UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 7, 2010. 'The video clip which featured foxes running down the city streets was quite good, but in didn’t really do any good to the company it was supposed to promote. I feel this particular ad campaign is a classic example of the admen getting creative for the sake of getting creative, and nothing else. Sadly, this happens quite often when the admen focus on the creative aspects so much that they go out of their way to come up with something breath-taking but entirely forget about the customers’ interests in the process. They don’t stop to think, ‘Will this benefit our customer?’ In my opinion, this campaign will backfire on Argayasha: firstly, it won’t pay off, and secondly, it will put the customers off,’ Evgeny Krasikov, the General Director of Press-Attache, a communications agency, told UrBC.
In fact, the ad campaign in question, which was launched in Yekaterinburg recently, turned out to be an act of manipulation. It was reported in the media at the end of December that some foxes were spotted in downtown Yekaterinburg; this news was actually the beginning of an advertising campaign organized to promote ZAO Uralbroiler. As for the video clip with foxes running down the streets, it was all made up.
‘As far as I know, some members of the journalist community did not at all like being deceived, so I think they will be waiting for a chance to take revenge, not on the admen but rather on their customer,’ Krasikov says.
‘The clip itself looks interesting in terms of production, but it turns the customers off. We worked with a focus group only to find out that the aversion does exist. The clip viewers feel scared and even disgusted. This is certainly not going to promote sales. I believe Argayasha will experience nothing but problems with this advertisement. How could it possibly have been approved?’ the expert wonders.