You’re going to do a lot of things today, but rest assured, you will not screw them up like this.
I get what Vanguard is trying to do here in this ad, but it had the opposite effect on me. They tried too hard and got too cute. Time and temperature makes people look, fine. So does a picture from my own local area. Neat. From there, it just falls apart.
There’s no doubt that Vanguard tests their ads, but you can iterate and improve anything– especially something that starts out so bad. That doesn’t mean you’re even on the right track.
Focus on fewer things. Get more done.
The sheer volume of what Vanguard is trying to do with this ad causes it to collapse on itself. Think about it:
- Localized background image
- Sunset time near the main text
- Temp and weather out to the left, for some reason
- Aspirational rhetorical question
- Weird new branded verb
- Unclear CTA button
Really, how are you going to help me see investing differently? Are you going to convince me of things that are demonstrably false, like that the sun sets in the east?
For this ad to be productive, it only needs to do one thing well: get people to click. That’s it. Remove time and temp, fix your image (srsly, I felt all the cranky feels from this one), nix the dumb new verb and tell me what the button does: “Find out how.”
Easy, right? Do less. Get more done.
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