Anti-Littering Campaign Uses DNA to Identify Litterbugs and Put Their Faces on Ads

Thinking of littering in Hong Kong? You could soon be a poster child for the problem.

A remarkable campaign from Ogilvy & Mather takes DNA from trash on the ground and uses Snapshot DNA phenotyping to generate physical likenesses of the litterers, who then end up on outdoor ads telling people not to litter. (DNA phenotyping is the process of predicting a person’s physical appearance based on their DNA alone.)

The legalities of labeling people as litterers this way must be awfully complicated, and it’s not entirely clear how close the images might be to the real people. But the campaign is certainly fascinating in a CSI kind of way.

“This campaign is one of a kind,” says Reed Collins, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Hong Kong. “It’s interactive. It’s innovative. It’s our own science experiment that we’re using to create social change. Litter is such a major problem in Hong Kong, and thanks to technology, we can now put a face to this anonymous crime and get people to think twice about littering.”

Read more at Ecozine. Via Laughing Squid.



Tiny Billboards for Ant-Man Are Popping Up That Ants Are Really Going to Love

There’s something irresistible about tiny billboards.

We’ve seen them before, of course—for example, there was this LittleBigPlanet campaign from 2008 and this Lego stunt from 2012. And now, the upcoming superhero film Ant-Man is joining the parade, with ant-size billboards popping up in several Australian cities ahead of that country’s July 16 release of the movie.

There’s even an ant-size bus shelter with an ad on the side.

Check out more images below, via Screencrush and This Is Film.

For its next stunt, the studio might want to enlist the World Wildlife Fund’s horde of leaf-cutter ants to parade the film’s tagline around.



3 New Businesses in Omaha Are Making People Cringe, but They're Doing Good Work

Three strange storefronts have popped up in Omaha recently that you wouldn’t to enter—but they’re part of a PSA campaign telling residents that, unfortunately, sexually transmitted diseases are open for business in the city.

Omaha has had a shockingly high STD rate for over a decade, and it’s only getting worse. Cases of gonorrhea and syphilis are up by 15 and 23 percent, and Chlamydia reached an all-time high in 2014 with 3,390 reported cases.

The storefront campaign by Serve Marketing, timed to National STD Awareness Month, aims to get people talking about the crisis—and give them information to get checked. The campaign includes TV, outdoor, radio, social and digital banners for the fake businesses.

“This has been a closeted issue in Omaha for decades,” says Serve creative director Gary Mueller. “If we want to ultimately lower the STD rate and change people’s behaviors, we need to be bolder and more aggressive about getting people to talk about the issue. We think this will get people talking.”

The storefronts:

The outdoor ads:

The commercials:

CREDITS
Agency: Serve Marketing
Creative Director: Gary Mueller
Art Director: Matt Herrmann/Carsyn Taylor
Copywriter: Nick Pipitone
Account Executive: Heidi Sterricker
Social Media: Alex Boeder + Lauren Wagner
Producer: Jessica Farrell
Director Of Photography: Quinn Hester
Editors/GFX: Special Entertainment LLC (Bobby Ciraldo + Andrew Swant)
Assistant Editor: Jon Phillips
Audio: Peter Batchhelder
Production Manager: Rob Birdsall



Fort Lauderdale Really Heated Up Bus Shelters in Boston and Chicago This Winter

At the height of winter, a goofy costumed dude called “Mr. Sunny,” the official mascot of the Fort Lauderdale tourism, hung out at Pompano Beach and bantered in real time via satellite with people at snow-streaked bus shelters in Boston and Chicago as part of the “Hello Sunny” campaign engineered by Starmark.

The shelters were decked out like beach cabanas, complete with heat lamps, which probably saved the bikini-clad models on hand from hypothermia.

“The brutal wrath of Mother Nature—record-breaking snowfall and arctic temperatures in both Chicago and Boston—motivated us to deliver a little warmth and sunshine to our northern friends,” says Starmark CMO Lisa Hoffman-Linero. “It’s all about a positive brand experience. At the right, sometimes unexpected, place. At exactly the right time.”

