Tracks & Fields’ Resolutions for 2016
We’re only a few
days into the start of 2016, and with every New Year come new resolutions.
Predictions about the New Year have already been made in the advertising
community, from Adweek’s
run down of the top trends influencing 2015 to Campaign
Magazine’s prediction that digital advertising is going to take over in
2016.
Amongst the wealth of New Year predictions, we have created our own list of trends in advertising. We have looked back on the most creative work of the past year and selected what trends we look forward to seeing more of in 2016:
Beyond Stereotypes
While society is becoming ever more diverse, so too is the face of advertising. 2015 saw advertisers becoming increasingly open-minded, with adverts featuring same-sex couples, such as Wells Fargo, as well as little girls dreaming of becoming anything in Barbie’s inspirational hidden-camera campaign and a little boy playing with Barbie in Moschino’s advert.
Moschino – ‘Barbie’
While looking beyond stereotypes and embracing open-mindedness fully is a slow process, this year’s adverts show us that diversity is a trend that is becoming even more evident in advertising and is set to continue into 2016.
Even More
Beautiful Cinematography
With increasing budgets and ever improving visual technology, advertising has long been seen as a work of art, and this year was no exception.
Take for example this stunning work of student filmmakers, whose Harley-Davidson spot this year went viral on advert blogs like Adweek, after being mistaken for officially branded content. This stunning spec work and its sensational number of shares around the world demonstrates the future for advertising and what audiences want - beautiful pictures that feel like blockbusters:
In another beautifully shot piece from the year, Atlantic Group captured this spectacular creation of life in a freezing and hostile environment.
Atlantic Group – ‘37 Days’
With such impressive cinematography being created for advertising in 2015, we can only hope to see even more breathtaking adverts to come.
Imagination through Animation
Advertising has not only been impressive this year through beautiful cinematography. Stunning animated visuals have also been adopted to transport the audience into other worlds.
Take for example this striking advert from IKEA UK, which transforms childhood imagination into a beautifully animated world, where a robot dreams of trying to fly.
IKEA – ‘Come Home to Play’
In another example from Spain, this hit lottery advert, captivated audiences with the lovable animated character’s story. The animation made the advert no longer just a story about buying a lottery ticket, but instead gave it feature film appeal – one could easily imagine it being an animated short played before a Pixar film.
Anuncio Lotería de Navidad 2015 – ‘Justino’
With such successful animated
creative in 2015, we hope to see even more imaginative pieces in 2016.
Emotionally
Led Stories
Unless you spent December underground, it would have been impossible to avoid the abundance of tear-jerking Christmas adverts of 2015. The predominant theme seemed to be lonely grandfathers, with heartbreaking adverts from the likes of John Lewis, Edeka, and the Spanish Lottery. The adverts engaged audiences with captivating and emotional stories, but with very little branding and product placement. It was the story inside the advert that made the headlines and made the adverts become viral hits around the world.
But it was not just the Christmas period that managed to draw on audiences’ emotions to create a strong connection between audiences and brands. Emotional spots showed up in the annual Super Bowl, with Budweiser’s lost puppy commercial, and even became worldwide trends once they were shared across Twitter, such as the case with this extremely touching PSA from Argentina:
As 2015 has shown, emotional engagement is set to become even more central in adverts, where telling a story and captivating the audience is slowly becoming even more important than portraying the use of the products.
Tymbark – ‘Give Something Back’
Stronger
Creative Use of Music
While emotion can create a strong connection between the audience and the brand, so too can music. Many of the most effective emotional adverts this year also featured strong and emotionally compelling sync licenses, which often ended up entering the music charts.
Adobe – ‘Dream On’
Creative use of music can be a powerful tool for an advert’s success. Clever use of music makes an advert memorable to the audience. A catchy tune can stick in the mind of the viewer and it also has the ability to increase the desirability of a product for example by featuring cinematic and inspirational music. According to a report by advertising agency adam&eveDDB and Goldsmiths University of London, music is ‘central’ to the success of TV adverts, with music helping adverts to sell 20-30% more compared to adverts featuring no music at all (Binet et al., 2013).
John Lewis Home Insurance – ‘Tiny Dancer’
With music playing an extremely important role in the creative and the selling part of advertising, we believe that 2016 will see increasingly strong creative use of music in adverts.
Amazon – ‘Lonely Little Horse’
2015 was a great
year for creativity in advertising and we are hoping to see even more in the
New Year to come.
