Different channels call for different creatives

Just a few days ago, I was sitting on the plane, which was waiting at the gate to be allowed to taxi out to the runway. Not ready to start reading yet, but also uninterested in putting on the earplugs, I ended up staring at the mute screen built into the seat in front of me.

After a few minutes consuming ‘muted advertisements’ it struck me that some ads made complete sense. I got the message, and a week later, I still have brand recall. One of these was a car ad and all key messages were also displayed on the screen. It was simple, to the point and all the right connotations (for performance, comfort, and reliability) were used.

On the other hand some other messages could have been selling sand from Mars for all I know. While we were waiting to move, with only a handful of ads rotating, I saw all of them again – some still not making sense.

Of course there are budgetary constraints to create a new artwork or creative for each and every channel within a marketing campaign. But creative should only be recycled and used cross-platform if the message will make sense within that medium. Otherwise it is just wasted ad dollar, and is likely to produce poor results.
.