COVID-19: DO WE ZIG OR DO WE ZAG?

Have you noticed how the plethora of Covid-19 commercials seem to be fairly similar in tone, approach, video and audio ?

Of course, brands need to, and want to, tell us that they care, that they understand and appreciate what everyone is doing in his or her won way to get through this enormous crisis. After all, this is something humanity has not seen since the Spanish plague of yore.

They want to salute the ones who go above and beyond to keep us safe and healthy. And this is good and extremely laudable. They want to encourage us to stay safe, to wash our hands, to stay inside and to keep a 2m-distance from each other. I get that and thank them for it.

But I wonder why all messages are so very similar ? We have some of the hottest creative minds in the world working for these brands. So why do they seem to have limited themselves to what I would call the easy way out in their concepts ? I am not necessarily criticizing anyone here, don’t get me wrong. I may not have done any better myself. But I feel somewhat baffled.

I wonder why it seems no one took a less traveled road to express the same message. Limited production possibilities are part of the answer. Rush to be on air is another. But do we not thrive in impossible solutions to get our creative juices flowing? To quote the great Bill Bernbach, « when everybody zigs, zag ». All I seem to see is a lot of zig.

Which makes me wonder what will the deconfinement messages look like ? Will they all have the same look and feel a well? Will we zag a bit and break away from the inevitable clutter and tsunami of hope-aimed ads?

I have no idea. I hope so though.

In the meantime I leave you with this video which brilliantly illustrates what I have been talking about. And I raise my glass to all the zaggers who I hope will get their voice heard and make creativity and originality the core of their messages to come.