Commentary

Consumers Want More Scrooge In Their Holiday Ads

Here's a tidbit of important news for you creatives out there. Independent cable rep firm Viamedia is out with a study that finds Americans are so tired of sickly-sweet, saccharin-themed holiday commercials that barf up so much feel-good merriment that they want to bomb the North Pole with frozen turkeys. So what do Americans want in their holiday advertising? Perhaps having been weaned on the snarkiness of modern day media for the last ten years, they want more Scrooge in their ads. So what themes do they want to see? They want to see people reacting to a present they don't like. They want to see the best way to return a bad gift. They want to see how to re-gift a gift. They want to see kids get coal in their stockings. And they want to see how to shop for people they don't like. Of course, by now, most brand campaigns are complete but if you still haven't finalized plans for the holiday season, you might want to top your creativity with a dollop of snarky wise-assitude.

When an advertising agency tops one of Advertising Age's many lists, such as the Small Agency of the Year Award, usually a politely-worded press release is sent out to the media...and promptly ignored. But when Providence-based Nail Communications lands a Gold in the Northeast on Advertising Age's Small Agency of the Year roster, celebration, it seems, heads in an entirely different direction. And absolutely does not get ignored. Witness “How Quickly Things Can Escalate,” a video that illustrates just how out of hand things can get when an agency nabs yet another industry award. 

And in other pre-Thanksgiving news San Francisco-based Mekanism has...wait for it...redesigned their website! (We’re digging very deep since, like no one's working today anyway.) Yes, it's totally true. And, yeah, totally boring. But not completely. The agency has always been a bit "out there" in the website department and this time is no different. And when they tell us the site employs a “parallax effect which enables users to have a 3D visual experience by layering images and having them move at different speeds and perspectives to create depth," we are, like, just, wow! So as you sit at your desk this day before Thanksgiving, bored out of your mind and counting the minutes until the boss says...at 4:59PM, "Hey everyone, why don't you all head home early today," check out the Mekanism site and wallow in its oddity

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