Creationists have thrown the latest stone in the heated battle to piss off the most number of people with a billboard. "To all our atheist friends: Thank God you're wrong," declares a billboard in New York's Times Square. (There's also one in San Francisco.) Paid for by Answers in Genesis, the ministry behind Cincinnati's Creation Museum (you know, the one where you get to frolic with dinosaurs), the billboard directs people to a site that explains the Young Earth Creationist theory—one which many god-fearing believers don't believe. Dave Silverman, president of the American Atheists tells CNN: "They're throwing down the gauntlet, and we're picking it up," adding that his group will "slap them in the face" with it. I think this means holy war.
Here's a simple, clever and well-executed idea from our friends in Iceland. Agency Brandenburg partnered with the Icelandic Cancer Society to paint a looping highway ramp pink in celebration of Cancer Awareness Month. While only truly visible from the air, the bright pink street paint was still quite attention-grabbing for Reykjavík motorists, as you can see in the case study video below.
Mysterious billboards have appeared in New York and San Francisco bearing the message that "Your data should belong to the NSA." As Gothamist astutely points out, it already does, regardless of any shoulds or should-nots. Animal New York did a little sleuthing and discovered this is some kind of teaser campaign for a company that will be revealed this week. A second billboard in New York reads, "The Internet should be regulated." ("For now, I am respecting the creative campaign and reserving comment on who the advertiser is," a Clear Channel rep told Animal.) So, two questions: Who's the advertiser? And don't they know needling the NSA is a bad idea? Photo via The Dusty Rebel.
Prankvertising can be annoying. Aggressively messing with people for questionable purposes is, after all, obnoxious behavior. But when it promotes something that is intended itself to be scary, it can be irresistible.
In that vein, Thinkmodo is getting rather good at public horror-movie stunts. First, it got a creepy chick to literally bend over backwards in a beauty salon for The Last Exorcism Part II. Now, it gets another creepy chick to show off freaky telekinetic superpowers in a coffee shop for Carrie—the upcoming horror film based on Stephen King's 1974 novel.
The looks on the patrons' faces are priceless. (For a change, it's not difficult to imagine these are real people, rather than actors.) Not insignificantly, the stunt ties seamlessly into the product, too—terrifying people also happens to be the point of the movie.
And there's a levity here, too—unlike, say, stunts for flat-screen TVs that make you think the world is ending.
If you thought the giant rubber duck that drifted down the River Thames last year was a ballsy advertising stunt, check out the 26-foot-high, inflatable, lighted Lotto balls the National Lottery floated last week. Those are big balls. Very big balls. Each is the size of a double-decker bus, we're told in a YouTube video immortalizing the event. Each ball used 2,000 watts of light. Those are giant, electrified balls. Project manager David Chambers calls them "the biggest Lotto balls ever made." (I should hope so!) It took "a team of almost 30 people over 1,000 man-hours to get these balls ready," Chambers adds. Yes, adjusting big balls can be tricky. And: "We're going to use two tugs to take us from here, West India Dock, to the heart of the city." Two tugs, eh? Cheeky monkeys! (The campaign used the hashtag #giantballs, in case you thought it was just us.) The client's just lucky its massive balls didn't crash into a tour boat, or someone would've gotten the sack!
Two very different kinds of out-of-home advertising stunts have been gaining traction lately—first, the sudden appearance of a spectacular, oversized prop designed to delight passersby; and second, an intricately choreographed sequence of fake pandemonium designed to terrify them. Examples of the former: UKTV's giant Mr. Darcy emerging from the British pond, and the giant Games of Thrones dragon skull washed up on the British beach. (The British love this stuff.) Examples of the latter: TNT's dramatic stunt on a quiet town square, as well as its sequel.
Now, M&C Saatchi has combined the two approaches with a larger-than-life stunt in Milan, Italy. As part of a campaign for an insurance company, the agency built a giant prop of a submarine and made it look like it was emerging from the ground. A Smart car nearby appeared to have been damaged by the sub—a potent reminder that it's good to have insurance in case all-but-impossible events occur. Many agencies would have stopped here. But M&C Saatchi then staged an elaborate early-morning event at the scene—having actors dressed as sailors and scuba divers emerge from the submarine in a daze, and the driver of the car exit his car angry and confused. Fake hospital workers and emergency personnel even descended on the scene to treat the wounded.
Check out footage from the event below. Your move, TNT.
Concerned that technology is keeping us all apart, Milka chocolate created a unique vending experience this summer that made Argentine strangers work together to score free sweets. Local agency David placed a cow statue across from a vending machine and challenged people to connect the two by holding hands in order to get free chocolate bars. Each time they cashed in, the cow moved farther away, requiring more people to hold hands until they spanned across the public square. The resulting video, with more than 1 million views, is another example of how one smart idea on a small scale can quickly go global. Considered alongside Milka's current "Dare to be tender" campaign in France, where missing squares of the chocolate can be paid forward to loved ones, it’s not all that shocking that a comfort food would latch onto the comforting notion of bringing people together. Of course, it's togetherness fueled by a good old-fashioned bribe.
