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Bennett Olson was unemployed and desparate for a job, so he decided to do a bit of creative advertising to get hired:
And yes, he landed a job: LinkIn April, Olson paid $300 for an 8-second time slot on an electronic billboard near downtown Minneapolis. His ad was up for 24 hours, rotating with other ads on the billboard. The words "Hire Me!" appeared next to his website address and a picture of his face.
After you've foolishly walked away from your Land Rover to explore a mirage in the Arabian desert, you've found yourself lost. What to do?
Thank goodness for this survival guide that explains how to keep yourself alive with tips on dealing with scorching temperatures, building shelters, lighting a fire and so on. The best thing is: you can eat the book!
Actually the whole thing is a clever ad campaign by Y&R Dubai ad agency for Land Rover:
Y&R Dubai researched every indigenous animal and plant, people could encounter in the Arabian Desert and how they could be used to survive. They studied the topography of the region to guide people to safety. The agency used a reflective packaging similar to army rations, which could be used to signal for help, and bound the book with a metal spiral, which could be used for cooking. Finally, the agency even took an extra step so that in case of emergency, people could always EAT the book. It was made out of edible ink and paper, and it had a nutritional value close to that of a cheeseburger.
Link - via DesignTaxi
Actually, they're just painted on. UK's National Health Service is worried that the upcoming summer
Olympic Games would mean that blood donors are too busy watching the games
that they'd forget to donate. So it embarked on a publicity stunt to raise
awareness of the need for blood donation in Britain.
Metro has the pics: Link (Photo: Adrian Brooks/PA) - via Notcot
Photo: Anja Hitzenberger
If a little advertisement is good for business, then A LOT of it should be fantastic, right? During her two-month residency in Beijing, China, photographer Anja Hitzenberger captured the intense competition between stalls in a food court:
This series, shot in a temporary food court set up inside Beijing’s Olympic Park, reveals a visually and viscerally overloaded fast-food culture that may make some mouths water and other bellies ache. Hitzenberger concentrates on the saturated visual displays of the food stalls and the way the environment contrasts with the boredom of the workers, offering an insight into some of the contradictions in contemporary Chinese culture.
Folks, this is what happened when you have an arms race in advertising: Link - via Creative Roots
This shopping bag offered at Joupi, the French toy store chain, is a clever ad by Euro RSCG 360. Place an item inside and pull up on the handles. The front handle slides up, replacing the child’s frown with a smile.
The Belgian organization Responsible Young Drivers (RYD) confronted the issue of texting while driving by telling student drivers they would have to pass a test on their texting while driving skills, and then recorded their attempts. The results are a lesson for all of us. -via mental_floss
Tipp-Ex is like white-out with an applicator. Their viral advertising involves a birthday party that is interrupted by a meteor. To escape, you’ll have to take the party to a different year, which you can do over and over in this interactive YouTube video. -via the Presurfer
These spooky figures, holding a note with their faces obscured, are part of a strange street art advertising campaign by Red Agency for Goodwill stores, to illustrate that Goodwill is the best place to buy costumes.
The slogan is “Be Anything This Halloween”, but I don’t think I’ll be going to this year’s Halloween bash dressed as a dumpster.
Still, as far as advertising campaigns are concerned, this is a rather creative and surreal campaign, and it would be fun to spot these odd stickers all over town.
One of the benefits of Bisleri Mountain water is that it can keep your child from choking on his food! -via the Presurfer
There are two kinds of beermergencies: bad beer and no beer. In either event, call the Beerbulance for immediate assistance from beer professionals. The Beerbulance is a promotional gimmick for Red Brick Brewing in Atlanta, Georgia. Drivers use it to pick up customers and deliver them to the brewhouse.
Official Website -via Nag on the Lake
Good news everyone! Another gaming relic from your childhood is available to play for free, thanks to those clever marketers who know that letting a game like Chex Quest make the rounds again gives you an opportunity to once again advertise your product.
The product in question is Chex cereal, and since it’s not a detestable product I’m sure many who remember the silly advertising games from the 1990s will appreciate being able to play them all again, if only for the sake of nostalgia.
Link –via Geekosystem
Hello, Neatoramanauts, look at your action figure. Now back to this. Now back at your action figure, now back at this.
