Swiss Casinos: Advertising for a cooler
With plenty of advertising space, Swiss Casinos is trying to get me in the mood to gamble with cluttered posters and artificial, cold (not cool) illustrations by the Mannerist artist Jason Brooks. But they don’t tempt me. By Theophil Butz, graphic designer, advertising agency owner, source of inspiration, and—for over a year and a half now—also a grumbler for *Werbewoche* readers. Please send relevant comments to [email protected].
Firstly, if you look at the advertising campaigns for casinos, you wonder whether this product doesn't deserve more creative, original and unbridled advertising. Even conservative insurance companies have shown much more advertising ingenuity. Secondly, it's about the design technique with illustrations. Before you have an idea, here's the idea: "We'll use an English illustrator. Yes, very good idea." You then show the customer your glamorous portfolio. And they are thrilled. But the advertising idea is still missing. And the advertising solution now looks just as unimaginative and stiff. Failure.
My theory. First of all, the problem of working with illustrations: In our example, the creatives completely forgot, or didn't know, that illustrations offer possibilities that photoshops can only dream of. This opportunity has been missed. Let us remember Herbert Leupin's clown for knees, who juggles the letters on his knee, the covers of Der Spiegel magazine, the New Yorker or the numerous opera house posters by Domenic Geissbühler (the opera house also offers spectacle and play). Lürzer's archive contains countless examples of outstanding campaigns using the illustration technique.
The countless movies such as Ice Age, Shrek and Toy Story show us how far the imagination can go in illustration.
In addition to the missed opportunity for the casinos, I am also annoyed by the unspeakable children's chocolate jumping jack on TV.
So illustrations are an ideal advertising medium. But even this technique needs an idea. Otherwise you'd better leave it alone.
On the subject of advertising for a casino, the client and its advertisers should have come up with a better campaign. I understand that casino advertising is a novelty in Switzerland. But the fact that the people at "Baden im Glück" and Swiss Casinos can only come up with these clichés makes me wonder. Advertising has a disease: the "unimaginative, non-dropout virus". I think that the clients carry this virus and have infected the advertisers with it. But I believe that this disease should be curable.
My pick of the week is that the post office has improved its service and friendliness. After all, they broke a 500 ml bottle of Olio Nuovo that was packaged in accordance with postal regulations. They called me immediately and refunded the value of the goods and the postage.
