Is it even pos­si­ble to stand out and get noticed through adver­tis­ing cam­paigns any­more? Of course, but in an age where almost lit­er­al­ly every­thing you could ever want to know about any­thing is avail­able with a few key­strokes, you may need to use octo­pus­es rain­ing from the sky and threat­en­ing to destroy our way of life to get attention.

At least this was the idea that ad agency BBDO had for their client GE in an ad that hit var­i­ous online and social chan­nels ear­li­er this month, and it seems to be a hit. The 60 sec­ond spot is called “Rain­ing Octo­pus­es” (of course), and launched March 11 as a paid spot on NowThis News and GE’s social chan­nels.  “The idea was that it would be rain­ing some­thing so unique and dif­fer­ent, but it had to rain some­thing real­ly bizarre, and it had to dis­rupt,” said Andy Gold­berg, chief cre­ative offi­cer at GE. So, an octo­pus.

https://youtu.be/SQ_blyWcQoQ

As in dis­rupt the kinds of things that GE holds togeth­er, such as the pow­er grid. This ad is a great idea and tack­les what GE is all about from a dif­fer­ent and unique aspect, which is how they are attempt­ing to reach a new gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who may not be famil­iar with the com­pa­ny. The gen­er­al idea isn’t that new, how­ev­er. Quirky com­mer­cials have been around for decades. Any­one remem­ber the eight­ies? Or more recent­ly, my favorite ad from this year’s Super Bowl — Moun­tain Dew’s “Pup­py Mon­key Baby”.

Not only is the ad itself a new approach from the com­pa­ny, but GE is also try­ing out new social chan­nels with its release, such as video site Hyper. “As the media land­scape keeps chang­ing, we have to keep chang­ing sites,” Mr. Gold­berg said. “We are look­ing at new dis­tri­b­u­tion sites and new chan­nels that might have the right con­tent and might attract younger audi­ences that might not be aware of GE, are learn­ing about GE and are under­stand­ing what GE is about.” For instance, does any­one under 20 know that GE stands for Gen­er­al Electric?

This ad, and oth­ers like it, are guide­posts for any­one look­ing for adver­tis­ing jobs in the future. Just like almost every oth­er aspect in our evolv­ing world, jobs in adver­tis­ing will be dif­fer­ent in a few years than they are now, even if that dif­fer­ence is only in the con­tent. And the quirki­er the world gets (and it’s pret­ty darned quirky already), the more unique the ads will need to be if they’re going to keep any­one’s atten­tion. The oth­er big les­son from this sto­ry is the expan­sion and re-eval­u­a­tion of social media plat­forms and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels. Remem­ber, Face­book is only a decade old and Twit­ter less than that. Keep­ing a fin­ger on the pulse of the indus­try will be vital in find­ing the right audi­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the land­scape keeps expanding.

But besides know­ing what to keep a eye on to land the best jobs in adver­tis­ing down the road, this sto­ry brings up anoth­er con­tentious, albeit unim­por­tant and triv­ial point: octo­pus­es or octopi? I’ll leave that for you to decide but here’s a hint: the answer is yes.