Slightly Askew

Imagine there are twenty-five people in a room.  You’re about to open a great new shoe shop and you want to know what size shoe most people want to buy.  You pass around a piece of a paper and everyone writes what shoe size they want to be stocked.  If you take everyone’s opinion into account and do a bit of maths, you’ll get an average shoe size.

Similarly, you can take an advert for your shoe shop into that room of twenty-five people.  You pass it around, let everyone have their input, and make changes based upon that input.  The result is exactly the same: you get an average advert.

Do you want average?

Following yesterday’s post, Caroline - my better-qualified half - pointed out that having “more legroom on a First Choice Holiday” could be intended to build up imagery of spaciousness and relaxation on your particular holiday.

And she’s absolutely right.  It does do that.  But only when it’s been explained to me.

So although I think the strapline would work well visually:

Shot of man sitting down in aircraft.

Zooms in to show man stretching legs.

Zooms out to show man now on deserted beach on sun-lounger, being brought overly-extravagant cocktail by penguin-suited waiter.

Strapline and voiceover: “You get more legroom on a First Choice Holiday”.

Logo and website.

Commercial ends.

The text-ad alone doesn’t do that.  Well, not for me anyway.

Copied directly from Google AdWords: 

First Choice Holidays - www.firstchoice.co.uk - More legroom on First Choice Holidays. Book online today & save.

I’m hoping they were going to use the words flights, planes, or aircraft instead of Holidays.  Alas, brand governance probably caused sense to be jettisoned.