We've reached an important point in the quarantine phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, at least in terms of the role that marketing communications can play.
There was an understandable lag over the first month of lockdown as brands struggled not only to determine what to say in their advertising, but also whether to say anything at all. For those who opted to move forward with new creative, customizing the messaging and solving the myriad production challenges would take time.
Over the past two weeks, we've seen that agencies and brands are finally hitting their stride, producing work that's both topical and on par with the craft we'd expect in more normal times.
Since it's Friday, I wanted to look back at some of our favorite response campaigns we noticed this week:
1. McCann Belgrade certainly created an iconic image with its campaign of doctors as superheroes. The subtle but powerful images, created largely by the agency's head of art, Lidija Milovanovic, were some of the most shared in the social media realm this past week.
2. Coors Light and agency DDB brought a much-needed breath of honesty to the discussion of the quarantine era by setting aside words like "uncertain" and "challenging" in favor of one we can all agree on: "sucky." They also offered up to 500,000 free beers for those who deserve a 6-pack, via the #CouldUseABeer hashtag.
3. As shown above, Mother New York and the New York Public Library produced something many of us didn't know we needed: a collection of the sounds of the city as we've always known it—humming with the thrum of humanity going about its collective day, pre-pandemic.
4. TBWA\Helsinki didn't just created a campaign about avoiding Covid-19. The agency prototyped an entire invention to help avoid the coronavirus that spreads the disease. Who wants to grab a door handle when making a supply run these days? (And for that matter, who will want to after all this is over?)
5. Dallas agency Dieste pulled off a wonderful transformation with local bookstore The Wild Detectives, which announced it would be pivoting to a...travel agency? But disappointed fans who clicked through to the shop's new site quickly realized it was a place to explore exotic destinations found in books, which of course could be ordered from the store's online shop.
Which creative campaigns were your favorites this week? Drop me a line at the email below or hit me up at @Griner on Twitter.
Wishing you a restful and work-free weekend,
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
[email protected]