This is the latest in a series of bus-shelter advertising stunts, and they’ve really run the gamut. PepsiMAX staged an alien apocalypse, Duracell encouraged commuters to join hands to activate battery-powered heaters, and a charity in Norway learned if people would lend their coats to a freezing child.

Those efforts were innovative and memorable. Alas—and here comes the pun—Mr. Sunny leaves me a little cold. He’s like a dimmer version of Jimmy Dean’s sun. (Now that dude’s chill!) Still, catching some rays inside a bus shelter beats pouring rain any day.



Pentagram Designs Climate Change Posters Made Completely Out of Emojis

Emojis are everywhere these days—even printed on posters at an environmental rally.

The popular social-media symbols found their way onto protest signs (made of what isn’t clear) at the recent People’s Climate March in London, thanks to design firm Pentagram, which created and handed out the placards.

Each featured mini emoji poems like “[Panda Bear] … [Hour Glass] … [Skull]” because, you know, pandas are endangered. Another triad: “[Tractor] … [Tree] … [Horrified Face]” (with the tree tipped to its side), translating roughly to “deforestation is bad.” It wasn’t all fire and brimstone, with sunnier odes to bicycling and recycling.

They look great—clear and clever, if perhaps a touch glib given the subject matter. But as Pentagram suggests on its blog, they’re certainly an effective antidote to “scrawled angst.” Nobody needs another badly handwritten rant.

It’s particularly nice that, unlike the proprietary emoticons (or even more complex visual systems) that brands have been conjuring of late, these are essentially all the standard emojis you might find on your iPhone (There are some minor modifications—like a red X through a blue car, and the fact that the aforementioned tree alteration). That means they’re more recognizable, and at least theoretically, more tapped into the zeitgeist.

On the other hand, out of context, they might tell a different story. Text your friend a panda turning into the grim reaper out of the blue, and he or she may think you’re in serious need of a hug.



The Trick Copy on These Clever Ads Shows Another Side to Homelessness

Here’s a clever outdoor campaign from Publicis London for the homelessness charity Depaul that manages to tell two different stories with the same copy.

The ads are being placed on corners, with text on each side. If you read only the left side, the copy is all about the negative ideas people have about giving up a spare room to a homeless youth. But reading them in full, the ads actually argue for the benefits of volunteering.

“There’s another side to the story,” says the tagline.

Click the images below to enlarge.

Conceptually, the campaign is quite similar to BBDO New York’s award-winning ads for BBC America back in 2007. Those ads, also placed around corners, showed two sides of the same photo, with the tagline: “See both sides of the story.”

The clever use of text differentiates this new effort, though it will always be likened to the BBC work. See more from the campaign, plus credits, below.

CREDITS
Client: Depaul
Agency: Publicis London
Executive Creative Director: Andy Bird
Creative Director: Paul Mason
Art Director: Dan Kennard
Copywriter: Ben Smith
Head of Art and Design: Andy Breese
Designer: Dave Stansfield
Photographer: Mark Wesley
Account Manager: Tom Froggett
Head of Operations: Debbie Burke
Agency Producers: Steve McFarlane, Ed Page, Greg Collier
Art Buyers: Sarah Clifford, Claire Lillis



Mexico Tourism Board Made Billboards Out of Snow in Chicago This Spring

There was enough snow this winter, and spring, that agencies started making ads with it.

At least, Lapiz did in this fun campaign for the Mexico Tourism Board. After an unexpected springtime snowstorm in Chicago, the agency called on local street artist NosE Lanariz to make some outdoor ads from the stuff—as you can see in the video below.

The campaign hit three locations in the city, with headlines like, “Take Your Clothes Off”, “Come Melt Under The Sun” and “Beaches With Sand This White.”

