Q: How do you attract attention to your photo retouching services?
A: Blackmail
.jpg)
There's packaging. Then there's Packaging.
This is what happens when you turn a designer loose and just leave them alone.
Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain.
Damnit - I was promised a flying car!
Where's my flying car? And my robot? Where in the hell is my robot?
Advertising using the future as a theme is always an interesting idea. But sometimes promises are made and not kept. Anyone can imagine the future. But the cold hard light of retrospection sometimes make the imaginings looks a little...well, dated. Look around, cars ain't flying and I'm typing this in, not my own personal robot.
Personally I'd rather take high tech and insert it into historical ads. Like Segway did. Well, they didn't, someone else did, but the idea seems to resonate more than some kind of speculative imagining of a possible future...
Finger lickin' good infrastructure
KFC wants to take the burden of road repairs away from the consumer. Ain't that nice of them? They also want to advertise. So they're going to "re-fresh" the roads that need to be resurfaced...
I just don't know what to think about this. It's like the 'adopt a highway' gone wrong. At what point does a company's altruism and its desire for promotion go too far? Sponsored daycare? Free funerals?
Illegal billboards to come down...now.
The Ontario Superior Court has decided in the favour of the City of Toronto, giving it the legal right to remove any billboard that lacks planning permission or a valid permit.
"The Court ruled that the City may proceed with removing Strategic Media’s illegal billboards while Strategic Media continues with its constitutional challenge against the City’s signs by-laws."
The fight over illegal signs resulted in the squaring off of IllegalSigns.ca and the OOD/OOH advertising company Strategic Media. The Court eventually ruled in favour of the City and IllegalSigns.ca, forcing Strategic Media to take down 35 signs. But Strategic Media is far from the only culprit in the illegal signs drama - far from it. The city is home to hundreds, possibly more than a thousand illegal signs.
Maruti Genuine Accessories "Key"
An increase in car thefts in the city had people worried about car security. And for Batra Auto Company (dealers of Murati - India's No.1 car company), it was the right time to push the genuine Maruti authorized car security systems. So the brief was to simply remind people how they could keep on driving their favourite car by securing it with genuine Maruti security systems. They had a simple solution to the problem. And the key to it was simply put, the "key"! They made some dummy keys that would fit in most Maruti cars and left them hanging from the door of cars parked in parking lots, outside apartment blocks, office buildings and so on. So that when the owners came back to the cars, it looked like someone was trying to tinker with the locks. A scary thought at that! And the tag attached to the key warned of the fact that next time they might not be as lucky! Thousands of enquiries, wich eventually led to a 130% jump in sales of genuine Maruti systems by Batra Auto Company. And that too in the first month itself. This activation also led to consumer affinity and goodwill towards Batra Auto Company. The only ones left unhappy were the carjackers!
Roche "Anti-Stress Balls"
Breast cancer is the cancer with the highest incidence in Portugal. About 4,500 new cases are detected annually. And the death rate is one of the highest in Europe. Their challenge was to create a simple low-cost action to raise women's awareness about the importance of self-exams and thus help them detect breast nodules or lumps. Simple and revealing, just like the self-exam. The agency created an anti-stress ball with a defomed stone inside, simulating a tumour. On squeezing the ball, the women feels a foreign object wich raises her curiosity. "You don't see breast cancer. You feel it. Do the self-exam". 50,000 balls and a flyer - explaining the correct way of doing the self-exame were produced and distributed to women on the street, at companies, hospitals and at theme-related events. During the action period, records showed a 22% increase in mammography exams and a 28% rise inhospital consultations.
Smoke'em if you got'em
Smoking kills. It's a fact. But how do you get through to people when they're completely jaded? Why you put a life-size pair of lungs on the street. Sure you say, been there, done that. But did you put a cigarette lighter in it? These folks did. It was for an anti smoking campaign in India. Instead of a lot of copy about how bad smoking is, they went right for the jugular (so to speak) and put an arresting visual in a very unexpected place.
