So we got a brief this week for a bank. They offer this savings account where twenty percent of what you put in gets put into a lottery, and you can win money and prizes. That's right, you put, say, fifty Euros of YOUR money into YOUR savings account, and assuming you don't win, a month later you have forty Euros. The account doesn't pay any interest.
My first thought was well that's fuckin' retarded. It goes against everything I've ever been told about the virtues of saving. The whole point of saving money is to let it sit there and not touch it and not do anything stupid with it like gamble it.
The second thing I thought was this would probably go over well with the young, not so wealthy, not so educated crowd. So I asked who the target audience is. Yep. Nailed it.
I knew this would happen eventually - it's the nature of the business. I knew that one day, someone would waltz into my office (or we'd meet in the kitchen, whatever) and ask me to make ads that convince the not-so-intelligent to do stupid things.
Back when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make advertising my next career, I talked to some people in the biz, and a couple times I asked this question: do you ever feel bad about trying to get people to buy things they don't need? Most people just hemmed and hawed a bit and said you get over it. But one guy whose name I can't remember put it really well. He rolled his eyes and said something like: "Look, I try as hard as I can to do good work that doesn't take advantage of people... but if I make an ad that says something ridiculous, and you're dumb enough to fall for it, then you're just dumb, and there's not much I can do about it." I thought that was a pretty good answer. And I think it's fair. I'm a Darwinistic kinda guy, and I think the buyer ought to beware. Do your best and don't be an asshole, but everyone knows that advertising is all promises promises. But there's just no way accommodate everyone's stupidity.
Still, I don't want to lie to people, or trick them (Cigarettes are healthy! Mel Gibson loves the Jews! This bank account is a great deal!). And what they want us to do is tell people who don't know any better that this savings account is FUN! and HEY, A EURO ISN'T THAT MUCH ANYWAY! and YOU'LL WIN A LOT AND GET RICH! Which is okay if you're the national lottery, but not so cool if you're a bank who's supposed to be telling people how best to handle their money. Hmph.
Then the account folks pointed us to our lawyer (THAT's always a good sign) if we have questions about what we can and can't say. So I talked to Christian. Turns out it's legal to offer accounts like this, but it's not legal to advertise them. Or at least, it's not legal to say things like you're gonna get RICH from GAMBLING with us. He also said that the client knows all this, but they want to make ads anyway. I guess they figure they can either a) get away with it, or b) get caught, pay a fine, and still basically get away with it. Great.
So I let all that brew in my brain for a bit, while Ricardo and I tried to find good angles to sell a product that we both know is pretty lame. We came up with some initial ideas, nothing spectacular, and I kept whining (internally) about it. So I talked to Christian some more.
Turns out, he's got one of these accounts with another bank. Same deal - no interest, and twenty percent of what he puts in goes into the lottery. Every two weeks they do a bunch of drawings, and he's won a couple of times. Usually he wins €5 or less, and a couple of times he's won €50. He said that he's probably broken even. And that it's kinda fun. Huh. Christian's not a retard... he's pretty smart. Made it through law school and ever'thang.
So that pretty much took all the wind out of the sails on my little ship of righteousness. Meanwhile, Ricardo and I have a pile of ads that are kinda funny, and not too dastardly. We present them tomorrow... I'm sure most of them will get kicked out, especially the ones that make outright gambling references... and the one that shows a hand with outstretched fingers against a white background. The pinky finger is missing and the copy says "If this were our bank you could win back up to 150,000 fingers or maybe a car!"
That shit is genius.
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