Advertising the Age of Heroes

Should good advertising be really fast, extremely strong, highly technical, very rich or…have control of the sea?

As incomplete as the allegory is, our recent Justice League campaign has got us thinking about rich media advertising and the influence of sharing skills and traits.

Just like in the film, in advertising the measurement of success dictates much of what we do. In the post-Man of Steel age in which the film opens Gotham and the World’s decline forces Bruce Wayne’s realization of the need to return to the age of heroes.  Similarly, the need to deliver an optimal metric for a campaign (whether that be CTR, CPM or any of the others) can often dictate the form and content of the advertising.

This is understandable, with clients wanting to know what the value and return of their investment has been. Across the industry the need to continually fine tune this and meet the needs of an ever-changing market is set to be one of the biggest topics of 2018. The huge range of formats and contexts in which a campaign can run will be afforded more clarity, but in the mean time are metrics the best sole focus?

Our favourite part of our Justice League campaign was that we were able to match core gamers and avid comic book fans with material about a film that was highly relevant to their interests. The most important thing Venatus does is connecting people with things that they love.

The fact that this works for our clients is fantastic, not least because funding from advertising keeps content free for people to enjoy. It takes a group of people with a range of skills, from planners to salespeople, creative and operations in order to achieve this, but where in Justice League the arc is a team finding their enthusiasm for saving the world, in advertising putting this first can lead to great results.