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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
What makes a good advertising slogan? The Atlantic looks at how some slogans stay with us for decades while others flounder. It’s not always a matter of crowing about the quality of the product.
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
Comments Off 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.
If you’re interested in how Volkswagen Canada made this gorgeous ad, you can get a behind-the-scenes look here.
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.
Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner are both New York-based ad execs who attended a TED Talk in 2008 revealing the economic sense of capuchin monkeys. The pair teamed up with Laurie Santos, the Yale University primatologist who gave the TED talk, to develop an experiment that tests the effects of advertising on monkeys. The solution? Branded capuchin food.
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.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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
In the ad campaign for Dos Equis beer, 72-year-old Jonathon Goldsmith plays “the most interesting man in the world,” whose blood smells like cologne, and who sharks named a week after.
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
The folks at Urlesque have been busy making ads for Facebook. No, not to sell anything; these are just for laughs!
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
A woman in China has done what many of us would like to do. Chen Xiaomei, a lawyer in Xian, Shaanxi province is suing a movie theater and a film distributor for wasting her time by playing twenty minutes of advertising before a film.
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.
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.
Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice spokesman, has been busy at YouTube today responding to messages on reddit, Digg, and Twitter. His response to Matthew Sinclair made me laugh out loud! You can see more personal messages at the Old Spice YouTube channel. Link
Advertisements painted by hand directly onto the brickwork of buildings were once a common sight in cities, towns and villages across the country. The rise of printed billboards soon led to their decline but many still survive, often faded, clinging to the walls that host them. These ‘Ghostsigns’ provide a window into the past and evidence of the craftsmanship that once went into their production. However, they are disappearing fast, often due to weathering but also as a result of property development and demolition.
This U.K. archive originated by Sam Roberts features 600 signs showcasing old time products hand painted by craftsmen. They don’t make them like that any more.
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