Well, it's about time! Mick Minogue has created the action figure of Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice guy, for Gallery 1988's upcoming MEMES show. The "Master of the Ladies" set comes complete with wild horse, man towel, sweater armor, scepter, oyster with 2 tickets to that thing you love, diamond, and, of course, Old Spice Body Wash Formula.
Check out more pics at Mick's website: Link - via Super Punch
Previously on Neatorama: Old Spice's Manmercials
Maybe we should give up this life of crime and go roller skating! The ad for Roller Kingdom in Reno, Nevada was produced by Rhett & Link, the team who brought us Chuck Testa. Oh yeah, the kidnapper became the owner of the rink, the gang leader became the skate instructor, and the drug dealer is now the rink DJ. All’s well that ends well! -via b3ta
If there was anyone who forgot this is an Olympic year, prepare yourself, because the emotional ad campaigns leading up to the London Olympics have already started. This Mother’s Day ad from Procter and Gamble will make you wish your kids had athletic ambitions. Or… it might make you appreciate the sacrifices your mother made for you. -via The Daily What
Target stores have come up with an extremely clever way to advertise both the items they sell and the upcoming Avengers movie-they’ve put together household items sold in their stores to form iconic images based on The Avengers.
The images are so densely packed with details that it takes a while to see all the products featured in each photo, which is what, in my opinion, makes them cooler than your average advertising campaign.
And I must admit that these ads make me want to buy some Avengers related merchandise, and I now have a mysterious craving for a Mr. Goodbar and a Dr. Pepper!
Photographer Fernando Martins of Camera Clara Photography Studio is angry. Very angry.
Fernando is miffed that stock photography - those generic images of models that you can buy for cheap - are competing with his own high-quality photography business. So he decided to travel from Brazil to Denmark to track down Jesper Bruun, the model whose handsome face earned him the moniker of The World's Most Downloaded Man.
Watch:
[YouTube Clip - via The Atlantic]
No, it's not real: the video above is actually a clever ad for Camera Clara Studio. In this weird mesh of fiction meets real life (Jasper is an actual model) - sort of like an advertisement in form of a mockumentary - Fernando acts out the dream of photographers who has lost out on many jobs because of their archenemy, stock photography.
Well played, Fernando. Well played.
Remember the first time you saw an ad for Sea Monkeys? I really wanted some, but never made the order. I figured the X-ray Spex were a rip-off, even in my childhood. Kirk Demarais was fascinated with those ads in the back of comic books, so much that he made a film about them, went to work for a novelty company, and wrote a book called Mail Order Mysteries. He talks about some of those products in an interview at Collectors Weekly.
Collectors Weekly: Isn’t it funny how when your parents tell you something is a rip-off, it just makes you want it more?
Demarais: Oh yeah. Suddenly, it was the forbidden fruit. I trusted my parents in general, but something about that, I thought, “How did they know?” They didn’t order it. It’s also the first time I ever encountered dishonest salesmanship. I thought, “With all the other commercials I see on television, you get what they show you.” Part of me had a hard time fathoming that people would just out-and-out rip you off, especially kids. That’s the coming-of-age lesson behind it.
Read the full interview, and learn the truth behind those tantalizing products at Collectors Weekly. Link -Thanks, Lisa!
Is this clever, aggravating, or both? The employees of Ebolaindustries, an Italian ad agency, go by pseudonyms (e.g. Mrs. Grey) on their business cards. If you want to learn their real names, you’ll have get out a microscope.
Link -via Super Punch
Say
it ain't so! Mike and Ike
(of the chewy fruit-flavored candy) are splitting up and fans are devastated.
Devastated!
WHEN beloved pairings split, fans may grow distraught, at the prospect of Simon without Garfunkel, Lennon without McCartney, or Martin without Lewis.
Now Mike and Ike, the brand of chewy fruit-flavored candies, is announcing its pair is separating, and hoping the development captures the interest of younger consumers.
Packaging that began appearing in stores recently has logos with either “Ike” or “Mike” scribbled out, as if by a felt-tip marker.
On the back of packages with Mike’s name crossed out, a handwritten message from Ike faults Mike for “spending way too much time on his music.” Packages with Ike’s name crossed out have a message from Mike faulting Ike for “spending way too much time on his graffiti art.”
