Nothing says “waiting for the bus” like the smell of baked potatoes. Okay, clearly that sentence didn’t make sense, and people usually don’t want to think about food while they’re waiting for the bus. And the sad truth is this bus stop is probably going to smell like the worst scents a human beings can muster in a few weeks anyway, so why bother with a gimmicky ad?

Well, the folks at McCain Foods are betting that these bus stop ads, with the scent of a baked potato available at the push of a button, will help them sell their Ready Made Jacket Potatoes.And there are coupons available, in case you decide to grab a box on the way home.

Maybe they’re on to something, but I’ve personally never wanted to think about food while waiting for the bus, and bus stops in my town tend to be akin to outhouses, without that crucial front door. But what do you think-are scented advertisements a good idea, or are they a real stinker?

Link

KILL OFF YOUR RIVALS | Benjamin Franklin

During colonial times, the almanac business was cutthroat. The books were the bestsellers of their day -fun compendiums full of facts and witticisms. So, in 1732, Benjamin Franklin decided to enter the game with Poor Richard’s Almanack. In an early edition, Franklin jokingly predicted that rival almanac writer Titan Leeds would die on October 17, 1733 at 3:29 PM, the very instance of a conjunction of the Sun and Mercury.

Humorless, Leeds took the bait and ridiculed Franklin publicly. The response only generated more press for Poor Richard’s Almanack, turning it into a best seller. After October 17 came and went, and Leeds was still breathing, Franklin kept up the gag, claiming Leeds was dead and pretenders were writing under his name. Five years later, when Leeds finally passed away for real, Franklin thanked the imposters for stopping their ruse. By then, Poor Richard’s Almanack had made Franklin a rich man many times over.

STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANT … TURTLES | Salvador and Gala Dali

(YouTube link)

Though notorious in Europe, Salvador Dali and his savvy wife, Gala, weren’t famous in the United States until 1941, when they took the nation by metaphysical storm. To introduce themselves to Americans, the Dalis threw an unforgettably weird party in Pebble Beach, California, called “Night in a Surrealist Forest.” Dali decked the room with 12,000 shoes, 2,000 pine trees, 24 animal heads, 24 mannequins, and a wrecked car. His guest list ranged from A-list stars, such as Clark Gable, to wild animals, including a baby tiger. At one point in the evening, Bob Hope screamed when, after removing the dome from a plate, a toad leapt out at him. After the bizarre bash, Dali conducted an interview for American Weekly from a tall chair -its legs resting on the backs of four giant turtles. Gala claimed the chair “stimulates the artist’s creative powers.”

THROW A PARADE | Edward Bernays

In 1928, smoking was still considered a taboo for women, so the American Tobacco Company hired a rising adman named Edward Bernays -Sigmund Freud’s nephew- to stamp out the stigma. To make cigarettes seem more feminine, Bernays invited 30 debutantes to light a “Torch of Freedom” on Easter Sunday in New York City. Reporters devoured the photo op of stylish women in hats and fur-trimmed coats smoking on Fifth Avenue and making lofty declarations about smashing stereotypes. The next day’s headline in The New York Times read “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom.” And ladies have been lighting up openly ever since.

LIVE BY THE SEAT OF YOUR PANTS | Richard Branson

Billionaire Richard Branson is like a modern P.T. Barnum. Ever since he launched his Virgin brand empire in 1972, he’s executed so many outlandish publicity stunts it’s tough to imagine he’s had time to do much else -let alone run an airline, an animation studio, and dozens of other ventures. To celebrate the opening of Virgin Brides, his bridal business, Branson got gussied up in blue eye shadow, red lipstick, pearl earrings, and a $10,000 wedding dress. For Virgin’s first flights to South Africa, he dressed as a Zulu warrior. When Virgin added flights from San Francisco to Las Vegas, the then-56-year-old CEO bungee-jumped 407 feet off the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, smashing into the building, and ripped his pants open.

GO TOPLESS | Marilyn Monroe

Before Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson, there was Marilyn Monroe, the woman who taught those ladies everything they need to know about getting famous. By 1952, Monroe had been credited in 15 films, but most Americans didn’t know her name. She needed some publicity, fast. Around that time, wire service reporter Aline Mosby discovered nude calendar photos that looked suspiciously like Monroe. When the rumor mill started churning, 20th Century Fox warned the actress to stay quiet.

But Monroe had other plans in mind. In March 1952, she gave an interview, admitting the photos were of her and claiming she’d only done them to pay the rent. The outpouring of sympathy made Monroe the most talked about woman Hollywood. One month later she was on the cover of Life magazine, and her next movie, Clash by Night, was a smash hit. Biographers now think that the person who originally leaked the photographs was either Jerry Wald, an executive producer of Clash by Night, or Monroe herself. And that’s how a star is born.

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The article above, written by Mike Albo, is reprinted with permission from the November-December 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston has started a fun new game: find out what Google guesses is your age and gender. These “inferred demographics” are based on the websites you visit and are tracked by a Google cookie; they are used for advertising purposes. Given Google’s controversial announcement Tuesday that users will not be able to opt out of new privacy changes, learning what the company thinks about you seems particularly useful, and informative.

