When good ads go bad…

I like the new advert for 3. The one for free Email and IM on your phone. If you’ve not seen it, here it is:

I was really really disappointed when I opened up my weekly Zoo magazine (it’s a work thing, honest) to see this press version of the ad. Actually I wasn’t disappointed by the advert itself, the press ad is fine. See below:

What made me almost spew was the thing they’d stuck over the top. A postcard. A postcard with stickers on it where you can ‘create your own message’. A bit of a horrible thing in it’s own right. Pointless and fiddly. And just another thing to drop on the newsagent’s floor.

I’m guessing that the Zoo audience is at the younger end of 3’s target. So of course the natural content for this postcard is skateboarding!?! I mean what else could it be? (Apart from breakin’ of course).

Here’s the front:

Here’s the back (the stickers are the words on the left):

Completely at odds with the rest of the creative. And ‘Grind to Email’, what on earth is that about? Next they’ll be asking us to “Ollie down to your local 3 store now”, or “Nosebone over to three.co.uk”.

Looks like someone’s been to the Youth Marketing conference I blogged a while ago ;-)

I don’t really enjoy negative blogging. But sometimes I can’t help myself. Especially when I see something nice get reduced to something horrible.

Trains are cool

Came across this yesterday:

The London to Brighton train ride in 2 mins.

Reminds me of the Star Guitar video for the Chemical Brothers by Michel Gondry. I’m not sure if the music almost sounds similar too, or whether that’s just associations in my brain.

One of my favourite videos of all time. So effortless and simple on the surface, but so damn complex underneath.

Feels like the top one had the music edited for the video, and the bottom one is obviously the other way round.