Fascinating YouTube Ad Brings Ordinary Products into the Spotlight

Advertising is an intriguing, ever-evolving, always exciting business. The popularity of movies like Glengarry, Glen Ross, and TV shows like the Emmy award winning Mad Men, based on the Madison avenue advertising executives in the '60s, prove just how fascinated society is with advertising. It's one of those businesses that will always be around, and will always be changing. The typical TV commercial market is still going relatively strong, although facing hefty competition from the dreaded PVR and on-demand TV. But complementing it is the existence in in-show "ads," product placements, and even subtle mentions, all methods that are growing like gangbusters. Likewise, while print advertising remains an intimate and interactive kind of advertising in the traditional sense (much like reading a book is arguably just as interactive for the mind, if not more, than watching a movie), so, too, has Web advertising complemented the experience, and afforded the ability for so much more than just a static image or an animated GIF. We've even evolved past just "traditional" Web advertising into the realm of social media integration. Consider the highly successful Old Spice Twitter/YouTube campaign as an ideal example of that.

I've seen some wild and crazy stuff; from the aforementioned Old Spice campaign, to even virtual ads where you can rotate an image 360-degrees to view it from every angle. But none has impressed me more than a YouTube ad I came across the other day for, ironically, a very antiquated product: the Tipp-Ex ink correction device. Yes, white-out. One of those little gadgets that run a piece of white material overtop text in a document, allowing you to write over it.

The YouTube video at first appears to be an NSFW ("Not Safe For Work") video of a hunter shooting and killing a bear out in the woods. But at the last minute, the hunter gets cold feet and asks you, the viewer, in Choose Your Own Adventure style, to decide whether he should kill the bear or not. Regardless of which answer you click on, the end result is that he chickens out, and decides he no longer wants to commit the heinous murder. What really makes your eyes bug out, however, is what happens next. He reaches his arm literally outside of the video window, and grabs a Tipp-Ex ink correction device right out of the standard big box ad that's strategically placed to the right of the video. He moves it over and up to the video title, and whites out the word "shoots" in the title "A hunter shoots a bear?" Then, peering longingly into the camera, he asks you to type in what you'd like to see him do to the bear instead. Regardless of what you type, there's a subsequent video to entertain you. Want to see him hug the bear? No problem. Love it? Yep. Eat it? Sure (although, not to give anything away, he won't really eat the real bear.) Even if you get a little naughty with your choice, you'll get a humorous response.

It's the most compelling online advertisement I've seen, and one that will really give other creative agencies a run for their money. What's most impressive, however, is that the ad has managed to get attention for a product that's not exactly conducive to the highly digital nature of our world today; even less so when it comes to things like social networking: the concept of "white out" is defined by a simple backspace key!

Will the ad, which was commissioned by parent company BIC (the same co. that makes those handy pens!) translate to actual sales of Tipp-Ex products? Who knows. Maybe not for the ink correction device. But the next time you're in a store and see the Tipp-Ex brand name slapped onto a product, chances are you'll smirk at the memory of this video, won't you? And chances are that you'll end up gravitating to that brand; perhaps without even realizing it.

Kudos to the advertising agency that developed this highly compelling ad. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see come from Don Draper if he were here in today's tech-savvy world. The video has already received more than four-million views in just two weeks. Whether that translates to four million purchases, or four, the brand recognition it has generated is an immeasurable example of the success.