The Google ad preference page shows my interests, which is actually evidence of my work plus the interests of the three teenage girls who also use my computer, often without changing to their own Google accounts. Then it guesses that I am male, age 24-34. Wrong on all counts. How is this useful to advertisers? These analytics are based on categorizing individuals based on the perceived behaviors of groups. In real life, we call that discrimination and try to teach our kids not to do it. Either way, there’s a lot of room for error. How wrong are they about you? Link -via Metafilter

This optical illusion street art was placed on the road outside of Universal Studios: Japan to promote their new Flying Snoopy ride. The characters can only be seen properly crossing the road from the right perspective and then voila! Peanuts-Abbey Road parody! What a creative and cute way to advertise a new ride!

Link

(YouTube Link)

Continuing the parade of “dear god, make it stop!” inducing advertising for The Phantom Menace in 3D, a new animated commercial has emerged for Lipton Brisk Iced Tea that, I must admit, is beautifully animated and very cute.

There’s even a mobile app centered around the battle between Yoda and Darth Maul, which you can check out here.  Now, why do I have the feeling that these ads are going to look a whole lot better than a 3d converted version of The Phantom Menace?

–via The Mary Sue

Photoshop Disasters is always good for a laugh -or a nightmare. I may be seeing this model and her “elbow that won’t quit” in my dreams for some time to come. She is one of the Top 10 Photoshop Disasters of 2011, but she’s not #1. Link

Timm Schneider a.k.a. Kong, the German designer behind the Cartoon Eyes Street Art and many other projects, has a new thing going. This time he’s putting up error messages on advertisements. The message reads:

An Error has occurred in your brain

This process has caused fatal boredom and therefore will be closed permanently. Please save all thoughts in progress and reboot your brain. [error code |-(42]

Link via Nerdcore

Man, Christmas seems to come and go faster each year! These ads harken back to a simpler time, a time when cowboys were all the rage, and gun ads were allowed to appeal to kids during the holidays.

It’s a nice bit of nostalgia, and a few of the pics in this gallery are definitely chuckle worthy. Just don’t shoot your eye out!

Link –via BoingBoing

Some advertisers have relied on product placement (think James Bond stopping mid-gunfight for a refreshing sip of Heineken). Others have attempted to make their ads so entertaining that people will watch them in spite of the sales pitch. And then there’s the more mischievous route — the grassroots, take-it-to-the-streets method — and that’s where guerrilla marketing comes in.

Dirt-cheap and chock full of trickery, guerrilla marketing is advertising with a wink. The successful campaigns usually corral attention through subversive means before revealing their true purpose, and they distinguish themselves by being so clever that even once the bait and switch is revealed, there’s no negative outcry.

In other words, even though consumers know they’ve been duped, the reaction amounts to nothing more than a bashful, “Oh Pepsi! We can’t stay mad at you!”

And it’s with that good-humored and awe-inspired mindset that we pay homage to the best “gotcha” moments in advertising.

1. The Blair Witch Project

Arguably the most important aspect of a successful guerrilla campaign is staying one step ahead of the public. As consumers become more attuned to ad agency efforts, marketers have to figure out how to attack the mob from unexpected angles. The brand standard for catching the public off guard? 1999′s The Blair Witch Project. With no stars, no script, and a budget of around $50,000, University of Central Florida Film School pals Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez successfully scrubbed out the line between reality and fiction.

The film’s tagline set the stage: “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found.” Audiences were expected to believe what they were watching — shaky, low-quality videotape of three runny-nosed kids weeping in the woods — was an edited-down version of real recovered footage. And while it was certainly an inventive way to challenge the boundaries of cinematic storytelling (not to mention justifying the low-budget look of the film), Blair Witch didn’t exactly seem poised to rival Titanic. That is, until an inventive guerrilla marketing scheme was devised.

To ease the suspension of disbelief and stir up some buzz, Sánchez created a Web site devoted to the Blair Witch — a fictitious, woods-based specter who’d been snapping up Maryland kids for the last century. Although the legend was created out of whole cloth, it was soon snapped up by gullible Interneters everywhere, and a first-ballot hall of fame urban legend was born. Pretty soon, thousands of people were terrified of the Blair Witch. Even when the actors who played the “film students” started showing up (alive) doing interviews about the movie, many across the country refused to believe the Blair Witch wasn’t real.

From that point, the “I’ve got to see for myself” effect took over, and Blair Witch dominated at the box office. Considered the most effective horror hoax since Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds broadcast, the film grossed $250 million worldwide. Not a bad return for Artisan Entertainment, which paid only $1 million for the flick after its Sundance screening.

2. Acclaim Entertainment

Nowhere are the semi-criminal aspects of guerrilla marketing more important than in pitching to video gamers. Regular folks might occasionally enjoy being duped by an unusually clever campaign, but gamers seem to suck down daring and deception like a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew. The more the stunts flaunt the law, the more the gaming demographic seems to like them.

