Orange gone bad

I twitted briefly about Orange's new corporate campaign, I am, which is now being run in full blast on Romanian TV and plastered all over Romanian OOH. And I was preparing this post for a while because, briefly: I HATE IT. There is no magic, no fun, no immediate connection. The communication is bland, indiscriminate, boring. The commercials are like corporate presentation movies, featuring expressionless and uninteresting people. The OOH are stupid, uninsightful, lost in the noise. I HATE IT.

This was the emotional part of the post. Now to explain why the hate and the whining: Orange Romania is the one brand that has managed to open our eyes onto a different type of communication since their faithful encounter with W+K London. I had previously not seen consistency and creativity at work for such a long time. Romanian advertising is a lot about bouts of indiscriminate creative, never coherent, because we grow executions not brand platforms. But Orange was different: they made platforms seamlessly, and proved that creativity was possible with slinkies, string, paper, paints, scissors and socks.

And I assume it all stemmed from this



because it says a lot. It says freedom, it says community, it says friends, it says breaking free. It also says telecom: it speaks about restrictions, groups, communication. And it does all of this with 1 fish in a bowl. It's good.

This one



says nothing using all the people in the world.
I HATE IT.