Audi and Abode show that traditional creative agencies can still deliver the goods

There’s a big debate going on in Marketing Land about the need for content to fill all those proliferating online channels and also who’s the best partner to supply it (see Oliver/Unilever story today).

There’s something of a duel going on between rapid fire production-based agencies and rather more stately conventional agencies.

So it’s interesting to see two new ads, both from the US, showing creative agencies at their best. For all we know these were produced in a hurry too although proper films like these don’t come off a production line.

The first, aptly, is called ‘Duel’ and ran on US TV on Monday night when there was a really big duel taking place, between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Audi’s duel is also between a man and a woman, doing what Hillary and the Donald would, no doubt, have liked to do to each other; age, infirmity and convention permitting of course. From Venables Bell, directed by Ringan Ledwidge.

84 million people watched Clinton against Trump and a fair proportion must have seen this.

The second is another in a long-running series from Adobe and Goodby Silverstein. It features a secret agent trying desperately to navigate those online-induced “customer-facing” (haha) sales channels that drive you mad. The campaign is called ‘Do you know what your marketing is doing?’ Directed by Steve Rogers.

Adobe can drive you nuts of course, with endless upgrades to its Flash Player that don’t seem to be any better than the last spec.

Both are proper campaigns from proper agencies demonstrating that the traditional combination of high level creativity and production creates high impact (we’ll give both of these 8). They won’t have come cheap, or quickly necessarily, but they certainly work.