The undisputed high-score holder in this renegade arena is Acclaim Entertainment, a plucky little company that began as a one-room outfit in Oyster Bay, New York, and bloomed into a multinational juggernaut. Eschewing artistry in favor of an “all publicity is good publicity” philosophy, Acclaim stirs up the stuffy types — and then laughs all the way to the bank. One of its bedrock tactics is to offer people money for performing some insane stunt on behalf of its upcoming game. Prior to the release of “Turok: Evolution,” for instance, the company offered £500 to the first five U.K. citizens who’d legally change their names to Turok. (Almost 3,000 people tried to claim the prize.) Later, promoting the release of “Shadow Man 2,” Acclaim announced it would pay the relatives of the recently deceased to place promotional ads on the headstones of their dearly departed. The company said the promotional fee might “particularly interest poorer families.”

The latter campaign was, of course, shouted down. But Acclaim blew it off and said the whole thing was a joke — right after its name had been conveniently plastered all over the headlines. In fact, many of the company’s schemes are designed to die on the vine that way. Acclaim actually counts on law enforcement and city officials to shut down their antics — preferably as publicly as possible. In 2002, the company announced its plans to promote “Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance” using something called “bloodvertising.” Touting it as the bloodiest game of all time, Acclaim said it was developing bus shelter ads that would seep a red, blood-like substance onto city sidewalks throughout the course of seven days. Officials thought that might not be in the best taste, so the campaign was aborted, as the world looked on. Also in 2002, Acclaim offered to pay all speeding tickets incurred in the U.K. on the day its racing game “Burnout 2″ was released. Naturally, the bobbies balked, feeling that removing the consequences for speeding might encourage people to speed. Acclaim judiciously rescinded the offer, but, yet again, not before the name “Burnout 2″ was burned into the public consciousness.

3. Half.com

The thing about Internet domain names is that they’re frequently difficult to remember. They have “krayzee” spellings, or “numb3rs” in them, or they’re only tangentially related to the products they offer. (What does “fogdog” have to do with sports equipment, anyway?) And in 1999, name recognition was one of the main problems facing half.com, an eBay-esque online marketplace that allows people to sell used items for fixed prices without the hassle of an auction. “There is such a dot-com clutter out there,” half.com CEO Joshua Kopelman said at the time. “We wanted to do something innovative to get some visibility in the crowd.”

That something turned out to be giving the 360-person town of Halfway, Oregon, $100,000 and a new computer lab to rename itself half.com for one year. When media outlets picked up the story, half.com (both town and Web site) got some much-needed publicity. Within weeks of its launch, the site was covered by the Today show, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Time magazine even called the renaming arrangement “one of the greatest publicity coups in history.”

The man who literally put half.com on the map was the site’s then VP of marketing, Mark Hughes. Hughes, who is now proprietor of buzzmarketing.com, managed to generate so much publicity for half.com that only three weeks after the renaming was announced, eBay snapped it up for a cool $313 million. And while half.com is probably the most successful town/product renaming event in history, it’s not the only one. In 1950, Hot Springs, New Mexico, rechristened itself Truth or Consequences after a popular game show, and in 2005, Clark, Texas, decided to go by DISH, Texas, in exchange for a decade of free satellite TV.

4. Booty Call

It’s not easy to draw attention to yourself on the streets of New York, but Manhattan commuters took notice in 2004 when a group of scantily-clad (and extremely fit) boys and girls dashed around Grand Central Station flashing underwear with “Booty Call” printed across their shapely backsides. Drivers and passersby whipped out camera phones and digicams, and soon, pictures of the “Booty Call” flasher brigade were zooming around the internet.

The unprecedented display of indecent exposure turned out to be a publicity stunt executed by a company called (forgive us) ass-vertise.com. Booty Call was a new butt-building fitness class being hosted at the New York Health & Racquet Club. “It was fantastic,” said Jay Travis, brand manager for the club. “It would have cost us half  million dollars to get that kind of publicity.” What kind of publicity did he get? In addition to the live eyes that saw the booties in question, some 800,000 interested parties followed the Booty Call trail to a website explaining the promotion.

5. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

For every guerrilla marketing campaign, there is a guerrilla marketing cautionary tale that illustrates just how thin the line between creativity and criminality can be. And no better example exists than the 2007 effort to promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters -a movie about an anthropomorphic crime-fighting happy meal that never actually fights any crime.

Basically, the whole hullabaloo began when a couple of Beantowners got freaked out by the sight of a Lite-Brite attached to an underpass. The board depicted a Moonite -an alien character from the Cartoon Network’s popular animated program Aqua Teen Hunger Force- “flipping the bird” at oncoming traffic. Although instantly recognizable to anyone who’d seen the show, the presence of a battery-powered circuit board carefully rigged to the support system of a bridge struck some Bostonians as menacing, and the police were summoned.

