Every profession has something. Nurses and doctors might always imagine the worst-case scenario when they hear their friend coughing, we pay attention and even seek out advertising to see “how other people do it”.
So we decided to turn this professional obsession with advertising into a blog showing you the best and the worst ads we have seen because we believe we are not the only ones with this “hobby”.
We look at both print and digital.
THE GOOD
This one is by Promo.com
and it caught our eye in the feed thanks to its 3D-like animation. The 3D effect is achieved by the astronaut circling the white bar, which looks like a part of the feed so it seems like he floats out of the image.
We have done and seen a few of these ads before, for example on Instagram when a part of the image looks like the comment section and the moving element is layered over it. A simple trick but still quite underused.
Next up: Backyard Cinema
This video manages to convey the atmosphere of the experience Backyard Cinema has to offer through soft smokey overlays with short snappy segments that highlight both people and the venue.
Plus, by using vertical video, they ensure that the ad takes the majority of your mobile making it hard to miss. Use of emojis fit the brand and make the copy more visual. Targeting is also on point as even after visiting their website we were not bombarded by endless retargeting ads at an insane frequency.
SEMrush appears in our best and worst list this month.
The video ad below caught our eye and although it was not the shortest video out there, it managed to maintain our attention until the end. The video features their customer who explains how he used SEMrush to become the most prominent business in the region. Simple, genuine, and convincing.
I was a bit surprised to be targeted by Toyota UK’s ad.
But then I realized I’m one of those confusing people who follows random pages (mainly for client or research purposes) so I’m not going to question their targeting here. The ad’s creative, however, caught my eye thanks to its simplicity and choice of colors. If you look at your feed, generally it’s full of “busy” images from your friends, metadata from publications and pages you follow, and various ads. Using something simpler can break that flow of “busyness” and stand out by simply doing less.
Speaking of simple imagery and “breaking up” the feed…
Another car brand, Vauxhall did this quite well with their mobile ad. You might be aware that Facebook mobile ads allow for longer imagery than you could use for Desktop. If you uploaded the same sized ad that Vauxhall is using below into your Desktop campaigns, it would appear cropped. But in the case of the example below, this would not cause any damage as the ad is designed to work even if slightly cropped – you would only lose a part of the white background at the bottom and the image/video would still work just as well.
Plus, Vauxhall’s use of color and simple design makes it pop in the feed.
If you don’t have fun making it, people won’t have much fun reading it…
We love puns. Especially the smart ones. Natural History Museum definitely made a few people chuckle on the otherwise mundane commute with this one.
Dogs in ads…
I mean, if you are lucky enough to be able to sue animals and stay on brand, you are ahead of a lot of brands who are restricted to stock imagery of people working in an office….
We love this simple ad by tails.com. Simple imagery, clear message, strong promotion and £1 p&p makes it sound like they’re not desperate. The only slightly negative comment is that creatively logo feels a bit in the wrong place and a touch too big, and they could play with the copy a bit more using formatting.
THE BAD
ENKEEO needs a designer and a copywriter…
I don’t think we need to explain just why this bad boy is…well…really bad. Besides the misspelling of “body”, the imagery looks very fake, not inspiring confidence in the vendor.
What’s wrong with this one?
You might ask…it doesn’t look THAT bad, does it?
No, it actually looks good. The issue here is the targeting. I saw this ad at least 10 times within one week. Not only that, but I had purchased from FFS a week before that. Meaning that FFS is running retargeting campaigns without excluding people who already reached the checkout. within the last few days. I love the brand’s product but I was tempted to report them for spam as I was getting fed up with seeing the same ad every time I looked at my feed. Please cap your frequency and make sure you do the right exclusions!
SEMrush round 2. Here we go.
The ad below had a few issues.
No.1: the frequency on this one was out of whack a bit too.
No.2: the creative appears very very fake. The issue here is not that SEMrush is using stock imagery or combining photography and design – we are definitely supporters of that. It’s that the choice of which people to crop seems a bit forced and done as “a quick job”. Which is something a lot of marketers spotted as well – all you had to do is to look at the comment section.
Oh no, LinkedIn!
We have seen these popping up more and more. Even in our Gmail inbox. LinkedIn has a lot of amazing ads – especially if you have seen any of the Sophisticated Marketer ones, those looked amazing! – but these ones look like they were put together in a rush. Come on, LinkedIn, you can do some much better than this!
That concludes our recap! Feel free to comment with any ads that you have spotted in your feed!
See you next month!
