Eye Magazine

Kolster, as many other commentators before, makes the case that the brands that will thrive in the 21st century are the ones best able to mainstream sustainability, conversation and genuine mutuality, not just into their communications, but into their modes of business. Citing brands such as PepsiCo, McDonalds and Puma, Goodvertising promises to show how far mainstream brands have come along this road – where they’ll not only save the advertising industry, but save the world, too.

The book showcases campaigns by some of the world’s most prominent ad agencies in ten chapters outlining the rules of goodvertising. Some of the campaigns are excellent and show off the ad industry at its best – witty, challenging and genuinely full of insight. Clemenger BBDO’s ‘Sleep Before You Drive’ campaign for the New Zealand Transport agency is beautifully conceived and powerfully art directed. Road accidents are reimagined with beds instead of cars, showing the danger of falling asleep at the wheel.

BBH London’s ‘The Difference’ campaign for St John Ambulance combines photographer Nadav Kander’s trademark monochrome portraits with perfectly pitched typography on everyday paper stock to encourage people to realise that first aid knowledge could be the difference between life and death. There are lots more like this from the likes of Unicef, Greenpeace and Amnesty. So many, in fact, that the central premise of the book ends up being undermined.

A great proportion of the Goodvertising’s examples are agencies’ campaigns for charities, NGOs and for government information initiatives: brands whose very purpose is to do good. Although there are some commercial cases included, as a piece, the book doesn’t quite chart the journey from corporate mammon the author had signed us up for.

So either ‘goodvertising’ corporate brand campaigns or strategies are thin on the ground, or the best examples of the ‘goodvertising’ principle exist where the client is already doing good. Or maybe the corporates’ most radical good work doesn’t actually render well as advertising at all.

Whatever the case, on the evidence of what’s in the book, it is hard not to be left feeling that Kolster might have oversold his core ‘goodvertising’ idea a little, driving it so hard and so fast that it ends up a little creaky.

Andrew Missingham, creative consultant, London.

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