Even Good Advertising Concepts Can Get Old and Predictable

The game had just ended and the predictable strains of “When You Wish Upon a Star” began to play over the images of Eli Manning parading off the field amid the confetti and cheering throngs when I thought to myself, “oh no, not again. Please, I am begging you, don’t do it! We had to endure Madonna for heaven’s sake, isn’t that enough to ask of anyone?”

“Eli Manning,” crooned the voice over, “you and the New York Giants have just won the Super Bowl. What are you going to do next?” With Walt Disney’s ink drying on the check, which will cover his parking spot costs in Hoboken for the year, Eli grinningly informed us that he’s off to Disneyland.

Now don’t get me wrong, Disneyland is great. I even worked for the company for a bit, and that too was good. But I can’t help thinking how refreshing it would be to hear him blurt out that he was headed for Las Vegas, baby, or Amsterdam, or even Lodi. It was the 45th of these commercials in the series that began back in 1987, and maybe the 45th time was just enough of this ad for me.

Even good advertising concepts can get old and predictable, I guess. Being fresh and very creative isn’t easy, especially if you’re in the trade or B2B end of things. For the most part you can tell the ads that come from the Chicago, New York, or Boston based advertising agencies in our business. These guys have creative teams that agonize over particular shades of green that will ultimately end up on the border of an ad. You can also tell the cut and paste ransom note ad that was put together in Microsoft Word, usually adorned with a campy stock photo that was purchased for $3.00, or a picture of the company’s owner standing there waving at you.

In a changing world where the marketing noise level seems to only get louder and more outrageous and marketing budgets are being squeezed, it is a challenging task to attract attention to what you are doing as a company, let alone create a buzz. It may be time and money well spent if you polish your creative and hone your creative direction. Is your message fresh and on target as it can be? In the end, we are all just trying to get noticed.

And in fairness to Eli, we too will be going to Disneyland during this Spring break, though I won’t be getting paid for it.