Ragtrader sister website adnews.com.au dissects David Jones' latest campaign - and how it reflects a broader shift in the way brands are talking to consumers.
Admen may be talking about the death of the 30-second TV spot, but Google's push for brand dollars is likely to make the big ad... bigger.
David Jones has kicked off its spring and summer collection with a 90-second spot via its YouTube channel.
The 'S/S 2014' page has a magazine feel to it in terms of hero image and story-themed manifesto.
It also tips its hat to film director Jeffrey Darling and UK-based band Little Barrie, whose Surf Hell provides the soundtrack to which Jessica Gomes and friends strut their stuff.
The retailer, not the quickest off the mark in terms of digital commerce and marketing, is trying to keep pace with younger, more agile and arguably hungrier competition.
That mirrors the transformation in recent years of traditional ad agencies, most of which have beefed-up digital capability organically or by acquisition.
Some agencies have become digital first. Others, such as R/GA, claim to have gone beyond digital to “functional integration” for the "connected age" , with founder and CEO Bob Greenberg today reiterating his belief that the 30 second TV ad will at some point make way for “stories and systems”.
Others, such as DDB, have set up digital and UX specialist agencies with a focus on rapid prototyping and interfaces.
Some agencies remain set up to feed the beast - big TV.
But as brand marketers look to longer form content, YouTube's push for more of their budgets and the growth of digital video more broadly, may mean that they don't necessarily have to transform themselves.
Big ads can be even bigger.
As well as for David Jones, Whybin/TBWA has been down that road before with a four-minute ad for Nissan's Patrol, whose marketing boss Peter Clissold has not ruled out going digital first.
“The Patrol results would not preclude us, at the right time, from going fully digital,” he recently told AdNews.
Speaking on the same subject, YouTube's head of automotive sales at Google Australia, Bart Jenniches, said that shift would continue as brands become publishers in their own right and that they could “become publishers without necessarily doing anything different” other than better utilising existing assets.
That appears to be the direction David Jones is taking via YouTube, both with magazine format and blockbuster video ad.
Maybe brands as publishers and Google's push for brand dollars is as much an opportunity for the ad industry traditionalists as it is a threat to media owners.