CREATIVE STRATEGY - Kill your babies. AXA didn't, but should have done.

Billboards may be old-hat to the digeratti, but they've served brands well. 

And properly exploited, they still do.  You'll recall great 48-sheets for the likes of The Economist, Wonderbra, Volvo and, more recently, Harvey Nichols, Shelter and Levi's.   Striking imagery and pithy headlines. 

A true poster is brutally simple, which means, of course, it's an extremely hard act to pull off - from the creative brief to commissioning specialist print companies. One wrong turn and you have a dog's dinner.

AXA should have gone back to their layout pads with their current campaign.  This is not a poster. But if it isn't a poster, what is it? 

Allow me to get technical with you, gentle reader ... it's a mess. 

Reading left to right ... Top left there is a jumble of words in a fat, childish typeface ... then a bold red diagonal device ... this hovers over the head of an "ordinary" person looking very ordinary to camera ... until bottom right we get more copy, this time in a very straight, corporate font with the logo.

Dissecting the AXA posters is generally not worth the effort.  The cluster of type is presumably the think bubble of the consumer.  Basically, it's saying: "You poor, confused thing; but don't you worry, Old Uncle AXA will sort it all out for you."  This is a problem/solution approach gone horribly wrong. 

Financial services products and how they are described may indeed be hard work, but you don't have to address me like a child.  It's a shame, as there are one or two interesting propositions buried in this campaign.

But then in one execution, AXA proclaim that they will now be writing their literature in plain English and not financial services gobbledegook. 

Well, slap me with a kipper.  This is shocking on two levels.  Wakey, wakey, AXA, it's 2009.  Only NOW do you cotton on to plain English?  And this is the message you wish to broadcast to the nation in your new advertising?  Because, to state the obvious, the poster is a public medium - that is part of its power.

What about the red slash?  If you have the misfortune to be familiar with AXA's brand guidelines, maybe it means something to you. 

But your consumer? It will go straight over their head (oh, the irony!). Finally, the AXA copy and how it looks are from that financial services school which states: "To be trustworthy, we must be dull". 

This baby should have been strangled at birth. 

Simon S Kershaw is a creative consultant. A former creative director at Craik Jones, Kershaw writes a weekly Creative Strategy column for marketingdirectmag.co.uk and the DM Bulletin