Iceland Air’s “Bad Photographer Contest” is Shattering the Monotonous Non-Human Marketing Model

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  via Canva+ Truecreatives

• Adveritising, Baby!

  Iceland Air, a teensy tiny multinational airline has thrown a Hail Mary marketing pitch onto the conference room table in an attempt to combat their industry’s decline in sales. Iceland Air has launched a “Bad Photographer” contest with a clear goal, publicly posting the following statement: “Required that the applicant have no photography skills. Preferably bad at framing, not familiar with composition, white balance, colour theory, or image-making in general.” Could this be real?

• WANTED: A REALLY BAD PHOTOGRAPHER

  
  via icelandair

• At first, the internet thought that the official airline’s Instagram had been hacked, assuming that a wildly random, weirdly nostalgic, and uncharacteristically bold stunt couldn’t possibly be legitimate, but Iceland Air HQ followed up and confirmed their seriousness. This contest is legit. They are looking for a really bad photographer to document their country’s beauty, insisting that even an amateur with shaky, off-center, poorly-framed pictures in their camera roll could make Iceland appear beautiful. Now, that’s quite the challenge.

• Surely an amateur photographer couldn’t capture something like the pros, but Iceland Air insisted otherwise, and they are determined to prove it as part of their ad campaign. 

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  via Getty Images Pro (tawatchaiprakobkit)

• This ad is pure genius, and in its simplicity, has shaken the marketing industry back down to its bare bones. 

  Shattering the AI-slop model and refreshing both their company’s image and their country’s tourism prospects, this is a refreshing ad campaign. Tapping into simplicity and humanity, Iceland Air turns away from AI-generation and even professional content creation. Instead, they’re leaning into an irreplaceably important business facet that many larger companies have completely forgotten about: humans. At a time where society is pivoting to astutely professional, overpolished, AI-coded content, Iceland Air did the opposite. Pushing back on the AI-slop advertisements, they decided to capitalize on the importance of humanity instead of trendy AI-generation tools or buzzwords. Times are desperate right now for the travel industry, and only a really good, witty, intriguing, and most importantly, sincere advertisement could save this small airline from imminent extinction. Perhaps the “Bad Photographer Contest” will be enough to save not just Iceland Air, but the soul of creative marketing prospects. 

• Shutting Down the Slop Factory

  Are you getting sick of AI-generated advertisements too?

  Every modern advertisement feels like a ChatGPT prompt come to life. Ads are an inevitable part of the global entertainment industry, but lately, it seems like the quality of advertisements have become far worse. Not only are advertisements lacking the clever, catchiness of marketing campaigns of the past, they’re becoming eerily repetitive, making viewers wonder, have I seen this before? Odds are, you probably have, because it seems like every ad repeated on Netflix, HBO, or even on TV is created using the same, formulaic language.  As if Claude wrote every script. The repetition is not only boring but it’s driving consumers insane. Is there any creativity left in this world?

• Relax, marketing cogs, you’re acting like human kind has never seen an app, a coffee machine, or a vacuum cleaner before. New products aren’t always redefining revolutionary innovation, sometimes a new phone is just a simple upgrade.

  According to Horatiu Boeriu, a content contributor at the official BMW Blog, two months ago, the car company created an entire 30 second advertisement without hiring a single human being for production. Boeriu says, “No camera. No set. No location. That’s how Bernd Koerber, BMW’s Senior VP for Brand and Product Management, opened his LinkedIn post about the brand’s latest campaign for the new BMW iX3.” While it’s fascinating that something like this is technologically possible, the prompt, the ad, the message, and the dark reality of this prospect overshadows any fascination.

• In truth, the advertisement itself is devoid of meaning. It’s uncompelling and flat, just like the two-dimensional AI bots that created it.

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  via BMW

• To the consumer, this also sets apart the brand that decided to move forward with a heartless, human-free piece of marketing just to consume 500,000 gallons of water in some data center and save an extra buck on the payroll.

  Iceland Air’s “Bad Photographer Contest” is abolishing this dehumanising construct, refusing to give in to AI trends and sloppy, wasteful, lazy tactics of content creation. Hoping to connect with our hearts as much as they connect with our travel-loving wallets, Iceland Air is counting on the last remaining shred of the collective populous’s charm and nuance to keep their company afloat.

• The contest photos will, undoubtedly, look nothing like travel bloggers or National Geographic snapshots. However, it’s not the awe-inspiring photos themselves that will be selling flights and seat upgrades! It’s the intrigue, the respect, and the salvaged honor of the advertising industry. 

  Because if some random woman, like the 28-year-old contest winner from France, can manage to take beautiful photos of this remote, majestic, and breathtaking landscape, so can the rest of us. That, therein, lies the heart, soul, and spirit of this ad campaign. 

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  via dwebstar

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