Terrible new ad campaign for The Economist

The Economist has a terrible new ad campaign by BBDO called "Red Wires." The film itself, featuring a wire-jumper named Florent Blondeau walking on high-wires throughout the city is fairly interesting. But the campaign's concept is stunningly bad. The imagery has no readily apparent connection to news. More importantly, The Economist is only mentioned at the very end of the 70-second clip, and when it is mentioned, it's accompanied by the ill-conceived tagline "Let your mid wander." But you go to TMZ (or Super Punch) to let your mind "wander." The Economist is serious news for the reader that's serious about learning about the world. It's a great example of an ad that might do wonders for its director but nothing for the product.*

While I'm on the topic, here's two interesting articles from The Economist, found via Tucker Stone's weekly summary:

1. A recent study indicates that the evolutionary reason for depression is that we feel depression when we realize a goal is unobtainable. Being depressed convinces us to abandon an unreachable goal, during the depressed phase, we conserve energy and devise a new goal, and then we can put our stored energy to good use pursuing the new goal.

2. Dinosaurs might have been much smaller than we grew up believing. (Still big, but not astonishingly big.)

*They're serious enough about the campaign that I was contacted twice and asked to write about it.

*Previously: Superman vs. a T-Rex.

*Buy amber fossils at eBay.