Terminix "Roach"

All it takes is a small crack for a cockroach to enter your home.

Standard Bank "Home improvement envelope"

With a limited budget, Standard Bank requested a direct mail piece that would communicate the benefits of Access Bond to its current clients with existing home loans. Acces Bond gives clients access to the equity available in their bond. The money can then be tranferred into an Access Living card and used for a range of things, from home improvements to holidays. Using a simple envelope they conveyed the benefits of Access Bond to the recipient quickly and easily by using beuatiful illustration. As soon as the envelope is opened an additional room/level is added to the roof of house demonstrating the benefit of Access Bond in an immediate and visual way. Clients who received the mail were engeged and the unusual design on the envelope encouraged them to open the communication.

Lübbe & Co "Paper handkerchief book"

Bastei-Lübbe Verlag is the largest publisher of sappy romance novels in the German-speaking countries. One of its most prominent authors is best-selling American author Sasha Lord. Due to her enthralling romantic adventure novels, Sasha Lord has become one of the most successful international best-selling authors of her genre. “Across a Wild Sea”, yet another promising title from the Bastei-Lübbe publishing house, came out at the beginning of 2009. To promote the title, their customer wanted to have an extraordinary campaign that would do justice to the love story and significantly increase the number of pre-release orders. The number of people who read sentimental literature is very large – as is the number of titles competing for space on the market. In spite of this, Sasha Lord has over the course of the years written her way into readers’ hearts and defended her title as a best-selling author. Her readership and their expectations of her are enormous. So the most obvious thing to do was give readers what they want: emotions. With this promotional concept, they want to let the target audience know without a doubt that this title is best-selling author Sasha Lord’s most emotional work yet. The way that an excerpt of the material was presented was a good clue as to the tear-filled content of the novel: the first chapters of the tear-jerking book were printed as an exclusive preview on paper handkerchiefs. At first the weight and look of the excerpt makes it seem just like the real version of the book. Upon opening the hardcover however, the reader realises that a box of tissues is hidden inside the book. The pages of this box have the first chapter of the novel printed on them. This “pocket-handkerchief book” in a tissue box was sent to 200 publisher’s dealers and about 300 loyal readers. The response of regular readers addressed before publication was gigantic. 70% ordered the book directly from the publisher even before the official sales launch. The eye-catching advertising campaign caused sales to reach the level forecast for the whole month of January in just the first week! Bronze Cannes Lions Direct Winner.

Grey "Lite"

Grey Amsterdam has launched a new service, Grey Lite, to support clients through a tough financial year, with the help of the world’s smallest website. The Grey Lite service offers ‘small jobs, small prices’ to clients who are looking for extra-fast, extra-value services with the built-in high quality standards they have come to expect from Grey Amsterdam. To reflect the philosophy that good things can come in small packages, the service is launched with a website www.greylite.nl so small you need a magnifying glass to view it. The supporting direct mail campaign involves a brochure no bigger than a postage stamp - and the essential accompanying magnifying glass.

Neotel "The physical e-mail"

Using standard envelope direct mailing, they needed to interest a potential consumer base of 1,000 small to medium enterprises in a new and faster internet offering from Neotel. But how do you effectively sell new technology using good old standard postage? Instead of looking at flat mailing as a restrictive medium, they decided to take advantage of the medium's primary shortcoming - it takes days to reach its target audience. So that became the idea: Let's create an e-mail that takes days to arrive so as to illustrate just how slow their competitors are. Then sell Neotel as the faster solution.

Wordsworth Books "3D flyer"

Get consumers to walk into Wordsworth Bookstores and not their biggest competitor located in the same shopping mall. Using augmented reality technology, they illustrated how Wordsworth books bring stores to life. After entering a partnership with the iMac store, opposite their client's store in the mall, they handed out flyers to consumers, wich were "torn out pages" from Wordsworth books, that when held up to the Macs' webcams became animated. 3-Dimensional depictions of the words. Consumers loved how the page came to life, Wordsworth Books reported increased traffic in their stores for the duration of the promotion.

Romani "Ecological Business Card"

Design a business card for an environmental consultant. Business cards are usually made of paper. But using paper, even recycled, is not good for the environment. To avoid this issue, the solution was to not print any card at all, but to create a rubber stamp and then "recycle" anything that is at hand (carton paper, cigarette packs, napkins, and other wastes) into business cards. The new "business card" communicates clearly what this proffesional offers: clever new ways of recycling, saving money and protecting the environment. More than a card it's a piece of communication.

Memac Ogilvy "Recession business cards"

With growing economic concerns and shrinking marketing budgets, they needed to tell clients and prospective clients that in spite of - indeed because of the recession, we are more relevant to them now. What they needed was a simple, cheap and effective way to do this. They created undersized business cards with appealing designs and thought provoking lines to drive potential clients to ogilvyonrecession.com; a website offering smart strategies to deal with downturn. The responses were overwhelming. Aside from being an engaging icebreaker with their desired audience - they had produced an insightful, relevant and targeted campaign, by saving rather than spending.

