the real travesty is the poor production used in assembling the ad.
even in the pdf the layers of imagery don't blend together...
If you are going to do an ad like this, for crying out loud, at least make the imagery flow smoothly together!
I am sure someone could have scrounged up a good, real, shot of special ops troops dropping from a helicopter into an urban combat situation and replaced the heli with the osprey...
AND, being as precision opperations targeting enemy in locations such as mosques ARE a current issue and topic of discuss amongst combat planning personel, this ad is entirely appropriate and well targeted, no matter how crass it may seem to those of us with finer sensibilities.
The other thing that everyone seems to be missing is that there is still a HUGE roll for both ad professionals and brand professionals in the solicitation, selection and publishing of consumer created content. While it is true that there is likely to be a lot of crap that comes in from such an experiment, and that the likelihood of a non-roster shop selling something to a big advertiser like Coke isn't large, but that is true no matter who is concepting and pitching.
It is also a great sign of the fact that marketers are finally willing to reopen a dialog with their consumers, rather than just paying a bunch of over educated people to sit consumers in a room and study their reactions to content that is still being pushed down their throats. Resistance to this dialog will prove to be damaging to brands, in just the same way as letting the consumers run rampant with the content and brand can. Yes, it is more work, and yes it means we'll sometimes hear things that we think are stupid, but that resonate with consumers, and there will still be plenty of crappy ads, but what's new?
This isn't a new concept, but something that has been going on for years. It is kind of funny to me that it is coming back around at the same time as a movie about the previous big era of consumer created ad content is coming out... dreamworks "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"
There's a review of the movie in monday's New York Times
one twist on the rss and ads concept is the new BBC ads that use rss to drive content in banner ads. seems to be a much more sustainable form of using the power of rss as part of a marketing medium, and truely leverages the content that sites produce. basically just a well designed and targeted skin on an rss feed, used to present a brand and link to it or another.
but irrelevant, sponsored links in feeds? uggh...
i am going to have to go with NFL...
the copy for the espn bugs the hell out of me -
1) camaraderie... how many fantasy football fans even know WTF this word means...
2) the flow of the scripts...
3) in the end, the NFL ones just feel way more on target than the ESPN ones.
although... in "bar view" the ESPN ones would still work well with no sound...
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actually, while you can perhaps take issue with the strategic goal of rebranding Heart Disease and Stroke as CVD (CardioVascular Disease) in order to get Americans to think about it differently, taking issue with this piece is a bit absurd. To me, this piece did exactly what it was supposed to do, illustrated at least in part by your reaction no matter how over blown; it opened dialog. The campaign is one of rebranding and re-engaging people to get them to think and engage in the dialog around CVD. CVD is more than heart disease, and has been in the news and fairly marketed in the last year.
Perhaps you should stop trying to assume that every piece of communications should tell the whole story, and instead accept that there should be full suite of engagement media pieces and avenues used to open up a dialog between the consumer and the message/brand.
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