ABOUT

One of my favourite things to do in my profession is develop new ideas for adverts and when this brief came up to design an advert to sit along side an article entitled ‘Colocation Data Centres, a maturing industry?’ came up it got my creative juices flowing! Traditionally, the data centre industry can be seen as a bit of a drab affair, middle aged men wearing grey suits and that is all very logical and rarely ‘fun’,witty and definitely NOT risky! It is against the whole ethos of the industry. Here is where I came in with new ideas to try and stir the pot a little.

The idea behind these advertisements was to characterize a data centre rack in sophisticated and gentleman like attire to represent a data centre that knew what was best for its client’s businesses. A lot of data centre companies tend to boast about tier III accreditation and their PUE (Power usage effectiveness) to be the main reason why their data centre is the best company to work with when in fact there are many more ‘mature’ ways to identify the best qualities required in a safe, secure and efficient data centre.
Likewise, a CEO would prefer to be taking the most sensible route for his IT equipment and be seen as someone who is sophisticated and makes intelligent decisions rather than simply follow the crowd like a teenager.
Adding this sense of play to the advert rather than like previously simply stating that MigSolv is a data centre adds interest and curiosity to the design which can sometimes be rarely found whilst being a little arrogant with a sense of confidence that being mature can bring.

In the background you can see London drawn in a cartoon manner that is only barely visible. This represents leaving the crowd behind that are less mature and not thinking what is best for their business and instead having a need to grow up and see the whole picture when requiring data centre space as London is known to be one of the least safe and most expensive areas to store data due its high level of terrorist alert, prone to flooding, power shortages and connectivity can sometimes be difficult as well as environmental principles are harder to apply than elsewhere.

By MigSolv showing this kind of attitude it shows that they are confident in their data centre and that they want to draw attention to the needs of business owners everywhere to save money by using one of the most state of the art, efficient and cost effective solutions outside of the capital.

Data Centres are developing

A similar advert was designed but this time with an approach of showing a developer rack. By associating the advert with something the developers can relate to can help developers see that maybe using a data centre outside of London ‘is the best solution’ to this problem they have to solve. They solve problems all the time so by really targeting the developer market the intention is to make them feel bonded to MigSolv and that maybe they consider everything that a developer needs to ensure their equipment is safe, secure and easily accessible.

Although totally different to our previous adverts of deliberately stating we are a data centre and are secure MigSolv took a calculated risk to attempt a different approach in their magazine advertising. The problem with simply advertising the fact MigSolv are a secure data centre that is low cost and environmentally friendly is that every other data centre also claims to be so thus making the advert uninteresting and simply white noise to the majority of viewers. The best way to create an advert that is attention grabbing is, if you have it, do things differently and raise awareness of the specific differences in your business than others that can help you stand out from the rest and add some extra entertainment through the tongue in cheek characterisation of something that is usually a dull and lifeless device.