The world of marketing & advertising has long been driven by technological advances to gain share of mind and market. First there was print, and ad space, sold by the inch, word, and placement was a huge business. Ads started mostly as text then evolved into graphics, then pictures and then even color. This well established market has matured and with the recent rash of Newspaper Bankruptcies, has faced a significant decline. Next came radio where live reads were the initial currency (and still exist). They evolved into far catchier jingles, slogans and "theater of the mind" creative. Television brought the two forms together, making pictures & sound equally important and far more impactful. The evolution of these media and the technologies that served them brought continued marketing advancements that led to better and more effective advertising. In the last 10 years, the internet has taken a dominant position in marketing, spawning numerous multi-billion dollar companies, (Google, Facebook, Yahoo), all of whom create their substantial revenues from ad dollars.

Although as an industry advertising has followed cutting edge trends and medium, the speed at which we have utilized some technology in this latest internet age has been slow. Marketers still design logos, ads, and full campaigns using old tools and mindsets. Static copyright & still photos are what you predominantly see on the web. Boring, old, and stagnant tools instead of the wonders of animated gifs & flash.

Looking at one of advertising's titans a change of tide may be occurring. In recent commercials McDonald's has begun to animate it's famous Golden Arches, scrolling from the middle out. How a company lights up their logo can be as much a signature as a slogan, jingle, or other brand extension, yet as an advertising society we have yet to fully embrace our technology and use computers, light, and signage to its potential. When an advertising juggernaut such as McDonald's, with a decades-old, globally recognized logotype, has begun to see the value in designing animation effects to evolve their look , isn't it time to consider the same?