In 2005 , a 21 years old student Alex Tew came up with an idea of selling pixels on the web which was one of its kind and makes you go WOW ! ( why didn’t i think of that !!!) .
The idea is Basic , selling each pixel for companies that wish to have their ad in that pixel , have a look :
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/index-orig.php
Back then i was wondering why didn’t anyone from the region copycat the idea and applied it ( since we are even better than china in doing that , ironically … )
well guess what i have found one today, here is a comparison between the 2 sites :
however , it might be the same dude which i really doubt , but are we that sad that we cant come up with creative new ideas ?
watch flipcorp with their creative idea , using papervision 3d engine , NOW THATS COOL ! source flipcorp blog …
heres the problem; this sort of idea only works because it had a novelty value, ie, millions of people visited it to see, can a person really make a million dollars from a plain webpage selling pixels? All copycats after did not achieve the same success because 1 the idea was already done before and 2 people who checked out the first one wont be so intrigued to check out any of the others. Even with this said, some of the copycats made quite a bit of money, but thats because the advertisers who paid for the copy pages were stupid.
Anyway, this isnt a new concept in advertising, its a gimmick that dies out after a while. With that said, companies in bahrain hardly understand the effect of internet advertising, (ie most would pay thousands for a plain street billboard, but wouldnt consider an internet ad to save their life), and on top of that, they dont comprehend publicity stunts and far out gimmicks. Result? Bahrains million dollar page ends up making about.. Mmm.. 5 Dinars.
!! Maan, the problem is: our people dosen’t have the passion of thinking
even big companies such as batelco, most of their ads are copied, or the Idea stolen from other campaigns do you know why?
because first of all: they hire people to deal with agencies who have no idea what they are doing, they just have good english language that’s it, or they know somebody that pushed them up. they are not updated !!
when this manager comes to you as a designer or creative, they don’t ask you to come up with new ideas, they show you some old stuff of other companies and ask you to do something the same, as a agency you have to do what the client wants !! so we stay at the back, with no creative movement !!
stick your neck out – try something original.
in the end it will benefit you and the client.
If the client does not like it then they probably would not thank you for some of the same old stuff that will not get the results they need and only waste their money.
Just make sure that whatever you do is well researched and not crazy, if the client does well, then so do you.
be confident in your abilities – if you are not then who will be??
Emma