Yeah I'll admit its odd to fall out of your chair when you see a new outdoor campaign on the net, but this one was more than an eye opener. 

I've been following Life is Good now for a couple of years.  They are local to our shop, actually just down the road.  So it always peeks my interest when not only do I see the "first" example of digital media from them in the wild, but a GEO target no less.  No idea if this was generated in house or who controlled the media spend.

The ad has been splashed in a nice sample of websites in around the Boston area, mostly on event publishers.  I've only seen it a couple of times, but its worthy of some comments.

First off, if you've ever been to the Life is Good site, you have a good understanding how their brand is reflected in the overall design of the site.  The same pastels that color their shirts dictates the design.  The font is super branded.  KEEN is also good at doing this type of work.  Keeping you brand in mind when you are designing your creative is key.  So, for Life is Good I'd give them an A- on this.

Here is where it gets interesting.  I've never been a huge fan of the font they use, so in this case when they have an astonishing amount of text in their ad, the font really takes over.  Take a look.  At first glance of this skyscraper ( 160x600 pixels ) right off the bat you know its Life is Good.  But that is where it ends.  There is so much text on this, your eye has a hard time focusing on what is important.  Remember, as an outdoor brand you have less than a second to draw a person to your ad as they scroll the content on the page.  Comparing the design to their landing page, it really is missing the bold graphic, young people / dark blurry background we've all come to expect from their branding.  So on contextual design, I'd give it a B.

Now for the message.  If you've been a reader here for a while, this is the BIGGIE.  The "Call to Action"  Every digital ad needs one.  And with this one, there are no less than three.  First, learn about the event.  Then they squeeze in a teaser for a free gift, then on top of that another call to action to join the fund raising effort. 

I'm scoring this with a C.  With our testing, this could have been avoided.  And the solution isn't rocket science.  The main focus is the date and location of the event.  That IS the call to action.  What they should have done is have three different ads designed, and then used some variate testing to see which had the highest CTR in a test control. 

Their end result may be a factor of limited budget for the design, or its possible the media buy did not allow for multiple ad units to be rotated through the same position.  Like I've said earlier, I've only seen the skyscraper, so there could be a leaderboard or small rectangle out there somewhere.

Score ::

Matched branding with Digital Creative : A-
Contect : B
Call to Action : C