Polar Ice Caps

Art Directors.

Here's an ad that will make you touch yourself.

A beautifully-designed and stunningly-executed print ad for Greenpeace created by Memac Ogilvy & Mather, Dubai that gets its point across with pure simplicity and effortlessness.

Faultless, right?

No.

Here's my problem with it:

"Act now against climate change."

It's a tedious, zany and downright unimaginative piece of copy. It adds absolutely nothing to this ad and, in my opinion, hinders its sheer brilliance. The call to action is of course needed, but Ogilvy should have left it at that.

This is one of those ads where the visual is that good, copy just isn't required.

See, advertising isn't all bad.

China Times Gone By

Now. I'm not Asian. But I think that if I was, I would be offended by these ads by DDB Dubai for China Times' 'Authentic Chinese Cuisine'.

In fact, I think we should all be offended by these ads. There's no 'Big Idea' here. The creatives on these ads have simply made people look (over-exaggeratedly, I may add) Asian. How is that clever? It's just plain lazy.

"But Marty, the tagline is 'Brings Out The Chinese In Everyone', do you not see what they have done?'

Yes, I have. But when I go to a Chinese restaurent, I want the food to be great Chinese food, I don't want to feel Chinese myself. These ads don't tell me in anyway whatsoever that their food is great. In fact, it doesn't tell me anything about their food.

I, for one, do not like these ads at all. And if I was China Times, there's no way in hell I'd have bought into this concept.

In my opinion, it's just razy lacism.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it).