It’s not often that we point out
display advertising; however I discovered an exceptionally eye-catching ad for
Ralph Lauren which I wanted to share.  Besides being appropriately placed in a
contextually relevant environment (the fashion section of the New York Times), the
creative “elegantly” uses in-banner video to promote Ralph Lauren’s fall fashion
show.  The video is fluid and the banner does a great job of maximizing its
size. 

According to Jacob Ford, “it looks like they are fully taking
advantage of Flash 9 and its stellar video compression trafficked through
Unicast.” I also like how they use
multiple videos (refresh the page) to showcase different clothing accessories. 
There is definitely room to enhance the banner, however I like the simplicity of
it as well.  The real pay off is the video of an actual fashion show which
resides on their website.

Here’s a link to the video at Polo.com.

Chris Portella