No-frills ads for no-frills companies…

Reading today’s Wall Street Journal article about the no-frills inhouse advertising produced by budget airlines Ryanair and Easyjet reminded me that part of what makes a blogad good — spontaneity, cheapness and even a little human roughness — can be part of what makes a company good.

“‘Amateurism is definitely part of [a budget airline’s] charm,’ said Guy Abrahams, director of strategy at media-consulting firm Carat Group. ‘[Cheap advertising] is to maintain their brand-name image as a no-frills airlines as much as or possibly even more than to save money.’ Although companies in other sectors are starting to do ads themselves, David Fletcher, head of research at mediaedge:cia, says he doesn’t see it as a major trend. Do-it-yourself advertising is for companies — such as mail-order firms or direct-response advertisers — that don’t need to produce high-quality ads and have business models in line with a no-frills philosophy, he says.”

It’s worth remembering that eBay and Google have always gone out of their way to appear simple and human-scale. No doubt, advertising on blogs — p2p, cheap and cheerful, spontaneous, risk-friendly — can help reinforce a brand’s association with those qualities. In short, glitz and blogads don’t mix.