Chew over this report by Andrew Adam Newman over at The New York Times: Link
Food and other industries have mascots that are walking and dancing versions of their products, so why not mascots for urine tests, syringes, and various body organs? These exist too, in walking, dancing, kid-hugging form! See eleven of the best at mental_floss. Shown here is Petey Cup, which is, well, you can figure that out or go read more about him. Link
Now that's smart advertising in 140 characters or less: smart Argentina created an ad with ASCII animation in its Twitter page. Each tweet is an animation frame (you can hit "J" on your keyboard to scroll down): Link - via Notcot
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"Come with a story and leave with another", says Colsubsidio Book Exchange of Colombia. To strike home the message, Lowe/SSP3 ad agency came up with these clever print ads.
The first one above mixes Snow White and Sherlock Holmes. Can you figure out these two below?
Enjoy another performance by surreal dancer Marquese Scott, known as Nonstop (previously at Neatorama). This was recorded in one take with no edits. They say there was no pre-planned choreography, but I suppose Nonstop knew what to do. Oh yeah, this is an ad for Peugeot, which explains how the car didn’t have to park next to other cars in an urban parking garage. -Thanks, Tiffany Maddox!
The Coke machine just wants to be loved. Is that so wrong?
The ad agency Ogilvy & Mather rigged this soda vending machine in Singapore to respond to hugs by dispensing free cans of soda. The idea is to encourage people to embrace Coca-Cola, in this case, literally.
What other products do you think should be sold this way?
Link -via DVICE | Photo: Ogilvy & Mather
Whether or not you’ve ever actually watched a full one, you’re certainly familiar with the show-length advertisements known as infomercials. But have you ever wondered how these comically bad ads came about? After all, unlike other forms of advertisement, infomercials were created specifically for television. Here’s the story of the paid programs we all love to hate.
If you’re familiar with old-timey radio programs, then you probably already know that many pre-television radio programs didn’t have ads so much as sponsors whose name and product would be plugged in between just about every song. Even those unfamiliar with these early radio programs may recognize the idea from the movie O’ Brother Where Art Thou, where there are frequent mentions of Pappy O’Daniel’s Flour Hour.
Interestingly, that character was actually based on a real life Texas governor with the same name who also had a flour company, Hillbilly Flour, that sponsored a radio program. As if the frequent mention of the sponsor’s name wasn’t enough, the real Pappy O’Daniel ensured that even his performers reminded people of the product, so he even helped form a band known as the Light Crust Doughboys (the Hillbilly Band in the video was created after the Doughboys broke up). Sure it was still not quite an infomercial, but I’m sure you can see that sponsored programming is certainly nothing new.
As television began to catch on, the same concept was used again, only instead of using music or radio plays, the sponsors could create entire TV shows devoted mainly to pitching their products while consumers watched the programming intently. One of the most famous early examples was NBC’s The Magic Clown, which was created and sponsored by Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy and featured regular interruptions promoting said candy (aside from the name in the intro, there’s basically a full commercial at 4:09).
The first real infomercial appeared around 1950 and was for a blender, although there is a heated debate as to whether it was for a VitaMix or a Waring blender.
more …
Totally rad! You can be a Nintendoid, too, with all this cool gear from Homer’s of Omaha! That is, if you were a young gamer in the early ’90s who bugged his parents until they bought such stuff. Clothing available in men’s and children’s sizes. Link
His name is Taxi Dave, he drives the Party Cab between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., and he’s a one man mobile paaar-tay in Sacramento, CA!
Watch him strut and sway his way across the parking lot, performing the Taxi Dave Dance in order to attract new customers. Party Cab is in the house tonight indeed!
–via Videogum
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This certainly put a new spin on Eric Carmen's popular song Hungry Eyes. That's a real advertisement for Burger King Netherlands, which prodded customers to "get a tasty new look." Link - via BellaSugar
Chris Pratt, of Parks and Recreation fame, stars in this silly little spot for Star Wars Kinect on Xbox. One question remains-Is Darth Vader evil enough to cut down a Jedi wearing nothing but briefs and an undershirt?
–via Rampaged Reality
I want to go to London if for no other reason than to get one of these cards stamped over and over again at Tapped & Packed. Especially since no one is steering the bike.
-via reddit | Official Website
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