Fearing a terrorist attack, Boston authorities shut down major road and waterways to investigate the installations and even summoned bomb squads to destroy at least one of the devices. Early in the fiasco, stunned Gen-Xers began trying to explain what the LED boards represented, but the company who created and distributed the devices, Interence, Inc., made the mistake of not immediately speaking up. The hesitation later resulted in two freelance video artists, Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, being arrested for placing “hoax devices.” Eventually, Turner Broadcasting -which operated Cartoon network- ‘fessed up, admitting they’d placed the devices in 10 cities as part of a guerrilla campaign. Turner paid $1 million to federal, state, and local agencies in Massachusetts to cover the investigation costs and a second $1 million in goodwill funding. And while the charges against the two artists were dropped, the general manager of the Cartoon Network stepped down in the wake of the incident.

While the TV show on which the film is based got an immediate 20-percent ratings boost, it’s still unknown what effect, if any, the incident had on ATHFCMFFT‘s box office sales. But one thing is clear: If you’re going to buy the municipality of Boston a present, don’t get it a Lite-Brite.

6. Obey: Andre The Giant Has A Posse

Most marketing ploys are created to promote a product, but the global rash of stickers, posters, and stencils reading “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” exist only to urge people to question their surroundings. In essence, it’s an ad campaign against advertising.

As subversive as it is pervasive, what became known as the “Obey Giant” campaign began when Rhode Island School of Design art student Shepard Fairey made a bunch of stickers and started putting them up around Providence. Mimicking Soviet-style propaganda posters, the stickers featured the unlikely visage of late professional wrestler Andre “The Giant” Roussimoff accompanied by messages like “Obey” and “Andre the Giant Has A Posse.” The stickers’ message was unclear — yet clearly counterculture. It resonated with local skateboarders, rockers, and other underground types, and soon, many were asking to join in the fun. The stickers spread underground to New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, and within a few years, they were all over the world.

The Obey Giant campaign is the kind of thing that, once you see it for the first time, you start to see it everywhere. The stickers are hip and cryptic, and they capitalize on the fact that most people think it’s cool to be part of something not everyone understands. Beyond that, the campaign does have a high-minded mission — to create a kind of emptiness in the observer. The propaganda orders a person to do something (“obey”), but the viewer doesn’t know what to do or how to obey. Fairey hopes this confusion will make people question other directives they receive visually — namely, in ads.

These days, Fairey heads up a design and marketing company that reps youth-targeted brands, such as Pepsi and Universal Pictures. An anti-advertising ad campaign staged by a big-shot advertiser? It doesn’t get much more guerrilla than that.

7. Court TV

“Hi Steven,” started the billboard that suddenly appeared near Times Square in 2006. “Do I have your attention now? I know all about her, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, poorly-endowed slimeball. Everything’s caught on tape. Your (soon-to-be-ex) wife, Emily.”

As you might imagine, this little love note caught the attention of a lot of people, and more than a few of them raced to the Internet to find out who Emily was and what she had planned. Turns out, Emily was keeping a blog (thatgirlemily.blogspot.com) of her vengeful activities, which included giving away bottles from Steven’s prize wine collection and listing his work number as the contact for a “fabulous 750 square foot studio in Soho for a steal -$300/month.” Oh, and she also posted video clips of his adulterous shenanigans on YouTube.

The website quickly registered more than 1 million hits, and the billboard zipped across blogs and news sites around the world. As word spread, however, it came out that identical billboards were currently decrying Steven not only elsewhere in New York, but also in Los Angeles and Chicago. Was Steven simply a well-traveled adulterer, or was something fishy going on?

E-detectives everywhere picked up the scent, and within days, Emily and her familial woes were exposed as a guerrilla campaign promoting the second season of Court TV’s Parco P.I. -a docudrama series revealing the exploits of a private investigator. the network’s in-house marketing department had devised the campaign in an effort to create a believable female character who might hire a private investigator like the one on the show. They wanted the “Scorned Woman” campaign to raise awareness about the program and hoped it would give the public a chance to play detective themselves.

With millions of hits registered and millions of “fwd: Check out this site!” emails speeding across the globe, the ads were an unmitigated success. As with all great guerrilla campaigns, the ruse was so clever that, rather than sulking about being duped, people reacted with a collective, “Nice one. You got us.” They continued to forward the site to their friends, and the show continued enjoying increased exposure.

8. Médecins du Monde

Not all guerrilla campaigns are about the money. In fact, one of the cleverest and most altruistic grassroots marketing efforts was pulled off by a group called Médecins du Monde — an international humanitarian organization devoted to providing care for vulnerable populations around the world.

In late 2005, the French branch of the organization staged an extremely effective campaign to draw attention to the plight of the homeless in Paris. Christened the “tent city” initiative, the group distributed some 300 “two-second tents” to destitute Parisians sleeping outdoors. Equipped with the rapid-deploying tents (which didn’t require poles or pins), the homeless gathered in small groups of eight to 10 along the Quai d’Austerlitz and the Canal Saint-Martin. The prefab shelter, which bore the Médecins du Monde logo, drew immediate attention to the number of homeless people in the area and provoked such incredible public outrage that the city was forced to act. A rare off-season government session was convened, and officials admitted that Paris’ homeless shelters were vastly overcrowded. They immediately announced the allocation of nearly $10 million for emergency housing.

