The rise of the ADvent.

Ad-vents

The TV world has gone a bit bonkers of late, as agencies are looking for newer and seemingly bigger ways to catch Joe Public’s attention. In the current ad landscape where content is king, brands are looking to adopt a more fanfare approach to their TV creative, making the ads themselves the stars of Saturday night television.

Ad breaks themselves are beginning to be assigned big ‘ad-vent’ ads, designed to drum up column inches and publicity through their innovative content, and paradoxically, these ads are being…er… well… advertised and their air dates and media slots revealed to the public. Is this the beginning of people turning on the box to see the latest Cadbury ads?

Strangely, this trend is nothing new in Japan, where Airside’s follow up to their first Sagawa ad caused such a stir, that the public were calling the TV stations to find out where and when the next execution was going to air. In the UK (and majority of the rest of the world) this is not something that the general public get too excited over, yet the current trend of new ‘ad-vent’ ads suggests otherwise.

The British Heart foundation has been hawking the somber message that your heart attack is on its way (along with channel, air dates and times) on the box, in pub toilets and other DM spots for sometime now. Finally this week we were treated to Berkoff smacking us in the chest and telling us to phone an ambulance in a bout of overdone thespian zeal.




Honda have also joined in the ad-vent jamboree, and treated the nation to one of the first ever ‘live TV ads’ as a bunch of adrenaline junkies hopped into the great blue expanse and linked together to form the brand’s name during their hasty plummet.




So does this current spurt of ad-vents mark the blurring of content / idea / ad and entertainment? Where does the advert start and the idea finish? Like the recent branded film from Eurostar ‘Sommerstown’ by super-director Shaun Meadows has left many people refreshed and invigorated as well as leaving a slew of many scratching their heads, and asking themselves was that a feature? Or was it an advert? feature? advert? Fortunately, in this case, regardless of what it was, it doesn’t really matter, as the ‘Sommerstown’ fadvert (whatever we call the finished hybrid article) really was very, very good.

Which leads us nicely on to ITV’s latest ruse during the up and coming Brit awards 2009 as seven agencies are being pitted against one another (almost like a bizarre agency x-factor) as they attempt to pitch for one of four ‘live ad breaks’ that are to be littered throughout the ceremony.

Which means that for this year and next year at least, the Ad-vent is here to stay. At least until the Brits are over that is.

...and we can only pray that none of them involve Sharon bloody Osbourne.