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bLink 37

Online advertising: more than talking frogs?

Thom Wong 15 Jun 2006TheTyee.ca

Thom Wong writes regularly about music for The Tyee. He has also been a teacher and contract specialist. With eight years of education and three bachelor degree, Thom focuses mostly on marketing writing.
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37th of 40 bLinks.

Sometimes I stumble across something online and have no idea what it is. Is it an ad? The deranged rantings of a mad genius? The work of a twelve-year-old savant? All three? After a little bit of searching it tends to become obvious. And increasingly, the most creative work on the web is corporate.

So when I found this site, I was intrigued. It had all the hallmarks of an advertisement, with none of the usual constant bombardment of slogans or "ironic" cleverness. Just a man with a billboard that seems to be screening a video of a flash website. When the video ends you’re taken to a screen with other similarly billboarded individuals, all hocking the beauty of their web design.

A quick glance around the site tells you this is the work of Freedom Interactive Design, a web design company that takes the radical approach of having a web site you would actually want to visit. Would You Like a Website? is the initiative of the Adobe Design Center Gallery. Both demonstrate that advertising can be much more than talking frogs and couples having conversations about which camera to buy. (Memo to Canon cameras -- stop making ads right now. Stop it.)

Thom Wong is a law student who spends an unreasonable amount of time online. His 40 bLinks column runs every Tuesday and Thursday on The Tyee. [Tyee]

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