9. Vodafone

While some guerrilla campaigns border on art — baffling consumers with their cocky blend of ingenuity and imagination — others take a more boorish approach. During the 2002 Bledisloe Cup rugby match, for example, two young men suddenly burst onto the field at a crucial moment and ran across the pitch wearing nothing but the Vodafone logo painted on their backs.

Admittedly, streaking at a rugby match isn’t exactly uncommon, but sponsored streaking very much is. Adding to the drama? The fact that the match was held in Telstra Stadium — Telstra being Vodafone’s competitor.

In the end, one of the streakers was fined $3,500 (AUS), and a maelstrom of criticism was directed at Vodafone. However, millions of TV viewers witnessed the event live, and it was covered everywhere from CNN to the front page of the The Times in London. For a company seeking to sell itself as young and brash, such backlash was a ringing endorsement.

10. Batman

(YouTube link)

These day, the movie-going public is almost habitually beguiled by blockbuster summer films. Zillions of people dutifully line up to see X-Men, or Spider-Man, or Superman, or whatever the opening weekend record-demolisher will be. But this wasn’t always the case. The summer “event film” phenomenon wes a lot to a little Tim Burton flick called Batman.

months before Burton’s Batman was ever released, it was already the biggest movie of 1989. Hats, shirts, posters, sunglasses, medallions, key chains -it was virtually impossible to purchase anything that didn’t have a yellow-and-black batwing insignia emblazoned on it. And all this for a film no one had even seen! Never before had a movie reaped such rewards from word-of-mouth buzz. In fact, the marketing of Batman established a bedrock principle of guerrilla marketing -that word on the street will put more butts in the seats than any slogan or jingle. But how did Batman‘s production team succeed in getting average Joes the world over to hype their film? It all began with an attempt to assuage a couple of comic book geeks.

When word leaked out that a Burton-directed Batman film was underway, many comic book traditionalists panicked. Michael Keaton, then known mostly as a comedic presence, was slated the play the Dark Knight, which caused Batman fans to fret that the film would be nothing more than a gussied-up redux of the campy, almost farcical Batman TV series. To quell fears, the heavyweight production tandem of Peter Guber and Jon peters (Flashdance, The Color Purple, Rain Man) quickly cobbled together a teaser trailer to demonstrate the new film’s dedication to a dark, comic book style Batman. It went out to theaters nationwide and, before long, bedazzled fans everywhere were buying tickets to other movies, where they’d watch the Batman trailer and then head for the bat-exits. McDonald’s got on board offering bat-themed kid’s meals; Coke put out special cans; and there was even a tie-in novel in the works.

When the actual movie finally arrived, it premiered on more than 2,000 screens nationwide and laid waste to all existing opening weekend records. Although it has since been displaced by its descendants, Batman made more than $40 million in its first weekend (a record at that time), more than $100 million in its first ten days, and more than $410 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run. It was the biggest earner of the year and remains one of the top-50 highest-grossing movies in American history. Yet all of that still pales in comparison to the merchandising, which made an additional $750 million.

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The article above, written by Chris Connolly, is from the July-August 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today!

(YouTube Link)

All of the games in the Katamari Damacy series have been strange to say the least, so I guess Namco Bandai figured “why not make a commercial as strange as our game?” Well, they have definitely succeeded with this billiards inspired promo, which features a pool shark slowly transforming into the Prince of the Cosmos.

–via Destructoid

Brian Menze designed these awesome posters, complete with wasteland wear and tear, and you don’t have to trek across the radiated desert to get your hands on one.

Link –via Super Punch

As an attorney trying to use a billboard to attract new clients, it’s probably best to show the client why they should hire you, not how incompetent, insane or downright creepy you are. These guys and gals aim to show the entire city why their services should be avoided at all cost.

Link

The advertising team behind Old Spice deodorant are continuing with their hilarious, tongue-in-cheek campaign by releasing a limited edition deodorant holding bear statue for the 2011 holiday season. So, if you’re worried about someone breaking in and stealing your deodorant, this guy and his toothy grin have got you covered.

Link

The Cleveland AAF (American Advertising Federation) challenged ad agencies to a competition to make a castle of canned goods. The object was to draw attention to the needs of local food banks. The canned goods used would later go to the Cleveland Foodbank, along with a donation from the Cleveland AAF. Melamed Riley used nearly 400 cans and built a facsimile of their local White Castle hamburger outlet and named it “Crave-A-Lot.” It has lights and even a drive-through! Their castle won first place. Link -Thanks, Rachel!

This is what advertising would look like if we lived in the fantasy worlds we enjoy vicariously through video games. Products would be marketed towards adventurers and heroes, and the magical would be mundane as ad agencies try to increase sales.

My faves are the ads for hair care products featuring Final Fantasy characters and anime girls with rainbow colored hair. I guess they weren’t born with pink hair?!

Link

Sure you might not need a tiny paper chair, but it sure is a lot more memorable than a tiny flat piece of paper. Oddee has a great selection of memorable business cards and while I love the chair idea, the breast augmentation one is certainly appropriate for a plastic surgeon’s potential market.