I was going to pick up the hatchback, but the sedan tasted better...
Move over scratch-n-sniff, the 21st century is going to be the dawn of lickable ink.
The mind fairly boggles.
Imagine having to focus group what flavour your brand is?
Oy vey.
Type Thursday
Here is a veritable cornucopia of type and font resources, courtesy of Lifehacker.com
It's a whole whack of some very excellent tools that will allow you to manage and better utilize your type library. It's got something for everyone and best of all, most of it is free.
Inspiration. Advertsing is Art
A new stunt from Improv Everywhere in the subway, they transformed the subway into a art gallery opening, where the usual structure and object of the space become "art pieces".
Brainobrain Jumeira Child Development Program: Lego, Balloon dog, Gummi bear
Here's some cool print ads, for some reason, I am off Gummi Bears now and really afraid of balloon animals.
Print Blogging Analog Style
Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand. To me this just shows the power of print and text. No matter where you go, there it is. Unpowered, undigitized, untouched by anything other than one person and two implements - a flat surface and something to scratch on it with.
The New York Times knew all about him back in 2006.
Big Brother is printing for you
The London police have bested their own impressive record for insane anti-terrorism posters with a new range of signs advising Londoners to go through each others' trash-bins looking for "suspicious" chemical bottles, and to report on one another for "studying CCTV cameras."
It's hard to imagine a worse, more socially corrosive campaign. Telling people to rummage in one anothers trash and report on anything they don't understand is a recipe for flooding the police with bad reports from ignorant people who end up bringing down anti-terror cops on their neighbors who keep tropical fish, paint in oils, are amateur chemists, or who just do something outside of the narrow experience of the least adventurous person on their street. Essentially, this redefines "suspicious" as anything outside of the direct experience of the most frightened, ignorant and foolish people in any neighborhood.
Even worse, though, is the idea that you should report your neighbors to the police for looking at the creepy surveillance technology around them. This is the first step in making it illegal to debate whether the surveillance state is a good or bad thing. It's the extension of the ridiculous airport rule that prohibits discussing the security measures ("Exactly how does 101 ml of liquid endanger a plane?"), conflating it with "making jokes about bombs."
The British authorities are bent on driving fear into the hearts of Britons: fear of terrorists, immigrants, pedophiles, children, knives... And once people are afraid enough, they'll write government a blank check to expand its authority without sense or limit.
What an embarrassment from the country whose level-headed response to the Blitz was "Keep Calm and Carry On" -- how has that sensible motto been replaced with "When in trouble or in doubt/Run in circles scream and shout"?
Now that's just wrong
Sure, auto sales are down and dealerships are feeling the pinch. But is this the way to go about generating business?
And I quote:
"My wife went into a Wal-Mart the other day and when she came out of the store she found a note that was left on her car. It said "Please call me about your car" and was hand written on a torn off piece of notebook paper. Of course the first thing you think of is that someone bumped into it or something, but after finding no damage she called the number to see what was up. The person that answered was apparently a car salesperson from a nearby Chrysler dealership and asked if my wife was interested in trading her car in for a new one. Once my wife said no that was the end of it, but I'm just totally surprised at the tactics of the dealership to bring in customers.
Tricking people into thinking something happened to their car, which is in many cases the most expensive thing one owns and relies upon the most, is just low. Not only that, but it's not like this particular salesperson was running around putting these notes out herself considering she was able to answer her extension at worth within minutes of when the note was left. Who knows? Maybe the dealership is just sending people out with handfuls of these things targeting Chrysler vehicles in parking lots. Amazing."
When ad fates fall, so does quality
Continuing today's journey to the exotic lands of the former USSR, we have some examples of billboards in Russia. It seems that with the economy heading south, ad rates have all but become free. They're so cheap now that anyone, yes anyone, can buy space on a billboard and get some really quality creative out there for everyone to see.
