By now, you should all have received your fabulous Top
Trumps-styled Christmas cards from BMP DDB.
If not, beg, borrow or steal them because they’re inspired.
But despite BMP giving agencies a good name for creativity, the rest of
the ad world let itself down.
Topicality seldom impresses, if only because by the time the joke’s
reached the printer, the laughter’s echoed out of existence. Yet the
AAR’s card which rebrands Father Christmas as a ’Festive Spirit
Consultant’ raised a few smiles.
Many companies that thought they were being really trendy by sending out
yo-yos forgot one crucial factor. Cut corners on the manufacture of your
yo-yos and you look cheap and tacky. No-one wants a yo-yo that doesn’t
yo.
Also, if you’re going to be unconventional, make sure no-one beats you
to it. The Liverpudlian agency which sent out cards reading ’Happy
Valentine’s Day from the agency that thinks ahead’ obviously wasn’t
forward-thinking enough to anticipate a London agency using the same
idea.
It wouldn’t be Christmas if TBWA GGT Simons Palmer’s creative director,
Trevor Beattie, didn’t create a tactical poster. Beattie has produced
one for the poster contractor, Mills & Allen. Proclaiming ’Ho! Ho! Ho!’,
we’re sure it’s meant to mean something deeply profound, but didn’t
Santa Claus do it first?
But top marks must go to Wunderman Cato Johnson and Ginger Media. WCJ
admitted, publicly in its card, that direct marketing is one of the most
convoluted areas of advertising by showing Santa making his list,
checking it twice and then ’overlaying it with geo-demographic data,
applying chaid analysis and propensity to have cheer sorted by postal
codes’.
And, finally, Ginger, which cut corners with its folding rectangular
cubic game that carried best wishes from its three divisions; Ginger,
Virgin Radio and TFI Friday. Thrifty but quirky.
