Ads About Nothing

Background

With all theatre shows, TV and movie productions cancelled, many actors suffered great financial loss. A few were lucky to have one source of income left: recording ads from home.

Idea

The Flemish Actors' Guild launched a call to action to all advertisers, asking them to create extra ads just for the sake of recording ads. Ads about nothing. The adsaboutnothing.be website was created that provided examples and where marketers could order an ad for their own brand. They were asked to pay the standard fee for a voice recording. Participating voice-over artists donated the fee to "acteurspenning", a fund that provides Covid relief to actors in need.

Results

37 brands participated, many of them well-known names such as IKEA, Coca-Cola and Toyota. Together, they increased the fund's resources by 25% and have helped 108 struggling actors to cover their immediate costs of living.

Our Thoughts

Branding is nothing more than making an impersonal product or company seem human. Here are big organisations like Bosch, Siemens, Douwe Egberts, IKEA and Coke all doing nothing more than to be nice. These radio commercials may not have been ads for the product but they certainly would have done a lot for the brand. And 37 marketers were smart enough to see that. In this time of difficulty for so many, those three little words, ‘thank you Coca-Cola’ would resonate with more people than just Belgium’s actors.