This TD Bank campaign from Ogilvy Canada demonstrates how White advertising agencies engage in blatant lies and deception under the guise of creative cleverness.
For starters, the images underscore the concept only “works” under precise and ideal conditions; that is, most humans will never clearly see and/or grasp the meaning. The campaign looks great for scammy awards entries but constitutes environmental clutter and wasted media placement.
The thinking behind the campaign (excerpted below) boasts how the responsible creative team worked around legal requirements. Indeed, the fine print seems fake too, as most financial investment messages require deep disclaimers.
In short, the TD Bank campaign is a waste of money—it constitutes a bad investment.
In a market first, TD Bank introduced Fractional Shares and needed to show novice investors that they could own a fraction of the biggest and best stocks in the world. The problem? We weren’t allowed to legally show the iconic brands people could invest in. If we did, we could face major lawsuits from the heavily copyrighted logos.
Knowing we couldn’t print other brand logos on our ads, we found a loophole that avoided trademark infringement and outsmarted the lawyers. We laser cut a window on each of our custom ads, then strategically placed them where the iconic brand logos already existed — storefronts and offices.
Since each logo was at a different height in its natural environment, each placement had to be positioned at the precise angle and distance. And because we were promoting Fractional Shares, we had to ensure every window would only display a fraction of the brand’s logo. Each ad took people to the TD Direct investing page.
Where most would see barriers, we saw a window of opportunity to playfully promote our product with a younger audience.
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