CREDITS
Client: Mexico Tourism Board
Campaign: Snow Graffiti
Agency: Lapiz
CCO: Laurence Klinger
Executive Creative Director: Fabio Seidl
Creative Director: Carlos ‘Ia’ Murad
Associate Creative Director: Flavio Pina
Copywriter: Eduardo Vea Keating
Producers: Bobby Gruenberg and Aldo Gagliardi
General Manager: Gustavo Razzetti
Account team: Ernesto Adduci, Pablo Sabouret
Director and Editor (video): Ben Derico
Editor: Jonny Arcila
Finish house: Optimus
Artist: NosE Lanariz



Uber Sets Up a Curbside Breathalyzer, Drives You Home If You're Over the Limit

Drunk-driving messaging is a naturally fruitful creative area for any taxi or car-service company, and Uber has produced a very cool campaign around the topic with this curbside breathalyzer in Toronto.

A sidewalk kiosk—dreamed up by agency Rethink and built by design and fabrication studio Stacklab—functions as a typical breathalyzer. You blow through a disposable straw for six seconds, and it analyzes the alcohol content in your breath. If you’re over the legal limit, it offers you a ride home. (The people seen in the video got free rides, in fact.)

“We want to ensure a safe, reliable and affordable ride home is available to everybody, especially late at night when drunk driving is most common and can be avoided,” says Ian Black, General Manager of Uber Toronto.



Cooper Hewitt Reopens on the Upper East Side With Ads Tweaking Other NYC Neighborhoods

There’s always something fun about site-specific ads in New York City. The richness of every neighborhood makes the place especially promising for that kind of outdoor work, as 72andSunny’s work last year reminded us.

Now, Wieden + Kennedy in New York has done a fun campaign for the recently reopened Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum that points the rest the city—perhaps counterintuitively—to the Upper East Side for world-class design.

“When the thrill of fashion models finally wears off, we’ve got this enameled porcelain collection you should probably come see,” say ads going up in the Meatpacking District, for example. “There are no croissant-doughnut hybrids in our design museum, but we do have things that were really popular once, and then the trend completely moved on, and then some other new things came along and took its place,” say the ads in SoHo.

The ads will appear on the Upper West Side, Lower East Side, Chelsea, Meatpacking District, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, the West Village, SoHo and the Upper East Side itself (where ads take a shot at the Guggenheim).

“Put simply: Leave your neighborhood and come to ours!” says David Kolbusz, executive creative director at W+K New York.

Check out some of the creative below. Click the images to enlarge.



Jaguar Attempts an Insane High-Wire Crossing of the River Thames

Did Jaguar’s high-wire stunt above the River Thames in London make a big splash? You’ll have to watch and find out.

Suspended about 60 meters above the murky depths at Canary Wharf, Jim Dowdall, a veteran Hollywood stunt coordinator, attempted to drive the new Jag XF sedan roughly 787 meters across a pair of tiny carbon-fiber cables, each about the width of a human thumb.

The car was fitted with specially grooved wheels and a safety “keel” on its undercarriage for Tuesday’s crossing, which was, naturally, broadcast live online. According to Jaguar, the stunt was designed to promote the car’s lighter, mainly aluminum frame. It aimed to set a record for the world’s longest high-wire drive.

So, did the Volvo Trucks-style stunt make a big splash in terms of generating excitement for the British automaker?

The answer there is a resounding … sort of. I guess. The escapade certainly generated more media attention than your typical new-car launch. Still, the 15-minute YouTube chronicle has tallied just over 70,000 views on Jaguar’s main YouTube page—and 16,000 more on Jaguar USA. Those stats aren’t exactly meager, but still underwhelming.

The enterprise is intriguing in a WTF? sort of way, but there’s an odd, unappealing coldness here, and the dreary urban backdrop and lack of spectators are a big part of the problem. It’s as if Dowdall performed his high-wire act for the silent steel towers of London’s financial district. Images of the white Jag suspended above the grey water are almost poetic in a bleak, Ballardian way. They convey a sad sense of loneliness and modernity, testimonies to the triumph of the car, skyscraper and all-seeing media eye.

