Google Taps Classic Commercials and their Creators for its Re:Brief Initiative

It's hard to disagree with Google that, after almost 20 years, online advertising seems to be stuck in something of a rut. For its Re:Brief project the search giant selected four classic commercials from the the sixties and seventies, then rounded up the creatives responsible for them. The idea was that by having them re-imagine how their vintage work would fly when rethought for our digital age, such insights could "help shape the medium of the future, prove that great ideas come first, and inspire a new generation of creative minds along the way."

The result is a full-length film, with additional material provided on the Re:Brief site. While such efforts by Google to kickstart creativity in the domain of online advertising are certainly self-serving, one can only hope that agencies will wake up and work a little harder or risk having online advertising become completely irrelevant. Or is that inevitable?