Hasta La Creative!

If you’re the Toyota RAV4, a vehicle specifically designed for outdoor types, how do you reach these outdoor types when they aren’t likely to be sitting on their ass in front of a computer screen surfing the internet? You take the brand’s website to the great outdoors where these outdoor adventurers are hiking, biking, jogging surfing and doing basically anything that gets them off their ass.

Working with Hello Computer, Toyota South Africa took its RAV4 website outdoors. Quite literally, they recreated the website on a 1.8 kilometer bike track on which bikers could explore and interact with the website as well as send tweets all while riding their bike and without using a computer.rav4_outdoor

It’s a masterful recreation and vivid reminder that there’s much more to life that spending it on the internet.

OK this is cool and all but, really? Please! On the other hand, we suppose there are plenty of people out there, as seen in the video, who are more than happy to be wowed by a guy who levitates alongside a London bus crossing the Westminster Bridge.

The stunt, created last month by Arnold KLP for Pepsi Max, involved English magician Dynamo affixing himself to the side of a London bus so that he appears to levitate alongside the bus as it crosses the bridge.

While the ad world hasn’t discussed this much, there has been plenty of breathless “secret revealed” coverage in English media. There’s even a video which digs deep into the mechanical aspects of the stunt.

Of course the bus and everyone on it was in on the stunt and his rising up and lowering down were shot separately from the footage of agog Londoners recording the event on their digital devices.

Sure, the stunt is cool and sure, Pepsi gleaned plenty of publicity. But, much like sci-fi movies which have had to become ever more logically realistic for increasingly jaded and more enlightened consumers, stunts like this are far less likely to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes for very long.

If you saw a phone laying on the ground, would you pick it up and see if you could find out who the owner was and return it? That was the premise behind a recent stunt BBDO Shanghai crafted for city guide Time Out Shanghai. Called Stolen Phone Tour, those who picked up the phone were treated to a text message-guided tour of some of Shanghai’s hidden gems, all captured hidden camera-style.

These stunts are awesome. Stunts that entice people to do things they normally wouldn’t. Stunts that amuse people. Stunts that hijack people’s online lives. Even stunts that turn people into criminals. Sadly, most of these great stunt never occur in America because in America we simply do not know how to have fun. We do, however, know how to lob lawsuits at one another like two three-year-olds throwing sand at each other in a sandbox.

Slow motion makes everything look better, right? Especially hundreds of woman getting powder paint tossed all over them while they participate in the Amsterdam Color Run. Normally, every last square inch of clothing is obliterated by the paint making and an all logos invisible. But Holland-based paint brand Flexa came up with an interesting idea to make their logo stand out despite the onslaught of paint.

The brand created T-shirts that were fabricated in such a manner that that paint would not adhere to the logo portion of the T-shirt thereby making their logo stand out amidst all the paint. Quite ingenious, actually.

The impracticalities of this particular approach to delivering pizza are countless but as a publicity stunt, this is one of the better ones. Domino’s in the UK, working with T and Biscuits and helicam company AeroSight, created the DomiCopter, an 8-blade drone design to deliver pizza aerially.

In a video posted Monday, we see a couple of pizzas being flown a great distance to a home at which a person takes delivery. As one YouTube commenter points out, impracticalities are many not the least of which includes the fact you can’t get near these things to take delivery unless you want to risk serious injury.

This will also never happen in America as the Federal Aviation Administration expressly forbids unmanned aircraft from being used for commercial purposes. Not to mention a statement from Domino’s U.S. spokesman Tim McIntyre who said, “this has nothing to do with us in the U.S. and we have no plans to pursue this idea.”

While the American side of the brand is distancing itself, Domino’s UK is touting the offering in a press release and notes a Domino’s Flight Academy could be established if the service…ahem…takes off.

Are stunts like this that will never see reality beneficial to the brand? Does the publicity sell more pizza? Or does it just result in, “Oh wow, that’s cool!”

Here’s something to spice up that mundane trip to the grocery store. To prove that Hellmann’s mayonaise goes with just about anything, Ogilvy Brazil created the Food Slot, a slot machine that doles out over 280 different recipes made with Hellman’s.

For each one of the random 280 combinations the machine gives the shoppers a collectible recipe and an actual sample sample made with the mayonnaise.

Apparently, four months of research and development were necessary to guarantee both a working system and quality food. Unilever’s chefs and the engineers and tech team of production company, Hungry Man Projects, worked together to create the machine.

Stealing an idea from Disney’s Hollywood Studios Fantasmic water show projection (or whomever did it before them), Coke created its own water show projection at Dublin’s Grand Canal dock last Friday to kick off their summer campaign.

People from around Ireland were prompted to share a coke with someone via Twitter and then have that converted to an aquatic message using a water projection.

As part of Coca-Cola’s largest summer campaign to date, the 20 meter high and 40 meter wide water projection touted the launch of Share a Coke in Ireland, a campaign where the brand’s ‘Coca-Cola’ script typography is replaced with the top 150 names in Ireland on 500ml bottles and sold in stores across the country.

Check out the video below.

This is a great idea. Glad transformed their ForceFlex trash bags into tents that could be used by campers at music festivals and other outdoor events. The aim, of course, was to create a really simple and excuse-free approach to litter control, a big deal and large outdoor events.

Miami-based agency Alma took the concept to SXSW and displayed the tents at the music festival and surrounding camp grounds. The case study video below captures the rave reviews.

Remember a few years ago when Guerilla was a big deal? Then Buzz and Word-of-Mouth were all the rage. Then Social Media. Now, it’s Content’s day in the sun.

Problem is, the sun is a blistering force that withers all memes and movements alike.

There’s enough content. Please stop.

— Reeder (@thatreeder) April 9, 2013

Mike Reeder, VP of Account Planning at Possible in Seattle has read, heard and seen enough already. Which is understandable when you see the enormity of the problem.

According to IBM:

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data.

Ergo, Reeder’s request to stop (the presses).

The post Content Overload Warning: Don’t Make Me Read This appeared first on AdPulp.

Marketing pranks come in all shapes and sizes. Some better than others. Most are innocuous and playful. But this stunt from German deodorant maker Nivea pushes past what most would consider acceptable limits. Of course, that doesn’t detract from the fact it’s an epically awesome stunt.

While travelers await flights and busses in terminal, actors secretly snap shots and use them in TV reports and newspaper stories. Tese reports and stories paint the picture of the unsuspecting traveler as a “wanted suspect” who is “armed and dangerous.” In addition, loudspeaker announcement are made within the terminal.

Naturally, craziness ensues. Watch the video. Over 4 million views since February 12.