Ad Watch: "It's Not Complicated" to Like AT&T's Latest Commercials
There you are, bored on any given weekday night with nothing more to watch than yet another rousing episode of American Idol or House Hunters. While the seemingly endless supply of everyday individuals who think they can carry a tune or afford a 4000+ sq/ft house with granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and a multi-head shower deeply intrigues me, there are times when I find my attention hungering something with a little more intrigue. Thankfully, locked away within a secret bunker deep inside the innards of an advertising agency, there dwell creative visionaries whose very jobs are to create a vacuum in which we’re all socially sucked in. And I applaud them.
Beginning in November, creative agency BBDO Atlanta unleashed a television ad series starring Beck Bennet and a boisterous variety of adorable kids, answering questions designed to highlight AT&T’s prominent features/services. These commercials don’t hurl facts and figures into your face, nor do they serve up steaming piles of propaganda for your unwanted digestion. Instead, Beck posts a basic question to some articulate adolescents, and their adorable answers create and instant chuckle fest. You forget that AT&T wants you to know about their network speed or sizable download capabilities, and instead just learn that a robot shooting lasers from two eyes instead of one is more powerful, or that fastening a cheetah to grandma’s back might make her faster. Hey, I don’t make this stuff up. But I wish I did.
An example can be seen in the commercial seen above. Beck inquires which is better: doing two things at once or just the one. The children enthusiastically give their responses, and then a tangent by one of the kids occurs wherein he displays his talent for shaking his head and waving his hand at the same. Exact. Time. I know what you’re thinking; this sounds improbable, maybe even impossible. But here we are, watching it together, perhaps both of us enjoying both the mysticism and the comic value of it.
While these commercials aren’t created for the intention of education, they are produced to pique viewers’ social awareness. And for this, the “It’s Not Complicated” campaign has been very successful (at least according to a study from BlueFin Labs). Between December 27th and January 2nd, AT&T was mentioned in an estimated 11.6L tweets. Behind them was Pepsi with 11K and Progressive with 5.5K tweets. To read more statistics and competitive facts, check out the analysis on lostremote.com. Kudos, AT&T; the Tweetosphere loves you.
Which of these four ads (the rest are below) is your favorite, and can you name any other recent ads that struck you as unique and memorable? 