Creative ad agency Boys + Girls has announced that it has a new advertising and brand-building philosophy embodied in the mantra of ‘Entertain or die!’ A decade after opening its doors, the partners at Ireland’s biggest independently-owned agency asked themselves the question: “What’s next?” Answer: producing entertaining ads that engage consumers.
They believe it is the only valid answer to the compelling adland question of the time. Namely, in this attention-poor economy, how does advertising stop being an interruption and instead be so good that people will seek it out rather than avoid it? Hubspot reports that 91 per cent of consumers regard ads as intrusive and 64 per cent see them as annoying.
In his book, The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die and the Creative Resurrection to Come, Andrew Essex writes about ‘the plague of infobesity’, which is a reference to the amount of information overload received through online, smartphone and social media, noting the impact on how consumers receive, process and engage with that content.
Even work which appears to be successful, digital ad fraud – ads paid for but never seen by people – is now estimated to be a €21 billion industry in the US. Boys + Girls cites work it has done for long-term client Three as an example of its new focus. Three have gone from producing ads that talk about their music sponsorship to getting involved in making music.
By stepping away from brand promises and moving into brand demonstration, Three have produced even more interesting and effective work. To show their brand purpose of a ‘Better Connected Life’ (above), Boys+Girls has been working with Three to turn Arranmore, an island off the coast of Donegal, into the ‘Most connected island in the world’.
The campaign works with islanders to use connectivity to improve healthcare and environmental conservation while helping local fishing and tourism industries. Three’s ‘Made By Music’ campaign saw them produce music videos for emerging artists that went on to become the best performing advertising campaign YouTube had ever run globally.
This year, Three have gone further by producing collaborative music tracks, using music to connect the brand to a valuable audience – creating culture not claptrap, as Rory Hamilton, excuitve creative director, Boys + Girls, says. “The shift in how brands are thinking beyond the traditional parameters of advertising has already begun,” Hamilton added.
He points to the Skittles’ Superbowl ad. When faced with a brief last year for the mega-sports event, it produced a Broadway musical starring Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame. By producing a campaign that was nothing like an ad, Skittles wound up producing the most-talked-about Super Bowl ad of the year and winning every major award along the way.
It was not a TV ad dressed up as a musical, it was the real thing. People went to a theatre and paid good money to go and see a musical about a brand. Last year, Johnson & Johnson produced a moving documentary called 5B heroing the Nurses and Doctors on the front line of the Aids epidemic in the early 1980’s – an important story that spoke to their brand values.
The last word goes to Boys + Girls managing partner Patrick Meade (above).
He says humans are a combination of the rational (left brain) and emotional (right brain). In between, lies a space where a creative spark captures people’s imagination and engages. “Our job is to find that most pertinent rational benefit and smuggle it within entertaining work. This is a serious business, not for the faint-hearted and only entertaining work succeeds.”
Two examples of Boys + Girls new entertainment approach for Three:
Three : The Island (one minute trailer for full doc):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDbUSWM1Kn8
Three: Made by Music Follow the Sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUKG4Syy8lw&t=113s
Dulux Weathershield ‘Invincibles’, a story of all year round swimmers:
