Lately I have been asked why I am featuring ads which - at best - are ho-hum. Because, to quote George Hillary when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, "because it's there!". What does that mean? The amount of ads in Lebanon has reached such a critical low, that any ad done - no matter its quality - is worth mentioning. A campaign can linger on billboards for months on end, or it can be exhibited on a dismal number and still be visible (just as a comparison stick, in 2005 if you wanted your campaign to be "seen" - meaning simply to appear among the fray - they required number of billboards to be booked was no less than 500).
Of course, you might say - yes that's because there's the advent of digital Tarek, wake up and smell the Facebook. Really? How many ads have you seen as of late? And by that I mean something other than a corny (mostly stolen or uncredited) image with a logo on top? Little. Incredibly little.
On all accounts, this brings us to Cyberia and its efforts on Instagram in a neatly done, very minimal ad, which involves a nice opening shot with a proverb that goes "he who changes his habits, has his happiness diminished" only to be followed by a second frame which says "only not so with Cyberia" (creatively, to be honest, I would have went with the other proverb that went "any change brings relief" (el na2le fiha el faraj)). The ad goes on to then detail what Cyberia (an internet provider) is giving as an ADSL offer and its numerous perks.
See the full ad here.