Private View: Daniel Bonner and Emma de la Fosse

Creative


Daniel Bonner

Global chief creative officer,
Razorfish

You know how this works: 北京赛车pk10 has kindly asked for my opinion on five projects.

For fairness, I have decided to think like a "real person" – not an advertising person. I’ve created a simple checklist the work should fulfil in part or entirely.

Did I… 1. Smile? 2. Want to change my behaviour? 3. Think /do something I hadn’t before? 4. Want to share it with someone – immediately? 5. Have a problem solved?

There you go: the most basic needs of a "real person" on the receiving end of these messages. These are the lowest barriers to entry – shouldn’t be too difficult.

First up is Nando’s and its "more time to…" website. The premise is simple: now you can order Nando’s online, you have more time to… well, mess about on the internet. Know what? It was quite fun. OK, it won’t set your hair on fire, but it did do fun and not just say fun. A brief smile from me here. A reminder that, with some creativity, simple use of music, sound and interactivity (clicking and scrolling), the desktop web browser might still have a role.

Next up is a behaviour-changing moment from Always. Its "#LikeAGirl" film is full to the brim with authenticity and delivers on the brand promise of confidence immaculately. I find it difficult to determine what I feel more: despair or guilt. Of course, I’m not the target audience necessarily: this is a feminine-care brand and I’m a bloke. But the message is universal and worth noting, regardless of gender. If I tried to explain, I’d ruin it. Go to tinyurl.com/nfeumwa to be inspired to think carefully next time you’re looking for an expression for doing things "less well".

Right. Avis. This telly ad (that’s what real people would call it) has an epically large mountain to climb. Quite frankly, it never stood a chance. In a sector where service, location, price, availability, loyalty and product offering is king, I’m left wondering what role an ad like this even has any more. It’s wasteful of the client to commission this. I wouldn’t dream of sharing it with anyone – even if I knew they needed a hire-car provider. Dear Mr and Mrs Avis, don’t tell me to "unlock the world" – enable me to, with an indispensable service or utility that gives me what I need to make the trip one to remember. I would tell everyone about that.

The work from Kids Company and its "see the child" ad is another moving, saddening portrayal of children who suffer poverty and abuse. Difficult to ignore. But I’d struggle to remember that phone number. In a sea of messages around this issue, I could be forgiven for being inadvertently generous to Save the Children or the NSPCC. No bad thing for charities reliant on donations but, for the benefit of Kids Company specifically, I can’t help feeling that some innovation with the media, channel and formatting of these types of messages would help me donate much more seamlessly. Make it easy for me to give. You have won my precious attention – now use me or lose me.

Talking of losing me, it’s Flava-It and its command for me to "unleash my meat lust". This is a lazy piece of work reminiscent of Nuts magazine. Nuts folded this year, remember? There are good reasons for that. I’m calling this out as inappropriate. Surely we have come further as an industry exalted for creativity than asking a woman to simulate a sex act on a sausage in an attempt to sell mixed herbs. This clearly failed on all five of my points.

Creative


Emma de la Fosse

Chief creative officer, OgilvyOne, Worldwide

Gone are the days when creative work existed in isolation. Now it’s a piece of "content" (a word to be used sparingly and under strict super­vision) meant to be shared, the catalyst for a conversation or the end of a journey. So in this week’s Private View, I’ve not only viewed the work I’ve been sent. I’ve also looked at the stuff leading to it or the destination the work takes you to. Clear? Thought not. Off we go…

Nando’s is what some in social media circles would term "snackable content": 50 daft, disposable web pages deliberately designed to allow you to waste time. Why? Because, thanks to Nando’s new online service, you now have more time to waste. When working with tired, old propositions like this, the work itself really does have to be energetic and fresh. These web pages feel like they’ve been under the hot lamps for a bit too long. That’s not going to help them be widely shared around on Facebook and Twitter, as seems to be the plan. And when I did click through to the real website, there was no reference to the "time-saving" campaign at all.

The Always work is part of a well-established trend towards brands "doing good". At Cannes this year, 37 per cent of the Grand Prix and gold winners were brands adopting a cause. The "#LikeAGirl" web film (which Always hopes you’ll have been sent by a friend) has been compared to Dove "real beauty sketches" but, where the message in "sketches" was implied, with Always you start to feel like they are simply reading out the brief. Should you follow the link to the site, you’ll find no mention of "#LikeAGirl" but another initiative that urges you to ban the word bossy.

Kids Company is an organisation that really does have an important role to perform. This film could have been emotionally overwrought but instead is powerful in its understatement. You never see the child. And that’s the point. Neither do the politicians. So you can’t help but visit kidsco.org.uk, where all the relevant information is right there on the homepage. I’ve just signed the petition. Please do too.

Avis, appropriately, makes a good stab at taking you on a journey. A gorgeously shot, beautifully simple idea about unlocking cars around the globe leads you to a site where you can do just that. I just wondered whether they could have done more to link the overall idea to "we try harder" – surely an endline with huge brand equity.

Flava-It. Wow. That’s embarrassing. It’ll certainly be shared around, although not for the reasons they envisaged…