Guerilla advertising
Billboard makes you feel like a life saver
Getting people interested in pursuing careers in public health is an uphill battle for obvious reasons. This interactive digital bus shelter ad does a nice job of using a simple interaction to make people feel empowered and create that interest around public health professions.
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Local advertising strategy gone terribly wrong
From time to time in my career I am presented with a piece of advertising that is bad on an epic scale. When I come to such a cross roads the only way I seem to know how to process these crimes against the profession I love is to write about them seemingly in the hopes that by putting the stupidity out into the universe it will somehow stop it from happening again. The latest offender arrived in my mailbox this evening so get ready universe because here it comes.
I came home from work and got the mail from the mailbox on my front porch as usual. I started to flip the assortment of junk mail and tome like fashion magazines my wife seems to receive on a daily basis. In the middle of the pile I found a medium size white envelope that had been hand written with my name and no return address (this should have been the first clue) but it had a local postage stamp. I was curious and I opened the envelope and pulled out what appeared to be a page torn from a newspaper with a yellow sticky note on it. The note written in bad penmanship read ‘Stephen, Check this out. -J”. I stood there for a second pondering what I just read before even looking at the paper as I don’t know anyone who signs their name “J”. I then read the newspaper page which was for a sale at my local Nissan Dealer. I little investigation and I realized that “J” was someone from the Nissan dealership who sent me the ad and used the note to pretend to be someone who knows me.
Lets take a second and walk through this logic on this genius marketing strategy. You start with the average consumer not trusting salesmen at car dealerships because there is a perception that those salesmen are fast talkers who lie and say anything to make a deal. So in this case my local Nissan dealership is going to fight this tragic stereotype by trying to lie me and pose as someone who knows me to try to get me into the dealership. That is so staggeringly stupid on so many levels I don’t even know where to start. I’m normally not a arrogant ass but this is one time where these guys need to leave the big thoughts to the professionals.
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The Audi Spectacle – billboards evolved
Last week I cam across some really interesting work by the Access Agency which is a multi-disciplinary agency lead by Bill Tikos the found of TheCoolHunter.net. The project was called The Audi Spectacle which explores the idea that outdoor advertising has lost it’s effectiveness so if you want to reach consumers you need to create a spectacle. Also because of media savvy, social media infused lifestyles the spectacle needs to go beyond the final creation to include the anticipation, the process of creation, the engineering of the installation and the launch event. In this case it is four life-size Audi cars suspended inside the silver rings of a massive Audi symbol that are then attached to an iconic landmarks like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge or the Tower Bridge in Venice. The rings rotate, light-up and move up and down the the structures to create a kinetic piece of branded art.
I think this approach is based in some really solid insights into how people consume media these days and the lengths you need to go through to break through all the advertising clutter. I also like it because the solution is so brand and product focused as they found a way for the solution to include their logo and their products. Based on the language in the case study and and mock-up look of the photos I am assuming this was pitch work but it I think there is a lot of great thinking and insights here that could lead to a really interesting new direction in outdoor advertising.
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Universal Studio’s big guerilla advertising
Universal Studios did a did guerilla publicity stunt (literally) this weekend for their new King Kong 3-D attraction that will open at the theme park this summer. Huge footprints appeared in the sand on Santa Monica Beach complete with a crushed lifeguard vehicle.
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C’Mon LeBron, Love NYC
If you follow NBA Basketball you know the the Cleveland Cavaliers were recently eliminated form the NBA Playoffs and it once again started huge speculation on if the Cavaliers superstar LeBron James will stay with the team when his contract expires at the end of June. The speculation about which team he will go to if he leaves continues to center on the biggest stage in the world – New York City and the Knicks who have been making salary room for just such a superstar. In typical aggressive New Yorker style the city of New York has launched an new grass roots campaign “to show the world’s greatest athlete why he belongs in the world’s greatest city”. The campaign is completely social media centric with a Facebook page, Twitter feed and C’mon LeBron toolkit containing logos, Facebook and Twitter avatars. It has just started so the movement only has 400 right now but we will see if a little love and whole lot of $$$$$ can make the difference and bring him to NYC.
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Virtual Homeless
I was walking through the city the other night and came across a really interesting interactive installation that was a projection being shown on the side of a building of a homeless man laying on the ground. After a little while a message pops up asking you to move the virtual homeless person via a text message. Intrigued I sent the text message, a door appeared and the man got up and went through it. I then got a text message to my iPhone with a code I could use to donate to Pathways to Housing.
A little research revealed that it was created by Sarkissian Mason for Pathways to Housing in response to the fact that they saw a growing number of charitable donations were being made via mobile text codes after they redesigned their web site.The projections will appear on New York buildings through March and you can get location details on Pathway to Housing’s Facebook page.
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Adbusting Photoshop style
Messing with subways and street outdoor ads have slow become an really interesting art work over the years. The latest and most interesting work I have seen appeared in Berlin recently where they put custom Photoshop palettes over the clearly highly retouched ads.
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iObama Burnout 360
In my continued interest around how the presidential candidates are using digital media I saw an article today that Barack Obama has started running in-game advertising for the Xbox 360 version of the driving game Burnout Paradise. The ads appear on billboards and signs in the game and have messaging about early voting now being open with the candidates Web site URL. The obvious question is if this type of media buy really targets voters who are undecided or are even planning on voting.
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SCUD balloons
My sense of humor runs to the dark side so the idea of driving down the highway and looking over to see this just seems too funny. No idea how you could use this is campaign but I just want to try to find one.
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Papa Johns at your door
I saw this promotional piece that was done by Saatchi & Saatchi and thought that it was really clever. I love this kind of stuff that is smart, original and makes sense for the brand no matter what medium it is using.
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