There's nothing Mini about this

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Note: Watch the video or you won't know what I'm talking about.

This is pretty huge. Can you imagine how far we can take advertising with this type of technology? All of the sudden the media space on the back cover of a magazine has gotten much more valuable. It's no longer a 3 seconds glance. It could be a 3 minute interaction with a consumer. That's not mini...that's HUGE!!!! Despite my excitement over this technology, I have to raid this party with some reality.

I was reading the first chapter of Truth, Lies, and Advertising today for my account planning class and there was an excerpt about efficiency and effectiveness, which I would like to share. In the 30's in the Soviet Union, Stalin assigned production targets to factories that they would need to reach or face severe consequences. You can imagine the pressure. A steel mill was given a production target for nails in weight not quantity. In fear for their lives, they didn't make a lot of nails, they just made huge nails. Some of them were even three feet in length. Completely useless but nonetheless, they met the weight requirements that were asked and lived to nail another day. This is a clear example of something that was efficient , but not effective. The nails went straight to the garbage.

As I saw the Mini ad, I thought to myself whether this was either one of those. Well it is definitely effective. You can get a complete 3D view of a car from the comfort of your own home. Oh how we love to make you lazier don't we? As if the drive to the Mini dealership was going to kill you. Either way, I'm having a few problems getting my mind around this. It seems to me that the actual creation of the 3D model took quite some time and money to make. The production value on this must be insane. I'm assuming. I don't know the price, but I would venture to say that it's pretty high. Plus, what if I don't have a Logitech webcam on my computer? Then it's just a lame looking print ad. It's not cool unless I actually engage in the activity, which means that the eyeball count isn't the same as for a regular print ad where I get the message right away. Measurability is going to be a factor.

Artistically, it's mind-blowing, but we are not in the business of selling art. As Truth, Lies, and Advertising says "art is a means to sell our product, but the art alone isn't enough." Our business is to sell product and sometimes art gets us there. This ad will probably win something at Cannes for interactivity, but ultimately will it sell more Minis? That's the objective. As advertisers, our duty is to make the most effective campaign using the clients money. This look like it took a lot of money out of the Mini budget. I'm not necessarily taking sides.

If someone was thinking so economically then this cool ad wouldn't have been brought into being and I wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. They would have done some TV and print and wham, bam, thank you mam! Sometimes that still works. Emphasis on the sometimes. In a way this ad is succeeding in many other ways. For one, I'm blogging about it. So are a bunch of other people. I was exposed to the ad without even purchasing the magazine the ad was in. Buzz counts too.

I guess we'll see how effective it was eventually, but for now I'm in a tug-o-war on this one.