Thursday, December 10, 2015

A new word.

The other day I saw a video on Agency Spy for PNC bank. It was a video recounting the sort of "marketing" I simply don't understand.

Someone at PNC, or at their agency decided it would be smart, or cool, or brand-enhancing to build a branch of their bank out of gingerbread and gumdrops. They thought that this stunt was important or moving enough to create a video on it. They thought it was all notable enough to send that video to Agency Spy.


I dunno.

The video was about as mediocre as these things get. Like every other video done for every other stunt it has the almost obligatory undercranked footage of the installation being installed.

I guess there are some few people in Philadelphia (where the gingerbread branch was built) who took their kids to see the giant gingerbread bank. Maybe the kids broke off a piece of it and ate it. Maybe turn-about is fair play in that banks usually eat us, now we can eat a bank.

Yesterday I wrote, briefly, about celebrating my 31 years in the business. In other words, I've been around the block a few times.

I can't see the value of creating this kind of "experience," despite all my experience.

I'd rather see a bank invest the funds in helping rebuild a ghetto. Or help a veteran get a mortgage. Or fucking give balloons to kids. Or god-forbid open a branch in an underserved neighborhood--of which there are many.

This is, I believe, the advertising equivalent of panem et circenses--bread and circuses. Fanfare to distract what marketing believes is a stupid public.

This isn't advertising.

This sort of thing is dumbvertising.

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