You call that a billboard? THIS is a billboard
6 square kilometers of one to be exact.
Located in downtown Moscow, it's 6000 square meters of pure advertising domination. Not something easily doable in Canada, but hey, one can always dream...
Super Print
The first ever Superman comic which was bought for a meagre amount of some 35 cent has fetched $317,200 at an online auction. London: The first ever Superman comic which was bought for a meagre amount of some 35 cent has fetched $317,200 (around Rs1.6 crore) at an online auction.
Rocker John Dolmayan, drummer for the Armenian-American alternative metal band System of a Down, paid the huge amount to possess the rare book.
The untouched ‘Action Comic No. 1’ —which shows the Man of Steel lifting a car on the cover—went on sale on 27 February, After a two-week auction, Dolmayan entered the bid on Friday.Only around 100 copies of the publication are left. It is credited with being the first appearance of any cartoon superhero. the Holy Grail of comic books" . . . It's the single most important event in comic-book history."
Before the auction began there was speculation that bidders could include Samuel L. Jackson, Quentin Tarantino and Eminem, who all collect comics, and even President Obama, who is a Superman fan.
Funny...I don't think you would see people paying that much for a screen capture of a website.
Samsung Viral
Non-sense viral video for Samsung with the goal to communicate the series of LCD TVs with ultraslim LEDs. For that they "created" a performance with sheeps "dressed" with LEDs guided by a sheperd dog, creating shapes like the Pong game or the Mona Lisa...
"Million Dollar Catch"
Nice ambient for the TV show Million Dollar Catch. Just place a sticker at the end of the lanes and advertise for your other TV Show.
When the Vampires come, we'll be ready
To promote the Vampire show "Trueblood" in Auckland, NZ, posters were put up made of a wood-composite. The trick? You could snap off your very own Vampire-killing stake. Or you could just use a bunch of them to build a small fence...
Social embarassment - the new way to advertise
You decide, hey, it's a nice day, perhaps I'll go out. So you do, and you think, hey, maybe I'll hop on the bus and run some errands, so you sit down on the bench at the bus stop to wait. But why is everyone pointing at you and laughing? You're wearing pants, you don't have a waffle tangled up in your hair...oh wait, it's the bus shelter ad, it's displaying your weight, the bench is a scale...how clever.
You then decide that someone is going to suffer for this, you don't know who or when, but someone shall suffer...
Restaurant-bar Le Cactus "Monday Hot Wings"
Publicize Monday Night Hot Wings at Le Cactus restaurant-bar, with a very small budget. Communicate the burning effect of spicy wings by putting stickers featuring the face of a men screaming on the rear window of taxis. The man's tonque is superimposed on the central brake light, creating the effect of extreme heat. Many positive comments from current customers, increased traffic, and tingling tonques.
No two paper stocks are alike
Fingerprinting blank paper - not for your fingerprints, but for the unique texture and composition of the paper itself. This, when combined with the hidden data from printers makes for a rather Orwellian scenario.
"Lamp for dark times"
At the end of year 2008 they noticed that there is general uncertainty about 2009 because of the upcoming recession and cutting off communication means. They used this situation as an opportunity to create a "new business" project that will position themselves as experts for communications in a time of crisis which demands special knowledge from an agency. Innovative, memorable action that would create response and potential "new biz" contacts. The solution consisted of two parts. First one - a direct mailing in a form of a useful night light which had an appeal to visited their website www.saatchi.si/trendi. There were three presentations (trends/how/why to communicate) which also offered a change of a free lecture from their strategic department. The response was surprising. The light was sent to 70 marketing directors of biggest Slovenian companies. In the first three days they had 74 visits on their website - 46 of them were unique visitors - and spent an average of 4,3 minutes. They got 20 written responses, mainly positive. With 6 of them they established personal contact and created a change in potential cooperation in the future.
