Look at the most admired recent advertising: bouncing balls, drumming gorillas and now dancing eyebrows. What they have in common (apart from being from Fallon) is no discernible strategy, as Mark mentioned. It’s not saying anything about the product, it’s not identifying a consumer need, it’s not based on any consumer insight. It’s all about entertainment and any strategy is to ‘justify the strapline’.
Is the new idea to have no idea? What’s going on?
But it’s also a new intellectual environment where people rely less on carefully laid plans to meet consumers’ rational and emotional needs and more on ‘simple’ publicity and word of mouth. If the marketing game is all about being famous then maybe entertainment is the only thing that matters.
Thinking back, there were always ads with new products or in growing categories where the strategy/ brand positioning/ USP were clear (like the introduction of the Dyson for example) and ads where strategy was ditched for legal or other reasons in favour of pure entertainment (a great read on this is Sam Delaney's Get Smashed.)
Would be great to know whether pure entertainment is effective in the long run. Successful advertising builds strong brand associations over time. But that isn’t going to be achieved with ‘pure’ entertainment and a strapline. Or is it?
Dominic