that I am prepared to spend money and a night in the cinema to watch the awards of the Cannes Lions Festival if they come to town.

However, I cannot tell you what makes a commercial a good commercial - otherwise I'd be in the wrong industry, I guess. After all, even Henry Ford (I think) said that half of his marketing budget was a waste of money - he just didn't know which half. So I'll confine myself to giving you two examples of bad commercials. The first one is the ad for Swiss wine shown in this post. The caption says: "Sex is just a substitute". And the second one is a TV commercial for a French car, featuring Sean Connery. Both are prime examples of bland, boring, guaranteed brain-free advertising of the worst kind. That's the stuff that should have been rejected and probably would not show up here either. What does that tell us about buyers of advertisements?