Link

This video is an ad for the Korean chain Mr. Pizza. Viewers said this must be a product of a US agency, as Korean advertising is rarely humorous or self-deprecating. It seems they are right. Link -via Metafilter

Mr. Schrom has the eyeglasses of an architect and the relaxed, contented air of a man highly entertained by his job. On this day, he is filming for a national chain — one that also requested anonymity — capturing what he calls “flavor cues.” In one shot, a stagehand pours chocolate syrup over a sheet of caramel. (You can almost hear a voiceover purring, “Chocolate.”) In another, cream bubbles up in a cup of coffee. In real time, these moments barely register. In slow-motion playbacks, with a digital camera that shoots up to 1,600 frames a second, the images are almost erotic. Which is no accident.

“You’re using the same part of your brain — porn, food,” Mr. Schrom says during a break. “It’s going in the same section; it’s that visual cortex that connects to your most basic senses. What we’re trying to do is be the modern-day Pavlovs and ring your bell with these images.”

He has several food stylists who work in a huge kitchen next to his set. They start with the very same food and recipes used in the restaurants and stores.

In part, this is a truth-in-advertising issue. Everyone knows that in 1970, the Federal Trade Commission settled a complaint against the Campbell Soup Company after its ad agency slipped marbles into a bowl in ads featuring its vegetable soup, apparently to force more veggies to the surface. That put a scare into the industry that endures to this day.

Anything that flatters the food, of course, is fair game, and that includes gimmicks you’re unlikely to find in a fridge. Glue is used to keep spaghetti on forks and pizzas in place. The ice in a beverage might be made of acrylic and cost $500 a cube. The frost coming off a beer could be a silicone gel, mixed with powder and water.

The New York Times look at some of those techniques, and the people who make a living using them. Link -via Metafilter

The daily commute got a lot more interesting recently when life sized lightsaber hand rails that actually light up were installed in Tokyo trains to promote the Star Wars: The Complete Saga DVD release.

If they’d been installed in trains in America’s major cities, they would have been summarily ripped off and sold on craigslist Ebay, so I doubt we’ll see a promotion as cool as this in the U.S. any time soon. Head over to the link to see what Japanese commuters thought of this bold promotional gimmick.

Link -via DesignTaxi

To promote their Prohibition Era show Boardwalk Empire, HBO has brought some vintage trains back to select subway routes in NYC. If you’re in the Big Apple in the month of September and find yourself in need of a ride, try to check out the express 2/3 track in Manhattan from 12 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Laughing Squid writer Scott Beale just happened across one on the inaugural weekend and took the above video. Vintage features include rattan seats, ceiling fans (!) and drop sash windows. Pretty sweet.

Link via Laughing Squid

We’ve all heard a marketing campaign at some point and thought, “that is just stupid,” but most bad advertising strategies just result in a few less sales than a successful campaign would have brought in. Sometimes though, a company will run a campaign that’s so idiotic that the company ends up losing thousands, if not millions of dollars. Take, for example, the Silo marketing campaign that said customers could get a new stereo for only “299 bananas.” When customers started actually showing up with bundles of bananas, the store had no choice but to give them stereos in exchange for fruit.

The saddest part? Silo couldn’t even get rid of the bananas (they had thousands of them sitting there, presumably attracting fruit flies), as the local zoos stopped taking them and the food bank didn’t take perishables.

Link

What do you guys think? Is this a realistic request or just plain over dramatic?

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Advertising company Ogilvy & Mather put together a campaign for the plastic model company Tamiya featuring kits that you can use to illustrate your favorite conspiracy theory. This one is for the faked moon landing; others have to do with Roswell, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and the Kennedy assassination. Link

Creating eye candy for visual ad campaigns generally means using illustration to create something people will remember. Computer generated imagery has dramatically changed the design industry, and creative studio Serial Cut aims to show the world just how cool 3d design can be. With designs ranging from simplistic to absurd, most of which boast an impressively realistic look and shine, it’s no wonder they’re the talk of the town. Follow the link to see more slick cgi artworks by Serial Cut.

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Yes, it’s a bowling ball. It just looks like the head of a zombie! Artist Oliver Paass painted a set of these balls that were then placed in German bowling alleys to advertise a TV channel specializing in horror films. Link -via @johncfarrier

In the 1980s, British Rail tried to convince potential passengers that they were making significant improvements to their service with the slogan, “We are getting there.” Passenger experience suggested otherwise, and the much-ridiculed slogan proved short-lived. Ford’s “Quality is Job 1″ met a similar demise around the same time. There is nothing wrong with slogans acknowledging weakness and being aspirational, but they do have to pass the test of experience. Avis’ current slogan, “We try harder,” was originally coined in 1962, as “We’re No. 2. We Try Harder.” Positive customer experience ratified the claim and helped Avis achieve significant sales growth.

Included with the article is a gallery of big advertisers and their slogan histories. Link -via mental_floss

We’re seen plenty of stop motion videos on Neatorama before, but one constructed entirely on a fingernail is definitely a first. Kia had the ad created for its Picanto model, which is, of course, small. The video took 1,200 bottles of nail polish, 900 fingernails, two hours of painting per nail and 25 days and nights to create.

