You
know that family picture sitting next to your TV screen? Maybe it’s on
a shelf above your TV or even resting right on the TV itself if you
haven’t switched to a flat screen (Luddite!). What? You don’t know that
picture? Of course you don’t because you haven’t paid any attention to
it since the day you placed it there. It sits there lonely and
unnoticed as you stare past it watching desperate house wives solve
medical mysteries and gather DNA evidence from two and a half men.
See, you don’t notice the crap around your TV because you’re there to
WATCH TV!, not notice the crap around it. Banner ads, unfortunately,
are the crap around your TV. That’s why banner ads need to do something
to get noticed.
Agency AlmapBBDO – Sao Paulo
Client Iberia
Art Director Victor Aragao
Writer Caroline Freire
Creative Directors Fabio Costa, Eduardo Foresti
Programmers Paulo Pacheco, Claudio Bellanga
View the ad here.
This 2002 One Show Interactive Gold winner from Iberia Airlines
does an amazing job of getting noticed. Not only that, it’s a fraking
clever idea that makes excellent use of rich media capabilities.
The banner starts as a simple 300x250 with the copy all crammed between
two rows of seats. Then the banner expands out into the page content.
Normally, this would piss people off but I’m betting the cleverness of
the ad makes more people smile than frown. You see, as the banner
expands, the space between the rows grows as well. At the same time,
the copy gets more “leg room” and is able to stretch out into one,
long, clean line. Brilliant. Plus, it’s a great product demo without a
product (see the last eArchive).
Whenever I do a banner, I keep one thing in mind, “How am I going to
get people to notice it.” because people go to websites to consume
content, not see banners. So if I want my banner to get noticed, I
better give the user a reason to pull themselves from their content.
After all, unless my family pictures go all Harry Potter on me, there’s
no way I’m pulling my eyes away from So You Think You Can Dance.
