Yahoo! Hearts Creatives
The story behind the video and our commitment to the creative community
Judging from the numbers, a lot of you have already seen the “Yahoo! Hearts Creatives” viral video. But here’s the back story.
Agencies and creatives make advertising. Copywriters, designers, directors—these folks and the agencies they work with chisel sizzle out of fizzle. It seems simple, sure. But anyone in the ad biz knows just how hard a simple message can be to create and get across. Remember the “Where’s the beef?” TV campaign? It became a national catchphrase, catapulted the brand into an industry phenomenon, and even influenced a presidential election. It may look easy, but it’s not.
And at Yahoo! don’t we know it. And we know you can’t just be thinking about TV when you create your campaigns. Back in the “Where’s the beef?” days, advertisers created their ads, put them on TV—it didn’t much matter if it was “Barney Miller” or “The Gong Show”—and prayed. With online advertising things are a bit trickier.
“When creating digital advertising,” says Brian Hunt, a senior creative director at Yahoo!, “the advertiser or agency must work with a property, whether it’s Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or what have you. Big online ad concepts often need to be tied to the property and its audience.”
Getting your show on the road
To help agencies wrap their heads around this idea and develop stronger creative, Beth Lawrence, Yahoo!’s VP of agency relations, and her team worked together with Hunt to develop The Creative Roadshow, which showcases examples of some of the most effective digital ad campaigns out there, on Yahoo! and elsewhere. So far, 11 agencies have seen the presentation and many more are lined up.
To kick off the Creative Roadshow presentation, Hunt, along with Ian Kennish, senior director of marketing development, created the “Yahoo! Hearts Creatives” digital short.
“It’s a humorous take on the creative process, an homage to creatives and an encouragement to continue to battle for the big ideas,” says Hunt. “We work alongside the creative community to help the world’s biggest ideas find a home on the world’s biggest stage—in front of our more than 500 million users.”
The video, which took a day to shoot, stars three actual Yahoo! creatives, Gavin Farrell and Kelly Valdivia, as well as Hunt himself, and three professional actors. (Watch the video and try to guess who’s who!)
In conjunction with the Roadshow, the Yahoo! Advertising team also recently launched a creative contest for Ad Council non-profits called “Create For a Cause.”
Whether Mikey likes it, or your bologna has a first name, or your ad features a talking gecko, Yahoo! Advertising is here to help you get the most out of your campaigns.
To learn more about partnering with us, visit Yahoo! Advertising’s Advertiser and Agency Solutions page.
[ 5 comments | Categories: Ad Creation, Display, Insights, Video and Photos, Yahoo! News ]
[...] For the full story behind this video, head over to our new Yahoo! Advertising blog. [...]
[...] A few weeks ago we unleashed the Yahoo! Hearts Creatives video—originally created as an in-house marketing vehicle—on the general agency public. Since then, it’s gotten rave reviews and is appearing [...]
[...] A few weeks ago we unleashed the Yahoo! Hearts Creatives video—originally created as an in-house marketing vehicle—on the general agency public. Since then, it’s gotten rave reviews and is appearing [...]
[...] A few weeks ago we unleashed the Yahoo! Hearts Creatives video—originally created as an in-house marketing vehicle—on the general agency public. Since then, it’s gotten rave reviews and is appearing [...]
The Yahoo! Hearts Creatives video is a fun satirical spin behind the scenes of many an ad agency! Love it!!!