Tüm Abbruch demolition company "Push Puppet"

The task was to create a direct mailing for the demolition company Tüm Abbruch to drive awareness and generate new business contacts. They created a "push puppet" building that dramatized Tüm Abbruch's core business in a very immediate, playful and memorable way. Due to long planning times in this sector they had to find an approach that "cut through" and guaranteed high recall rates. The results were outstanding. Overall 13,5% of the recipients responded via mail or direct phone calls. Most of them wanted an additional piece for their colleagues. New business targets were fully met.

Vodafone/Earth Hour "Fluorescent freecard"

Switch off the light one more time on March 28th between 20:30 and 21:30! Let this be your vote against global warming.

Vaude Outdoor Equipment "Extreme conditions"

Vaude. Equipment for extreme conditions.

Index Livingmall "Model Room Bags"

The Agust '08 catalogue for Index Livingmall, the furniture store, is introducing the index condo set. Instead of the typical catalogue, it's designed like a shopping bag. The different bag sizes represent the room spaces. With these "bags" the consumer can see the furniture and decor items fit in the condo space printed inside. The detachable items gives the consumer the experience of designing their own space. No doubt will these catalogue bags be the hottest items for Index.

Cadbury’s Creme Egg Twisted.

CMW unveils its new ‘Goo on the Loose’ campaign for the Creme Egg Twisted bar – the chaotic brother to the Cadbury Creme Egg. Activity begins with a direct mail ‘security strongbox’ sent to hardcore ‘Goo’ fans – who talk about the brand on social networking sites. The strongbox carries Twisted bars, however the recipient will spot an empty wrapper amongst the bars and a hole in the bottom where one has escaped. The recipient is then challenged to become an agent of the CIA (Cadbury’s Intelligence Agency) and track down the escaped bars. Online advertising of the Twisted bar creating mayhem will also direct potential agents to the site. Have a look: www.cremeeggtwisted.com

Sundown Solar Protection

Sundown Solar Protection: an ad that reacts under the sun just as your skin would. Magazine insert that invites the reader to discover an image that shows who uses and who doesn't use Sundown. When exposing the insert to the light (UVB rays), the man, that apparently doesn't use the product, becomes very red, while the woman, with Sundown in her purse and on her body, maintains a sun tan. The redness ceases once the image is taken away from the light.

Blackwell's unveils Espresso Book Machine - any title printed while you wait

It's not elegant: it looks like a large photocopier. But the Espresso Book Machine could herald the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented his printing press more than 500 years ago.

Unveiled today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch, in central London, the machine prints and binds books in five minutes.

Blackwell believes the introduction signals the end to the frustration of being told a title is out of print or not in stock. The Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework.

The company hopes to increase the catalogue to more than a million titles by the end of the summer, the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space or more than 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are out of copyright, but Blackwell is working with UK publishers to increase access to in-copyright writing. So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive, the firm says.

"This could change bookselling fundamentally," said Blackwell's chief executive, Andrew Hutchings. "It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon ... I like to think of it as the revitalisation of the local bookshop industry. If you could walk into a local bookshop and have access to one million titles, that's pretty compelling."

The Espresso can cater to a wide range of needs from serving academics keen to purchase reproductions of rare manuscripts to wannabe novelists needing a copy of their self-published novels, says Blackwell, which will be monitoring its use to decide pricing and demand. The plan is to roll out the innovation across the 60-store network, with the flagship Oxford branch likely to be an early recipient as well as campus-based shops.

The Espresso is the brainchild of the American publisher Jason Epstein and was a Time magazine invention of the year. It proved a star attraction at the London Book Fair this week, where it printed more than 100 pages a minute, clamping them into place, then binding, guillotining and spitting out the (warm as toast) finished article.

Described as an "ATM for books" by its US proprietor On Demand Books, the Espresso machine has been established in the US, Canada and Australia, and in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt.

The Charing Cross Road machine is the first to be set up in a UK bookstore. It cost Blackwell about £120,000, but Phill Jamieson, head of marketing, said: "It has the potential to be the biggest change since Gutenberg."

Taken from The Guardian and thanks for pointing this article out: David Colpitts at david@digitaljoy.ca

MTV "Eat this ad"

To publicize the MTV Young Universe Brief on the theme of sustainability, they created a totally sustainable ad: in edible paper. Fot this action we also created a website www.comaestenuncio.com.br. Wich offered a promotion inviting people to send in their recipes using the edible paper as an ingredient. A famous chef was invited to create the first dish and invite people to take part in the promotion. There were thousands of hits and hundreds of recipes and the best won an invitation to the award ceremony of the Brazilian Video Music Awards. The edible paper aroused so much curiosity that it even made the news programs. An incalculable amount of nationwide spontaneous media was achieved for the brand. This brief event was a huge success and attracted a massive market presence.

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.

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.

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.

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.