Hasta La Creative!

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There are no women wearing bikinis in this commercial. There are no guys doing stupid tricks. No one is throwing a phone. There is no mud wrestling.

LONDON – Microsoft has confirmed it is launching its long-awaited search engine Bing that will directly compete against Google when it rolls out globally by 3 June.

Real housewives of intervention.

Business pundits often argue that a recession is no time to cut spending on marketing. Few CFOs agree. Times like these, when margins are down and the cost of raising new capital is high, are relatively unfavorable to new investments. Still, some companies do mitigate sales declines with innovative marketing, often putting themselves in a stronger position for recovery as well.

Call me a weirdo, but for some reason I’m quite interested in financial advertising. I don’t know if it stems from having been an admin monkey in so many financial institutions in the past, the fact that Edinburgh is a hub for the industry or because I might have a slight mental imbalance. I know it’s not all this recession guff, because even back in the boom days I was still looking at financial ads with an unhealthy fascination.

I figured out a while ago that the reason I’m so interested in financial advertising is threefold:

1. Financial campaigns are usually boring or clichéd or ugly or irrelevant. Or all of the above.

2. Financial advertising has reams and reams of regulations and rules that it must abide by in order to be cleared and run.

3. Financial clients have rods up their arses when it comes to being creative.

So, when I see a financial ad that manages to overcome all three hurdles, it’s like celebrating a lottery win. Albeit it’s the three numbers in a line lottery win, not the jackpot scenario. But still.

The currently running Aviva campaign, of which I’ve seen several full-page press executions and a TV spot, resonates with me:

Of course, I don’t believe for a second that Aviva actually considers me an individual. Hell, I don’t consider people individuals and I’m just some lowly ad minion going about my daily business, so how a global corporation does is beyond me.

Even so, I like the sentiment of the campaign and the idea behind it even if it is all just a big load of twaddle. At least Aviva are trying to come across as personable, and that rings a bell with me. It’s like that colleague at work who obviously doesn’t like you, but still makes the effort to be decent and civil rather than rude and condescending. And that’s a start at least.

Claire Connachan is a copywriter based in Scotland. She does have a kilt, she does have freckles, she does eat haggis and she does love creative advertising. Read her Scottish ad blog to get a ginger, caber tossing perspective on the industry.

Un court-métrage et une belle animation de Quimby the Mouse, personnage de vieux dessin animé à la Felix The Cat créé par Chris Ware. Cette souris vit des jours mélancoliques, dans une aventure grise et bleue, animée par John Kuramoto. Le tout sur une chanson d’Andrew Bird.

LONDON – The tightening budgets of British households has led to a slide in the performance of travel operators online, with top travel-related companies except for Thomson Holidays suffering a decline in traffic over the last three years, recent statistics show.

LONDON – Tour operator TUI is mounting its largest-ever summer marketing campaign for the Thomson brand in an effort to capture late holiday bookings.