Yay (and also Boo Hiss) to the return of long copy

I keep getting told that long copy ads are back.

MI6 have this month taken a wordy approach to recruitment (courtesy of M&C Saatchi):

(click the image above and click again to enlarge to a readable size)

There’s lots of nice long copy outdoor around at the moment:

which came from here, where there’s a fab posterscope recruitment one too

Does it work?  Well here’s what the eye tracking says:

taken from a great post by thinkeyetracking

The last 12 months has seen a lot of nice long(er) copy generally:

view the hi-res origional here at Marketing Week

image from here

BUT. There’s beautifully crafted, and sweated over long copy, honed to touch the soul of the reader.  And then there’s this B2B ‘diary style’ ad I found in this month’s Research magazine:

(click and click to enlarge if you must, but I wouldn’t bother)

<sigh>