I don’t know who does Reliant’s advertising. I talked to the internet, and it wouldn’t tell me. Whoever it is, the agency needs to rethink Reliant’s outdoor campaign for the new “cap and save” program. I’ve heard the radio spots. They’re good. Straightforward and simple: you lock in your price at a cap. If the price of energy goes down, so does your price; if it goes up, your price remains unchanged. So far, so good.
But now take a look at the huge billboard that went up recently on a building two blocks down Ross from D HQ. I saw it for the first time today and remarked to one of our art directors that I thought it was bad. “Can you explain it?” asked the art director. “I don’t get it.” Which is precisely my point. Unless you’re already familiar with the “cap and save” concept, this billboard is confusing. Why would you be all “Oh yeah” if prices went up? Beyond the confusing words, the double image of the woman is dull. I give it a “D-,” and it scores that high only because all the words on the billboard are spelled correctly.
(Note: for a brief time, I worked in an ad agency and created outdoor ads. The people at Nestle, no doubt, still talk about the sweet stuff I did on their behalf while employed by Publicis. What I’m getting at is, I’m an expert in this field.)
