There's No Such Thing as an OK Mobile Ad


Six months ago I had a vision. I set out to express it with paint. I stretched the canvas, added the primer in an even coat across every edge and arranged all my materials. As I painted I was conscious of color, composition and the emotions conveyed by my images. For months I worked and reworked the painting, and even in the wildest moments of creative abandon I was aware of the context in which the painting would appear: a large canvas hung on a wall, several feet away from the viewer.

While we may work in different mediums, I’m sure the creative director for your TV commercial meticulously planned out every microsecond of your 30-second ad, just as I controlled the journey my painting took to completion. The difference is that my painting will only appear in the environment in which it was designed to live, while your creative director’s TV spot will be poked and prodded in all kinds of ways.

It might get cut in half to be placed in the traditionally shorter mobile environment. It will be shrunk down to be viewed on a 4-inch screen just inches from the viewer’s facefar from the originally imagined 50-inch screen that sits a few feet from the TV viewer. Any text that’s been added will become virtually unreadable on the tiny screen. The beautiful vision is barely visible when you simply repurpose a TV spot for a mobile device.

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