Thursday, November 13, 2008

Ello Tosh

The first few seconds of the latest Toshiba ad reminded me of the classic Trott branding opus of Hello Tosh Gotta Toshiba.

The rest of the ad was raised eyebrows and daft smile. It tries to fit an idea in there, but falls a little flat; but flatter squarer tube the execution works. There is so much going on you want to see it (or at least don't object to seeing it) again and again to make sense of it.

With enough post production to keep ILM moving in crunch Britain, it ain't half built well.

As a planner I suppose I should be complaining about the lack of strategy in there, but frankly this ad is a good argument that true planning also involves knowing when the execution is good enough to get a message across on its own merits. This is. That's good.

And its from Grey. Grey... Grey! Next you'll be showing me an M+C Saatchi ad with some subtlety.

3 comments:

Age said...

ha yes mate, i agree. i saw this the other day too and also felt it was another one of those ads that was creative for the sake of it and there no real idea in there. i think you're right about knowing when it's ok to do that though.

Robert said...

Yes you should be doing that Mr M ...

Visually interesting is fantastic but when it's got little purpose, you either 1/ mentally switch off 2/ ignore the brand and focus on the image or 3/ adopt an attitude of 'seen that, don't need to see it again' - which isn't great for commercial purposes whatever many others will say.

Doing any old shit and attaching a brand name on the end is easier than doing interesting work with purpose which is why I don't like this spot.

Too much justification of indulgence going on in adland today - and that is especially upsetting when there are good people writing good things who are ignored because they're not 'trendy enough'.

Rob Mortimer (aka Famous Rob) said...

To much an extent I agree with you. However with this ad I think it works as an interesting spot to get people noticing the Toshiba brand again.

It's a brand that most people see as sensible and dull, and whilst I hope that this ad will be followed with some proper thinking; as a stand alone piece of work to re-announce the brand I think it works.

The main flaw with it is (as you mention) the feeling that the brand is tacked in as opposed to being a central part of the execution. (Ala Hello Tosh)