So it’s been almost two months into Bell’s new advertising campaign and we find, again, why an ad campaign fails without a public relations campaign to back it up.
As you probably noticed, Bell fired chatty animated beavers Frank and Gordon in anticipation of the launch of its new logo. So it unleashed a new ad campaign to go with it. Presumably, to celebrate the momentous occasion of a restyled logo, Bell also wanted to launch a new image.
So how did the venerable old Canadian corporation decide to do this? With a great big “Er.”.
As is “closER”. “FastER”. BettER.”
Er.
Rather than revive the brand, the campaign could also be taken for what everyone’s reaction to the new ads have been.
It’s not a horrible campaign-it would almost be better if it were. This is just bland.
Bell tried to create some buzz by running a couple of weeks of ads with just the word “ER” drifting around a white background. But with its typeface unfortunately resembling that of a certain Toronto TV network, I actually thought it was a massively overhyped campaign for ER reruns on Global.
It’s too bad, because with all the tools available to them, Bell could have created an innovative PR campaign around the relaunch. Maybe “What was your best ER moment?” Even “be our contest winnER!” Beyond the usual cross-promotions, I haven’t seen anything from Bell that could be used to drum up any excitement.
No matter how tired people were of talking digital rodents, at least the campaign was distinctive . The “er” campaign is just vague and if it has a message, it’s lost on me.
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