Speaking of the media, video host Gabby Logan works hard to generate a sense of excitement, but her rah-rah “reporting” comes off sounding insincere. Everything feels a tad forced, unfocused and under-explained. Beyond publicity, what the point, exactly? Even Dowdall seems nonplussed and almost dismissive of the event.

“I’ve been very lucky to be able to drive cars in some very silly situations,” says the veteran driver, who has performed stunts in Bond, Bourne and Indiana Jones films. “That’s probably one of the silliest.”



This Audi Emits Nothing but Water Vapor, So Its Billboards Are Made of That Too

Innovative products deserve advertising that itself is innovative—embodying the promise of what’s for sale in the way it’s being sold. This Audi campaign from German agency thjnk does a nice job of that.

The Audi A7 Sportback h-tron uses a fuel cell coupled with a hybrid battery and additional electric motor in the rear. Notably, nothing but water vapor comes out of the exhaust. And so, Audi created billboards that similarly leave nothing behind.

It’s clever and intriguingly produced, though it’s not quite clear how the effect in achieved. In any case, it’s perhaps most reminiscent of 2012’s “Invisible Car” campaign for Mercedes, which also promoted zero-emission fuel-cell technology—by draping the car with an LED “costume” that made it look invisible.

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Facebook Gets Even Friendlier With Striking Outdoor Ads and Mosaic of Digital Content

A few weeks ago, we posted Facebook’s great new commercials about friendship, directed by Mike Mills. But there’s a lot more where that came from—in various other media.

The “Friends” campaign also includes Facebook and Instagram ads, outdoor billboards, print ads and off-Facebook digital advertising to connect with people at different points in their day, both on and off the social network itself.

AdFreak’s exclusive look at the billboards shows how striking they are—simple and very nicely art directed, with great snapshots of friends framed by the word itself, next to a check mark. A small Facebook icon is the only branding, again showing the brand’s newfound confidence as an advertiser. (It’s an iconic brand by now, and is finally acting like one.)

The digital experience is interesting, too. The site, friends.fb.co, including all sorts of clickable content—leading to quirky little videos and photos, all of which are sharable on Facebook with a click.

Facebook will also be on hand at SXSW Interactive this weekend, partnering with Turner Sports to broadcast the Selection Sunday celebration at Turner’s live NCAA March Madness Bracket Lounge. The Facebook Live show will be streamed on the NCAA March Madness Facebook page at 6 p.m. CT on Sunday.

See more of the Facebook billboards below.



Clever Outdoor Ads List Cost of Their Own Square Footage If They Were Homes in England

Several hard-hitting outdoor campaigns have protested soaring home prices in the U.K. lately, including these bleak billboards narrated by people who’ve been priced out of London. Now, AMV BBDO has unleashed a clever campaign on behalf of Homes for Britain, which advocates pressuring politicians to help build homes people can afford.

The centerpiece is an outdoor campaign in the Westminster subway station. The ads call attention to their own square footage and calculate how much that amount of space would cost if it were part of a home in London, Edinburgh, Bath, York or Oxford.

In addition to wall posters, there are more intriguing placements, including ads on escalator steps (the area of a single step would cost £6,111 in central London) and inside train cars (a single car would cost £618,375 in Westminster and £302,182 on average in London).

Check out more ads below. Via The Inspiration Room.



The Bruised Woman on This Billboard Heals Faster as More Passersby Look at Her

Here’s an interesting use of facial recognition technology on billboards—to do something a little more inspiring than target you with the right products.

To coincide with International Women’s Day this Sunday, London agency WCRS teamed up with Women’s Aid and Ocean Outdoor to create some remarkable digital billboards about domestic violence. They use facial recognition to recognize when people are paying attention to the image of a bruised woman. As more people look at the ad, her bruises and cuts heal faster, communicating the benefit of not turning a blind eye to the problem.

The campaign premiers today at Canary Wharf, but it’s actually already won an Interactive Award in Ocean’s annual Art of Outdoor competition 2014. The video below is the case study made for those awards—with a different image, as you can see.

The new images are mockups of how the current campaign will look.

