We hold these truths to be self-evident, that people will usually avoid advertising whenever possible.
At no time has this been more clear than in the last decade, when premium services, such as Amazon and Hulu, as well as other new technology, allow individuals to bypass most advertising all together. No longer do we have the captive audience once available through television commercials, magazines or even radio. It’s all on demand and what the people are demanding are no commercials.
The key to cutting through the commercial-free platforms and droves of tiny, hyper-specific ads bombarding our device screens is creativity. At Esparza, we have six criteria we test our ideas against in order to discern whether they are truly creative and worthy of pursuing. These six criteria ask whether the idea or campaign is arresting, engaging, relevant, compelling, newsworthy and measurable. We value creativity and our criteria for assessing it because we understand the significance of carefully crafted creative work. Creativity allows us to see beyond the history of what has been done and to forge new paths, new innovative ways of accomplishing the same objective.
Covergirl recently achieved this by tapping Muslim YouTube star, Nura Afia as a spokeswoman. Not only are they using a non-traditional media platform by tapping into Afia’s YouTube fan-base, they also got creative with who is representing their brand, because Afia wears a hijab. Not only is she an influencer, this covered girl is a unique voice for Covergirl and perhaps an ambassador for acceptance and unity in our culture. Covergirl’s campaign certainly meets our six creative criteria at Esparza and thus, has gained a great deal of positive and measurable attention.
