A clever ad by Oogmerk (which I presume is an eyewear company focused on creative, funky glasses) – it’s true how perceptions can easily changed by eyewear. Incidentally if you’re interested, the Opus design competition is on now and their theme is also on eyewear being tools to enhance faces.
For those in Singapore, a mystery was revealed recently – the yellow stop advertisement panels with simple lines like “Anything can happen on May 18″ and “Get ready for Whatever at May 18″ were probably a little more literal than you’ve expected – they were a drum-up campaign for the introduction of these new can drinks – labeled of course as “Anything” and “Whatever”.
Taking the indecisive nature of some people to the fullest, these drinks might be the surprise return if you indeed answer “anything” when your friend ask what’d you like. The second surprise would be in the flavors of the drink – there are six flavors for each label – “Anything” consist the fizzy versions: cola, cola with lemon, root beer, etc. while “Whatever” are non-carbonated – e.g. ice lemon tea, chrysanthemum tea, apple tea etc. They have even purposely reduced the ingredients to non-descriptors like carbonated water, permitted flavor, fruit juice etc, so you’d have no chance of “cheating” the system than to have real random drink. (I wonder, maybe someone would go and analyze the serial numbers or something and decrypt it? Surely they must be different SKUs – but that is still rather extreme for just a can drink).
Most would see this as simply a marketing packaging, or perhaps even a passing fad that would not stand the test of market and time. That is too early to say – but as characteristics of such a gimmicky approach to beverage marketing, a hyped-up launch campaign is definitely crucial.
They took out some ads, some of which verging on the risque, e.g. the picture of a sexy woman accompanied by the line “I’m easy. I’ll take Whatever you give me”. There was a mild reaction (controversy?) to the campaign – some people think they are demeaning (which I’m fairly certain is the intention: you’d need all the publicity you can get, controversial or not – debates and letters to the newspaper forums would certainly fuel the curiosity and hype).
What they perhaps did not anticipate was a response of another kind to their ads. You see, they have lined cans around their posters (empty sealed cans). These cans were quickly vandalized – whether it be the bored teenager fiddling with it and opening the tabs, or from poor old women removing the aluminum cans for money. As a result, there were again concerns over the opened cans being a breeding ground for dengue mosquitoes – eventually the company pulled the ads down prematurely.
Youtube promo video “Anything”:
Whatever Ad:
The media landscape today’s definitely a vastly different one than just twenty years ago. Effective advertisements of yore were mass-blasted through the conventional channels: TV, Mass Print, radio, etc. Most of the time, the effectiveness of the campaign scaled rather proportionally with your pockets.
With recent developments in technology, we’re seeing the emergence of a whole new ballgame. We can now skip past the ads in TV program segments. We probably don’t even watch TV all that much – preferring to get our stuff through the Internet, sans advertisements, at our own time and pace. We’re freed from the confines of having to sit through commercials, infomercials – we can effectively filter them now.
What, then, happens to the conversation between the advertiser and the consumer? This video explores.
A rather effective ad by WWF in China to illustrate the sheer amount of pollution generated in one day by a car – I never imagined it was that much (the Chinese copy on the balloon doesn’t suggest that the amount was produced in one day though the English copy does). Anyway, it’s a promotion of the WWF’s microsite: 20to20.org.
“Renault breakdown services
0810 05 15 15 on-call 24 hours a day”
Agency: Publicis Conceil, France
The best things in life are simple, clear and clever!
It does seem like adidas is taking Nike heads on in this ad campaign (not sure of its origin though – could it be fan art?) – the copy reads: “Nike has great ads”, signed off by “adidas – love competition”. If it’s real, I do hope Nike would respond with a creative return – that’d certainly make life a lot more interesting, like the (hoax, but funny nonetheless) battle between BMW, Audi, Subaru and Bentley.
Creativity finds itself in the smallest and most mundane details!
Wonderfully creative works by a small Japanese company called Design Barcode – whose name probably implies that they’re definitely very specialized in giving barcodes a facelift, as demonstrated by their works above. And it was no wonder that they grabbed the Cannes Titanium Lion Award (the only ad campaign to do so), which is given to firms to recognize work that broke through traditional awards category boundaries and represented creative innovation.
I guess Design Barcode is having a rolling good time now, especially since they’ve trademarked this proprietary method of advertising (and have since licensed the rights worldwide). From the juries in the competition:
“Our industry has banged on about ideas being important and about intellectual property issues for some time,” said juror Craig Davis, worldwide creative director of JWT. “This idea is trademarked, it’s proprietary, it speaks to many of the issues we’ve been talking about.”
Scott Goodson, creative director at Strawberry Frog, said the winner represented “an agency owning something that brands around the world will pay for.”
This is a beautiful commercial from Volkswagen Phaeton – Phaetons are Volkswagen’s top line model. I’m not quite sure what it’d mean to you, but I definitely think that the factory that made these Phaetons (as covered by my blog post on it last year) are certainly more beautiful than the cars themselves.
Phaetons are hand assembled in the factory, which is why this VW commercial focuses on the beauty that the hand can give – in this case, the familiar art of using the shadows formed with a hand to create animated shadows. You’d probably know the “eagle”, but this ad is chock full of various lively creatures that tells a story.
It is perhaps regrettable though that the digital age of animation has bred a cynic in me – before I could be truly impressed by the artistic feat, a definite voice in my brain would ring “That is probably just CG – DON’T be impressed!”. Which is a stupid thought – why should I reduce the amount of surprise, delight and amazement in my life – but I guess it’s a stupid thought that would stick with me.
Disney hits again! Many (all?) of us grew up with Disney characters like Cinderella, Little Mermaid and Snow White, and these cartoons both crystallized and entrenched the entire notion of the dream life and world – the pretty princesses, the prince charming, the happily-ever-afters.
As I grew up, however, Disney’s magic seem to rub me the wrong way more often. Perhaps I have outgrown it – Disney and Disneyland seemed much more commercialized and crass – to me, it seemed like they’ve lost the edge in creating dreams amidst tie-ins with McDonalds on Happy Meal soft toys.
This series of ads (appropriately titled “Dreams”) seems to be harking back at the dream world and fantasy. They roped in icons like David Beckham and Scarlett Johansson, who perhaps are among the best choices in portraying the roles of the Prince Charming and Cinderella. The artistic direction and the photography are also much more sophisticated, awakening the kid in adults (rather than treating adults like kids) of the old myths of utopia with stunning photography. Taglines go “Where imagination saves the day” and “Where every Cinderella story comes true”.
And there will be more of these to come – featuring more icons as Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and Ariel the mermaid.
[story and more pictures]
***Update*** – Apparently Disney is not allowed to use the tagline “where dreams come true” as it had already been trademarked – by a porn producer no less!