Link via AdWeek

If you’re interested in how Volkswagen Canada made this gorgeous ad, you can get a behind-the-scenes look here.

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There’s a lot of green activity happening in this Coca-Cola billboard in the Philippines. The cola giant partnered with the World Wide Fund for Nature to create a 60×60 ft. billboard made of 3,600 Fukien tea plants, a breed excellent at absorbing air pollutants. The pots the tea plants sit in are made of recycled Coca-Cola bottles, the potting mix within is made of industrial by-products and organic fertilizers, and a drip irrigation system was installed to properly hydrate the plants.

I guess I can feel a little bit better about my caffeine habit now.

Link via AdFreak

The objective, says Olwell, is to see if advertising can make brown capuchins change their behaviour. The team will create two brands of food – the team is considering making two colours of jello – specifically targeted at brown capuchins, one supported by an ad campaign and the other not.

How do you advertise to monkeys? Easy: create a billboard campaign that hangs outside the monkeys’ enclosure.

“The foods will be novel to them and are equally delicious,” Olwell says. Brand A will be advertised and brand B will not. After a period of exposure to the campaign, the monkeys will be offered a choice of both brands.

Santos plans to kick off the experimental campaign in the coming weeks. “If they tend toward one and not the other we’ll be witnessing preference shifting due to our advertising,” Olwell says.

But what kind of advertising might a capuchin–without language, pop culture, or an appreciation for human aesthetics–find appealing? The answer is simple, if wholly unrelated to the food in question:

One billboard shows a graphic shot of a female monkey with her genitals exposed, alongside the brand A logo. The other shows the alpha male of the capuchin troop associated with brand A.

Olwell expects brand A to be the capuchins’ favoured product. “Monkeys have been shown in previous studies to really love photographs of alpha males and shots of genitals, and we think this will drive their purchasing habits.”

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To promote their Fusion ProGlide razors, Gillette asked their Facebook fans to help them make this giant, painted version of tennis star Roger Federer. After his likeness was painted on the grass, foam was sprayed on it to simulate shaving cream. Then, of course, they shaved him.

Link via AdFreak

Remember those ads actress Melissa Leo did in the weeks leading up to the Oscars asking members of the Academy to consider her for the little gold man? Well, it’s back – but this time it’s Pee-Wee Herman preening by a pool in a faux-fur coat. The pitch-perfect spoof is a little reminder that alter ego Paul Reubens’ Pee-Wee HBO special is up for an Emmy.

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My one-year-old likes to rip pages out of magazines and shove them in her mouth, and now, thanks to Volkswagen, she might actually get something edible the next time she does that. VW South Africa’s “Eat the Road” campaign places pages made of “glutinous rice flour, water, salt, propylene glycol, FD&C colour, glycerine” in publications like Auto Trader with the slogan “Eat the Road. Seriously, eat it.”

Have any brave souls out there given this a shot yet?

Link Via AdFreak

A Vancouver ad agency called Dare came up with this creative stunt to unveil the new Honda Civic in Canada. The vague idea is that the Honda Civic is as fun as toy cars, but I’d just like to know what those giant cereal bits are made out of, myself.

Link via AdFreak

This might make a massive traffic jam a little more tolerable. As part of their “Spread Happiness” mantra, Coke put up a big screen in Bogotá, Colombia, so stranded people could at least be entertained by a movie while they waited for the jam to clear up. Cars not in seeing or hearing distance of the screen could tune in to a local radio station to listen, similar to the way drive-in movies work now. But that’s not all – Coke also hired models to act as carhops, delivering free mini-Cokes (a new product – see, there’s the marketing tie-in) and movie theater fare such as hot dogs, nachos, candy and popcorn.

Link via Mashable

I love cupcakes and I like vodka as much as the next person. But I have no desire to mix the two. Apparently Cupcake Vodka feels differently, because they’ve recently come out with a sweet spirit in four flavors: Original, Frosting, Devil’s Food and Chiffon. Has the cupcake trend officially jumped the shark?

Link via Adfreak

Created by Brazilian ad agency Loducca, more than 600 balloons were used to create this clever little “book” that tells a story involving Slash and Ozzy Osbourne, among others. About 10 balloons were popped every second.

Link via the Des Moines Egotist

The US has Isaiah Mustafa; the rest of the world has this. It’s an ad for Old Spice Danger Zone that airs various other nations. Funny, yes, but I think America got the better end of the deal. -via The Daily What

This brought back memories for me. I’d circle all of the stuff I wanted in the tissue-thin mailers, shove them in my backpack so I could take them home to discuss with my mom, and then find them wadded up at the bottom of the pack three weeks after they had been due. There’s a wide assortment of companies represented in the linked post – you’re sure to find one that brings a little nostalgia to your day.

Link via GoFugYourself.

