Are contextual social media creatives a good idea?
Today, an agency friend of mine (who is not on Twitter or Facebook) send me a link to a contextual ad campaign she found at the Eyeblaster Creative Zone. The ad is from Vodafone Italy and promoting their 360 degrees campaign. It is an experiment which reminds me of this year’s Volkswagen attempt.
So, what is happening in this campaign?
Interaction 1: Once you click the banner, the ad expands and you can connect to Twitter or Facebook inside the banner…
Interaction 2: The banner app takes out your surname and creates a nice picture of it by using all your Twitter friend pictures.
Interaction 3: With a mouse-over, you can see the latest Tweets of a specific followers.
The final click leads you NOT to your friends account but to the landing page of the Vodafone 360 campaign. That’s it…
Spot On!
Now, we could discuss about the creative idea, or the stickiness value or “clickiness” factor. Or we could talk about the fact of the staying time and branding factor… and who “wins” customers with such banners in the end – apart from amusing them for a while.
When I saw this campaign for the first time I was disappointed as I thought I will be coming straight to the follower’s page – but had to realize that this is a campaign and follows some different purpose. It’s marketing, it’s a campaign and the old commercial approach. No conversation – limited engagement.
And now I am asking myself where the benefit in such creative campaigns is – for the user and the advertising company.
What do you think?
PS: If you want to test the interactive banner, please visit the Eyeblaster Creative Zone.