Heineken and Wieden + Kennedy in New York revisit the concept of unscheduled trips in this sequel to their popular Departure Roulette stunt. That effort, from the summer, dared JFK travelers to ditch their plans and immediately fly to more exotic locales chosen at random by pushing a button. For the follow-up, the brand made surprise visits to people who had tweeted during the earlier campaign that they would want to try Departure Roulette—and let them do so.
In the sequel video, camera crews confront unsuspecting tweeters at their front doors, at work and on the sidewalk, with the big green Departure Roulette board in tow. The board becomes something of an actor in the drama, popping up behind tweeters during interviews and suddenly appearing around street corners. It's creepy and goofy at the same time, keeping the subjects off balance but generally adding to the fun. And there's an amusing bit halfway through the three-minute clip in which a brand ambassador knocks on a person's apartment door and calls out, "You're totally gonna miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!" A neighbor steps into the hall to see what the commotion is about, takes in the scene with the lights and cameras, and quickly retreats back inside.
One guy who wins a trip to Bucharest seems less than stoked. "Romania … OK. I'll go to Romania. I guess." Maybe he was hoping for Budapest. Other destinations include Marrakesh, Morocco; Reykjavík, Iceland; Seoul, South Korea; and Panama City. As with the original Departure Roulette, the sequel is designed to capture Heineken's bold, adventurous spirit. Personally, I prefer Tui Brewery's approach to stunt marketing. They pump beer through your pipes so you can take off without ever leaving home.
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York Executive Creative Directors: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal, Mark Bernath, Eric Quennoy Creative Directors: Erik Norin, Eric Steele Copywriter: Will Binder Art Director: Jared White Executive Producer: Nick Setounski Assistant Producer: Kristen Johnson Account Team: Patrick Cahill, Jacqueline Ventura, Sydney Lopes Social Strategist: Jessica Abercrombie Project Manager: Rayna Lucier Community Managers: Mike Vitiello, Rocio Urena Director of Interactive Production: Brandon Kaplan Head of Integrated Production: Lora Schulson Business Affairs: Sara Jagielski, Lisa Quintela, Quentin Perry Global Travel Director: Colleen Baker Lead, Senior Travel Consultant: Angela Wootan Senior Travel Consultant: Joelle Wainwright
Production Company: Legs Media Director: Dan Levin Executive Producer: Tom Berendsen Line Producer: Sara Greco Postproduction Company: Joint Editorial Senior Producer: Michelle Carman Editor: Jon Steffanson Assistant Editors: Stephen Nelson, Noah Poole, Brian Schimpf Motion Graphics Director: Yui Uchida Information Display System Fabricator: Solari Corp. Design and Build Team: The Guild Audio Company: The Lodge Audio Mixer: John Northcraft Color: Nice Shoes Colorist: Danny Boccia Producer: Melissa Dupre
Nothing gets people riled up quite like a Guinness World Record involving mayonnaise, and so Hellmann's on Tuesday celebrated its 100th birthday by building the world's longest picnic table in New York City. Chefs Mario Batali, Tim Love and Aaron Sanchez were joined by special guests Katie Holmes and Andy Cohen on Pier 84 for a picnic lunch, whipped up by Batali and served on the new world-record-setting 320-foot table.
The event was held just blocks from where German immigrant Richard Hellmann opened his delicatessen on Columbus Avenue in 1905. (He began mass producing Hellmann's mayonnaise the following decade.) As part of its 100th birthday celebration, the brand is providing 1 million meals to the Feeding America effort to fight hunger nationwide.
Logo que comecei a assistir ao video-case da ação criada pela Lowe Roche para o canal canadense TFO, senti uma ponta de nostalgia no ar. Um teclado gigante sempre me remete à clássica cena de Tom Hanks em uma loja de brinquedos (a FAO Schwarz, em Nova York), fazendo música em Big – Quero Ser Grande. Na verdade, eu não estava de todo enganada, a não ser um por um detalhe: aqui, os sons do teclado eram criados por vozes humanas.
Para divulgar o Festival d’Opéra de Québec, foi criado um instrumento musical que permitisse que as pessoas interagissem e se envolvessem com o evento. O Living Opera Organ contava com 12 teclas, cada uma delas ligada a um cantor de ópera responsável por fazer o som da nota correspondente.
Assim como o teclado de Big, este também podia ser tocado com os pés, atraindo principalmente crianças, que tiveram a oportunidade de conhecer um lado muito mais divertido da ópera e tocar diversas músicas com as vozes dos artistas. Na minha opinião, uma das ações mais bem-pensadas do ano.