As advertising becomes an ever-bigger part of our television experience, advertising characters are becoming pop culture icons. Hero Builders is offering a limited edition line of action figures based on characters from commercials. From the left, the Allstate Insurance “Mayhem” Guy, Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World, and the Old Spice Guy. There are two versions of the Old Spice Guy, one for all ages, and an anatomically-correct version for adults only. All of them talk, too! Link -via AOL News

Goldsmith is not this man. Still, he has more in common with him than you do. A montage of highlights from the real life of Jonathan Goldsmith might include (had there been cameras present) footage of him rescuing a stranded climber on Mt. Whitney, saving a drowning girl in Malibu, sailing the high seas with his friend Fernando Lamas (the inspiration for his Interesting persona and, according to Goldsmith, “the greatest swordsman who ever lived in Hollywood”), and starting a successful network marketing business (“I was a hustler, a very good hustler”), which, for a while, anyway, enabled him to flee Hollywood for an estate in the Sierras. Among the outtakes might be glimpses of his stint as a waterless-car-wash entrepreneur. “I love the old philosophers,” he said. “I have a large library. I am not a die-hard sports fan. I love to cut wood.”

Goldsmith lives on his sailboat with his wife, who is also his agent. Read more about this interesting man who used to intercept Warren Beatty’s dates at the New Yorker. Link -via The Daily What

Anyone with a Facebook Account can create advertisements on Facebook. You could legitimately advertise your business or perhaps a waterproof blow dryer. I decided to use the feature to create ads for things that could really use more exposure like potatoes, VHS tapes, and Reddit. If your budget is under $30,000 you can post an ad for anything you want, as long as you meet the strict guidelines. Sorry everyone, “Images of unrealistic body changes, such as extreme weight loss or muscle gain, are not allowed.”

Then again, you have to admite they get your attention. I mean, I really want a cheesburger now! See all 30 fake ads at Urlesque. Link

I remember when a carton of cigarettes was considered a nice Christmas gift. After all, they were three or four dollars a carton! Flickr has tons of old ads like these that might bring back memories or put you in the holiday spirit or possibly horrify you. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(Image credit: Flickr user clotho98)

In your real life you get only one chance. Here you get many.

This interactive ad campaign by B-Reel and Lowe Brindfors for Save The Children shows you how different your life could be if you were born in a different place. Enter the site and connect via Facebook or enter your name and spin the wheel and you’ll discover your new life. Flickr, YouTube and Google Maps are some of tools that were used. It’s a real eye opener

Link – Via The Daily What

The man your man could smell like meets the most interesting man in the world. Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice Guy) posted a picture of his meeting with Jonathan Goldsmith, the Dos Equis beer guy. And somehow the space/time continuum remained intact. Link -via reddit

Foolproof advertising is when your entire building brags about your product -and it’s visible from far away. Still, it may tend to limit your customers when you sell the location. Mental_floss takes a look at ten such attention-grabbing buildings from this milk bottle ice cream stand to an 85-foot chest of drawers! Link

Sears has an entire advertising campaign built around zombies, complete with a zombie shopping website. Link -via Bits and Pieces

Chen Xiaomei claims she was unreasonably treated by the cinema’s owners and the distributors of the film she went to see, because she was not warned there would be 20 minutes of adverts prior to the screening of the main feature. She is demanding a full refund (35 yuan), an extra 35 yuan in compensation for emotional damages and a written apology, reports the Xinhua agency.

In addition, Xiaomei is calling for the Polybona International cinema in the northern city of Xian to publish the length of advertisements on its website, in the lobby or on its customer hotline. In total, they should be less than five minutes, she says.

The film was Aftershock, a big hit in China. Chen’s lawsuit has been accepted by the People’s Court in Xian. Link
-via Arbroath

Pomparkour is supposedly a new “sport” that is described as parkour with ladders. This ad for a sports drink is raising eyebrows because it has no warning that these are professional stunt people and this should never be tried at home. In fact, we get a glimpse of how they did it in another video.

(YouTube link)

Notice the safety ropes, which were apparently edited out of the finished ad. -via Metafilter

Older readers of Neatorama will remember an era when Burma-Shave signs entertained drivers on the nation’s highways (the complete text of all the jingles has been assembled at Burma-Shave.org.)

The company also posted two promotional offers on their signs; the first one (“Free offer! Free offer! / Rip a fender off your car / mail it in / for a half-pound jar / Burma-Shave”) resulted in some actual fenders being mailed to the company, which made good on its promise.  The second promotion (in the title of this post) stimulated the imagination of Arliss French in Appleton, Wisconsin.

French managed the town’s Red Owl supermarket and offered to pay customers 15 cents for every empty Burma Shave jar they brought in. He ran a full-page ad in the paper reading, “Send Frenchie to Mars.” As the empties accumulated in his store, he telegraphed the company, “Please advise where to ship the jars.”

The folks at Burma Shave scrambled to avoid embarrassment. Thinking he would decline, they offered to send him to the village of Moers, Germany (which they insisted was pronounced, “Mars”) if he would wear a space suit for the trip. He agreed.

French and his wife departed New York at the company’s expense on Dec. 2, 1958. He wore a football helmet and a silver costume emblazoned with the Red Owl logo. When he arrived in Moers two days later, all 78 residents turned out to greet him.

Link.  Photo: Wisconsin Historical Society.