Even the most freewheeling advertising creative is limited by the constraints of budget, client, and physics. But what do they come up with in their wildest dreams?
It’s Christmas ad season, which means every brand and their dog is releasing a big-budget TV spot.
But the trend towards bigger formats isn’t seasonally isolated. Recently, The Drum reported from the frontier of long-form advertising. And it gets bigger – last year’s Barbie movie was an Oscar-winning triumph, yes, but also an enormous ad for the world’s most famous toy (and such a successful one that Mattel has reportedly greenlit a raft more movies for properties like Barney and Polly Pocket).
Even space, the final frontier, has already been breached, by stunts like Elon Musk’s Space Roadster (now five years on, it’s probably pretty burnt-up and might crash back down to earth – entirely unlike the fate of Musk’s Twitter/X, of course).
We’re already edging into science fiction territory with the ads …