More images and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Women’s Aid
Agency: WCRS
Creative Directors: Ross Neil
Creative Technology: Dino Burbidge
Creatives: Mike Whiteside and Ben Robinson
Agency Producer: Sam Child
Account Handling: Torie Wilkinson and Katherine Morris
Planning: Stuart Williams
Photography: Rankin
Media: Ocean Outdoor
Posthouse: Smoke & Mirrors



Oreo Gets 10 Artists to Produce Beautifully Dreamy Outdoor Illustrations

The “Play with OREO” campaign, which launched in January, continues this month with a lovely new set of out-of-home ads featuring groovy illustrations from 10 artists.

The artists were given words to play off—functional ones like “dunk” and “twist,” as well as more emotional ones like “dream” and “wonder”—and asked to come up with a scene that brings those words to life. The only requirement was that the scene include a character with the Oreo cookie wafer as the face/head.

The ads will run outdoors in New York City, Los Angeles and Indianapolis and shared through Oreo social channels starting this week. The featured artists are Shotopop, Jeff Soto, Ryan Todd, McBess, Andrew Bannecker, Geoff McFetridge, Andy Rementer, Alex Trochut, Craig and Karl and Brosmind.

See all the ads below, along with credits.

CREDITS
Client: OREO, Mondelez International, Inc.
Advertising: The Martin Agency
Public Relations: Weber Shandwick
Social: 360i
Media Buying: MediaVest

Client Credits:
VP, Global Biscuit Category Jason Levine
VP, Brand Strategy and Communications Jill Baskin
Senior Director, OREO & Chips Ahoy! Janda Lukin
OREO Global Brand Manager Flavio Ackel
OREO Sr Associate Brand Manager Kerri McCarthy

Agency Credits:
Chief Creative Officer: Joe Alexander
SVP/Executive Creative Director: Jorge Calleja
VP/Creative Director: Magnus Hierta
VP/Creative Director David Muhlenfeld
VP/Associate Creative Director/Design: Chris Peel
Associate Designer: William Godwin
Senior Studio Artist: Matt Wieringo
VP/Group Planning Director: John Gibson
Strategic Planner: Gigi Jordan
EVP/Worldwide Acct Director: John Campbell
SVP/Group Acct Director: Darren Foot
VP/Account Director: Leslie Hodgin
VP/Account Director: Britta Dougherty
Account Supervisor: Molly Holmes
Account Coordinator: James Salusky
EVP/Managing Director Production & Development: Steve Humble
Senior Art Producer: Anya Mills
Senior Print Producer: Paul Martin
Junior Print Producer: Jamie Parker
Group Project Management Supervisor: Giao Roever
Business Affairs Supervisor: Juanita McInteer

Illustrators:

—Bernstein Andruilli
Shotopop
Jeff Soto
Ryan Todd
McBess
Andrew Bannecker
Geoff McFetridge

—Big Active
Andy Rementer

—Levine Leavitt
Alex Trochut
Craig and Karl
Brosmind



Classic Disney Characters Shadow Shoppers in This Delightful Mall Stunt

What would you do if you were walking through a well-lit shopping mall and your shadow suddenly turned into Donald Duck? It might be enough to strike panic into the heart of any reasonable person. Is it time to go on a diet? When did things get so wildly out of hand? Is this an acid flashback?

But a new reality-style video from Disney—promoting Disney Parks—finds a string of shoppers seeming to have a pretty great time when silhouettes of the company’s classic cartoon characters start stalking and mimicking them from behind a backlit set of doors.

It’s very charming, especially for the kids in the audience, and the young-at-heart—because who doesn’t want to be Buzz Lightyear?

At least some of the reactions are likely staged, but it almost doesn’t matter—they’re entertaining either way. One very serious businessman balks then smiles at the notion that he’s “getting shadowed by a Goofy.” One sane woman shakes her head no, backing away, terrified, saying “I’m good,” when Snow White’s evil queen offers up a poisoned apple.