Georgia Max Coffee "Ski Toilets"
Georgia Max Coffee chose to redesign the toilets of a number of key ski resorts in Japan. The cubicles were fully wrapped on all sides, so that the person caught short would have a ski jumper’s view when they were sitting on the loo. The person could look down at their skis (simply printed on the floor of the cubicle) and see the steep ski jump slope ahead of them. The toilet paper holder carried the only brand messaging in the cubicle, reading: “Seriously kick-ass intensely sweet for the real coffee super zinging unstoppable Max! Taste-explosion!” The message also featured the URL www.maxcoffee.jp, where visitors could view videos of extreme sports as well as sign up to the MAX community.
If I can't pronounce it, it must be lethal
Part of the ongoing study of how the brain perceives risk - an integral part of advertising...
Self-identified rational people take pride in the fact that they can't be easily manipulated, but of course that's the pride part of their dumb monkey brains talking. Here's an interesting study that measured whether hard-to-pronounce words were perceived as riskier than words that were easier to pronounce—in this case, by comparing fake additives in food and asking which ones were more likely to be harmful.
Brand new brand news
Brands are just as important as what we use to advertise them. The whole content is key thing if you will...or is it the medium is the message? I can never keep those straight.
Anyway, here's a link to a branding news site, it's mainly for U.S. based brands but there's always some spillover into the Great White North and hey, branding knows no bounds...
The periodic table of type
It's like high school chem class all over again, but without lab partners and impromptu explosions. Instead, here's a very nicely laid out periodic table of type. Amuse your friends, dazzle your clients and annoy your studio artists with it.
A random sampling of cool transit wraps
Someone tell the TTC and GO Transit that wraps don't have to be boring. Here are some very cool and well executed transit wraps that will leave you wishing we did something like this in Toronto...
Amnesty International "Candle"
Their objective was to make people understand the meaning of the Amnesty Candle (bring the horrors to light; No one will keep us from seeing) and boost Amnesty's brand appeal. They created an "interactive card". The people who bought the candle received a card with it. They had to bring the flame of the candle close to the black card to see the image that was hidden behind the black surface.
Moodwall
24 metre long display, made with 2 500 LEDs behind a semi-transparent wall - the future of outdoor advertising - making your ads more dynamic...
Walk left, stand right, advertise all over.
Outdoor and out of home ads are everywhere, but using an escalator presents unique challenges. Here are some real winners...
Quite possibly the most memorable business card on the planet
There's one thing print can do - it can go anywhere. From writing on the moon with lasers to manipulating jets of water to spell out text, and of course, skywriting. But nothing, nothing at all, compares to this - the most memorable business card ever...
And just for fun, here are some more novel and creative examples.
Did your logo cost as much as a latte?
That's bad, very, very bad. Here's why. Logo design is vital to a company, and a bad logo does as much damage as a crooked accountant or a customer service rep with Tourette's.
Toyota "Greeting Card"
Dealership Toyota - Lovse wanted to wish a Happy New Year to their visitors in december. New year's card should be innovative, memorable and was supposed to reflect the holiday spirit. One greeting card - double usage. Card had a removable part/sticker with shown dimensions of break lights illustrated on the back for four most sought after Toyota models. Every step on the breaks created a New Year's greeting to all those driving behind.
Nissan "Catch up"
The Nissan Murano has always been mould-breaking in the the looks department - part SUV, part luxury sadan. But the new Murano's smart technologically advanced features and styling made it just as innovative on the inside - helping it move ahead of the competition. Their brief was to find the best way to demonstrate that in direct mail. How do you demonstrate a car that's ahead of it's time? Show the rest of the world trying to catch up with it. Right down to the very direct mail promoting it. They sent the first half of the mailing, with the promise that this was just the half of it. They then followed with the second half of the mailing the next day, wich both visually and physically demonstrated the world trying to catch up with the new Nissan Murano - an engaging and unique way to use direct mail to best portray the idea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)