Férias de verão. Taí uma ótima época para se apaixonar, especialmente quando se é jovem, viver romances, declarar seu amor. A Cornetto resolveu dar uma forcinha para espalhar o amor pelas praias de Málaga, na Espanha, com o Cornetto Love Plane, ação criada pela Lola/Lowe & Partners que usou aviões para compartilhar tweets apaixonados.
Usando a hashtag #cornettoskytweets, os usuários do Twitter escreviam a mensagem que gostariam de ver levada por um dos três aviões utilizados na ação. As mais retuitadas eram pintadas em faixas levadas pelos aviões e trocadas a cada 15 minutos.
No vídeo acima dá para ver algumas das mensagens, em especial um pedido de casamento que surpreendeu os organizadores. Após uma espera tensa, o pedido foi aceito.
Segundo a Lola Madrid, foram utilizados quase 1 mil tweets durante a ação, com cerca de 6 milhões de fãs acompanhando a experiência pelo Facebook e Instagram.
O Cornetto Love Plane deverá ganhar novas edições ao redor do mundo no verão de 2014. Existe a possibilidade de o Brasil estar entre os países que receberão a ação, mas ainda não há nada confirmado. Agora, é aguardar para ver.
I sometimes think billboards are watching, beaming out messages meant just for me. Then I get back on my meds, and everything seems fine. Anyway, BMW's Mini, as part of its "Not Normal" campaign, worked with agencies Iris and Vizeum over the summer to personalize content to drivers of its cars on nine consecutive digital billboards along a busy London motorway. Spotters armed with iPads identified approaching Minis, and the text and images on the boards were then tailored to the individual cars. Drivers' photos were even flashed on signs further up the road. Offers of commuting snacks, car washes and flowers were also in the mix. For example, a driver in a grey Mini drove past successive signs that read, "Early start, Mr. Grey Mini driver? … Need a pick me up? … Fancy a tasty bacon butty? … Mini's buying … See you at the next garage." Nearly 2,000 Mini drivers received such personal greetings in a week. All those folks driving Vauxhalls probably felt sullen and neglected. But that's nothing new for them, now is it?
What in the name of Jerry Tarkanian was the University of Nevada-Las Vegas's marketing team thinking? They actually weren't dreaming of past basketball glory this week when a Sin City highway billboard featured the school's former coach Lon Kruger—who left for Oklahoma two years ago.
No, it was all Clear Channel's fault. And give the out-of-home media giant credit for quickly fessing up on Facebook.
As first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the billboard was a complete accident but has generated plenty of social-media banter (see Kruger's reaction below). And current UNLV coach Dave Rice played the situation well by making light of being left off the roadside ad for tickets to see the upcoming Runnin' Rebels season.
"Hey, if Coach Kruger can help us sell tickets, great," Rice told the Review-Journal.
Impressed with Coach Rice and how he handled the billboard goof. Great guy makes it easy to cheer for the Rebels!
Sempre que alguém publica uma foto muito legal e com belas cores em uma rede social, mas quer deixar claro que a imagem não foi editada com os diversos filtros disponíveis por aí, faz questão de usar a hashtag #nofilter. Mas, segundo a Ray-Ban, “os mais novos filtros das plataformas de compartilhamento de fotos de fato não são filtros”.
Juntando todas essas peças, a DDB Bruxelas pensou no conceito #nofilterjustrayban e simplesmente substituiu as janelas de trams (para quem não conhece, um tipo de veículo leve sobre trilhos) por lentes polarizadas coloridas da marca, do azul celeste ao pink.
Durante o Ray-Ban Test-Drive Trams, realizado nas cidades belgas de Ghent, Bruxelas e Antuérpia, os passageiros têm a oportunidade de fotografar através das lentes coloridas da marca e compartilhar suas experiências em redes sociais, utilizando a hashtag promocional. As imagens podem ser conferidas no hotsite da ação.
O conceito é bem interessante e a agência soube usar o transporte público de uma maneira criativa, oferecendo uma experiência marcante para os passageiros e criando engajamento com a marca. Se você vai passar por alguma destas cidades – ou tem algum amigo que vai – vale dar uma olhada nas linhas em que os Ray-Ban Test-Drive Trams estão operando.
Mexican stationery company Scribe won a Bronze Lion in Cannes for its "Scribe Billboard" campaign, in which artist Cecilia Beaven lived inside a blank billboard like a shoemaker's elf for 10 days and added illustrations to it based on tweets from the public. (The finished work can be seen above.) The illustrations have now been turned into a 60-second cartoon by Vetor Zero/Lobo, and the results—featuring characters like a rabbit DJ, a surfing giraffe and a taxi driving Pegasus—wouldn't be out of place on Adult Swim. Really. I could see something like this paired with Adventure Time, no problem. Via The Inspiration Room.
