At last. A great Ad online.

You know I often wonder about the demise of traditional advertising and what if, ad people like me, from traditional ad agency backgrounds, embraced the technology rather than dismissed it?


Honestly, I wish we'd stop doing dismissing it because it's like going out to Dollymount Stand and trying to push out the waves. To sound sophisticated I often say, we're like the peasants in Lamb's essay....we know not how to roast pork other than to burn the house down (good isn't it?)


What I mean is that the game is up. It's over - so now get involved or lose it all.


You see apart from being second generation adman and my son possibly being a third, I was also a spokesperson for advertising being a former President and Fellow of The Advertising Institute (iapi). It's been a long time in advertising - since the breakfast table.

So it's not that I'm critical of advertising agencies, it's more that I wished they just stood up and realised that this is the fun of the 'madmen' era and is actually the most imaginative, creative space they could be in. Instead of being a threat to their livlihoods, it's possibly the greatest opportunity for their talent.

And just when despair became bleak, up stepped McCanns of Israel and creative director Nir whose Facebook page is at the top and who deserves to have his pic repeated here. And no, I've never heard of nor met him, unfortunately. 

Funny too that at almost exactly the same time I was reading an article by Tonia Ries of Modern Media in Social Media Monthly - a publication run by Bob from his Apartment in Washington DC. And if you see it, buy it, it's smashing.

Basically what Tonia is saying, which she bases around a concept called "realtime", is that with the rise of social media, geolocation and realtime services, brands have a massive opportunity to target consumers in realtime, based on 'expressions of interest'. Consumers of course, constantly tell you things about themselves - "likes", status updates, comments, video uploads, location, relationships and so on. 


You know that. And you know that brands traditionally interrupt their day, frequently, not because of expressions of interests but because of their media habits only and they keep telling them about the brand. Shouting at them repetitively whereas this way means you target consumers with relevance.


For example, I tweet that "I'm on my way to the airport". Your brand sees that and Tweets back "flights delayed due to fog so take your time" from say, "Mr. Coffee", then I appreciate the relevance and am likely to remember you.


Or I have arrived late at the hotel (don't we all) in a foreign place and I check-in via Foursquare to see a restaurant on the corner opens late and will give me a free beer. Thanks, I'm there.


Yes it requires automated personal activity based on detailed analysis of activity (have a look at Klout if you think this level of detail doesn't exist because it does). The web is a network of computers so advertising can be as accurate as it wants.


So Nir Refuah, sitting in McCanns in Israel and his team, clearly gets that and he has a problem to promote his client 'Opticana'. So he designs a "banner" based around eye tests. It's called an 'iphone pinch banner'. But he links it to the most common expression of interest that we all do, squeezing the text on an iphone.


If you squeeze it you make it bigger. If you need to make it bigger, you might need an eye test. At Opticana.

So here's an Agency, McCanns, about as traditional as you can get, thinking in the new space and doing a wonderful job for their client. And more importantly perhaps, doing a wonderful advertisement for the ability of admen in the new space. 


Thank you Nir and the whole team at McCanns, Israel.
I hope the rest of us are watching.