Advertising Is Good For You

An advertising campaign for fertilizer without the obligatory image of a big, lush plant

Thumb through a gardening magazine and you'll find a jungle of ads featuring images of beautiful lush plants. Imagine how much more eye-catching and interesting these ads must be.

Advertising agency: DDB, Dusseldorf

Source: Ads of the World

B2B ads worth looking at. Really.

Despite the fact that I produce a lot of them for my clients, I don't often post B2B ads. Frankly, most B2B advertising is atrocious. And that's because much of it is created in-house by people whose job descriptions have little to do with advertising creative.

Another reason B2B advertising is so goddawful is the mistaken notion that it has to be serious. As though people leave their senses of humor and humanity at home before leaving for work.

Here are a couple of B2B ads from Farm Plan that show it should be done.

Farm Plan makes accounting software for farmers. Basically, a boring product for an audience with boring trade publications. (To be fair, 99% of trade publications are boring.)

These ads use humor to both catch a farmer's attention and convince him/her that this accounting software will make life easier. You think the same could have been accomplished with  charts and photos of a person sitting at the computer?

Source: Ad Rants 

Marijuana is the USA's biggest cash crop.

Pot is the most profitable American crop according to an analysis of government statistics done by marijuana public policy wonk, Jon Gettman.

Somehow, I just know it, they're going to try to blame advertising for this, too.

Source: Boing Boing