There's art everywhere! It's loose in the streets! The onslaught of art will kill us all! possibly enhance our dreary, workaday lives!
The Art Everywhere project in England fuses art and commerce on a grand scale, with reproductions of 57 popular works—ranging from the 16th century to modern times—replacing ads on 22,000 out-of-home ad sites, including billboards, bus shelters, tube-station walls and other locations like shopping malls and office buildings. Innocent Drinks cofounder Richard Reed spearheaded the initiative (it was his wife's idea), and he described Art Everywhere to the Guardian as "a joyful project with no agenda other than to flood our streets with art and celebrate the creative talents and legacy of the U.K."
Some $4.7 million worth of ad space is being used for the project's two-week run—the tagline is, "A very very big art show"—with online donations helping to cover costs. The art was chosen by the public, with pieces selected from a list provided by the Tate gallery and the Art Fund. "The Lady of Shalott," an ethereal, evocative 1888 oil-on-canvas by John William Waterhouse, inspired by a Tennyson poem, topped the vote count. But, d'uh, who couldn't guess that.
It's only appropriate that ad space is being employed, since billboards, commercial posters and advertisements of all kinds are the popular art of modern times, reflecting the contemporary culture as surely as pre-Raphaelite paintings captured the nuances and obsessions of an earlier age.
Not that I'd advocate such a thing, but I'm sure that at some point a few taggers (perhaps even Banksy, England's maverick anti-advertising artist) will see fit to deface the public displays. It's clearly vandalism, but I think they'd be creating valid hybrid works that could say quite a lot about art, human nature and the media-saturated times in which we live. Or else they'd just be acting like jerks.
The city of Toronto is offering prizes as part of its "What the Fact?" campaign promoting local museums and historic sites to young people. Unfortunately, those prizes are passes to the museums and sites in question, which should squash any interest among the target audience. Kidding, of course. But my snarky intro illustrates a very real problem facing the client: How do you market museums to a fickle audience that basically lives online?
Its answer is a campaign in 100 area bus shelters and online, headlined by the slogan "WTF?" in bold letters. The ads show historic artworks, soldiers' uniforms and other exhibits, and invite people to go to Facebook and guess what each item might be. Correct guesses get you free passes, which will be awarded once the campaign ends on Sept. 10, when the artifacts' identities will also be revealed.
"We wanted to find a way we could reach out to the general public and ideally a younger audience," museum services program designer Ilena Aldini-Messina tells the Toronto Star. "We find that social media is a great way to reach out to that audience."
Kudos for embracing interactivity, and for the quasi-questionable "WTF?" headline, which has predictably ruffled some feathers in the Great White North and generated free publicity for the cause. According to Inside Toronto, the campaign has already been shared or commented on 1,200 times—though I'm not convinced that will translate into more young people patronizing local museums and historic sites in the long run. The youthful target audience probably plans to sell the tickets to get cash for beer and earbuds.
Stealing cardboard cutouts of the David Hasselhoff from Cumberland Farms is all fun and games until someone gets seriously hurt.
It began innocuously enough last summer, when some 550 cutouts of the Hoff were stolen from the convenience store's locations in New England and Florida. At the time, a brand strategist for the chain brushed off the thefts, saying the company didn't encourage it but was nonetheless "flattered by the attention." The chain will be less flattered by an incident on Tuesday, however, in which a Cumberland Farms clerk in Shelton, Conn., was critically injured trying to prevent the theft of a Hoff cutout from the latest campaign.
According to a statement from the local police: "The initial investigation revealed that a black SUV pulled into the lot of Cumberland Farms. The victim later observed a white male get out of the vehicle and cut two 'David Hasseloff' [sic] advertisement signs off of a light pole. The male then put the signs in the back of the vehicle. The victim approached the vehicle in an attempt to get the signs back. The vehicle then sped away and the victim was dragged and then he spun around and flipped backwards landing on his head."
The victim, who has not been identified, is listed in critical condition at an area hospital. Meanwhile, a 19-year-old who is suspected to have been the driver has come forward and is cooperating with police.
Here's a simple concept executed simply for Adidas. This beautifully shot, expertly cut short tells the story of the opening of the D Rose Jump Store in London. This unique store gave fans a chance to jump with the Chicago Bulls point guard to get a pair of Derrick Rose signature Adidas sneakers. Hundreds of fans descended and tried to make the 10-foot jump. Great moments, from Rose laughing at a girl who can't get enough air to helping a kid reach a pair, are offset by some pretty impressive jumps—including a dude who not only reaches the shoes but manages to kiss them on the shelf. Best pop-up store promotion in a while.
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