But the stunt is perhaps most delightful when a grown man tries to catch a shadow football thrown by a shadow dog. (It’s least convincingly spontaneous when Minnie Mouse crushes a teenager in a dance-off.)

Regardless, it’s a testament to the iconic status of the characters (most of the silhouettes are proper, easy-to-recognize brands in their own right). And it certainly gets across the idea of good, family-friendly fun. As much as you might want to, hating Disney characters (or at least, hating all Disney characters) is like hating puppies and sunshine—you just can’t do it.



Jose Cuervo Mixes a Margarita in Space and Parachutes It Back to Earth

Brands are obsessed with space, getting to space, and anything that’s been to space. This week, it was Jose Cuervo’s chance to boldly go where no tequila brand had gone before—and hopefully make it home safely.

In honor of National Margarita Day last Sunday, Cuervo and its agency, McCann New York—using aerospace technology and GPS tracking—launched a container of margarita ingredients heavenward, hoping to mix a cocktail in space and parachute it back to Earth.

See how that went in this video:

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The agency teamed up with independent space program JP Aerospace, along with scientists who led the Phoenix Mission to Mars, to build and launch the spacecraft. The launch site was Pinal County Park, about an hour north of Tucson, Ariz.

Severe buffeting of winds at high altitude shook the margarita, and the extreme cold froze it. When the capsule reached about 100,000 feet into space, the weather balloons shattered and the capsule parachuted down.

The margarita landed in a ravine 100 miles from the launch site. It reportedly tasted good.



Bleak Billboards in London Tell Sad Stories of People Priced Out of the City

Bleak black-and-white digital billboards in London (one in Holborn and one in Aldgate) are telling the sad stories of people priced out of London as the city continues to change. If you’re headed to or moving out of London, LondonIsChanging.org wants to know why.

The project was created by Rebecca Ross, a communication design and urbanism teacher at University of the Arts London. It’s about the housing crisis, but it’s more than that, too. Ross’ intent is to hold politicians accountable for the planning changes that are changing the face of London. But most of the responses she’s received in her call for a open dialogue at LondonIsChanging.org have been socioeconomic in nature.

While select quotes are being pulled for display on the billboards, all of the data collected by the project will be made available to the public in 2016—at which point, hopefully, somebody somewhere will do something with it. Of course, the fact that there’s no guarantee that will happen is probably what makes it qualify as public art.

Either way, this is officially the classier British way to scream, “The rent is too damn high!”



This Pizza Brand's Outdoor Ads Are Hard to Notice, and That's the Point

Making out-of-home ads that are hard for people to see sounds like a terrible idea. But Daiya Foods does just that with clever ad placements in a new campaign that plays off the line, “It’s easier to notice this ad than notice our pizza is dairy-free.”

Some ads are running where few people look (like on top of a bus), while others are almost too small to see (tiny stickers on benches, crosswalk lights, elevator panels, phone kiosks and more) or go by too fast to read (taxi tops).

The campaign, by TDA_Boulder, extends to digital and print, including full-page ads with tiny 2¼-by-¼-inch headlines in magazines such as Cooking Light, Every Day with Rachel Ray, Fitness, Health and Food Network Magazine.

CREDITS
Client: Daiya Foods
Agency: TDA_Boulder
AD: Austin O’Connor
CW: Dan Colburn
CD: Jeremy Seibold
ECD: Jonathan Schoenberg



An Ad Agency Punked Kanye West From Its Offices During Last Night's Flatiron Show

Kanye West held an outdoor concert in front of the Flatiron Building in New York on Thursday night, but not everyone was completely welcoming. In fact, Partners + Napier’s NYC office (at 11 East 26th St.) spelled out a message for the rapper on its windows—obviously a reference to Kanye’s latest Grammys antics.

Agency execs Matt Dowshen and Jason Marks told Gothamist: “We are an agency actively researching the effects of out-of-home advertising. We found out Kanye was playing outside our building, and we wanted to make a point about being in the right place at the right time with the right message, and how that can be amplified through digital channels. And … don’t fuck with Beck.”

In other words, those who troll will get trolled back.