Hasta La Creative!

You're walking down the street and you see a giant 3-D mouth singing opera. Maybe you see an enormous, realistic rugby player taking a shower. Perhaps a gigantic Marilyn Monroe dress blowing in the breeze grabs your attention on your way to a bus stop that plays disco music if you touch the weird medallion-adorned hairy chest of a swarthy dude.

Well, if you're in France and you encounter any of these scenarios, you've probably come across the latest outdoor campaign from SNCF French Railways and agency TBWA\Paris. These crazy larger-than-life ads aim to inspire people to travel to places they are passionate about. 

If you are not in France and you see these things, you may want to seek therapy. 

Marketers; always up to something. Struggling marketers; always resorting to desperate measures.

You’ve probably never heard of the Angel of the North. It’s a large structure of a 66 foot tall angel with wings that are 177 feet across. It’s located in Gateshead England. It was created by Antony Gormley in 1998 and was created to celebrate the work of coal miners and signify a transition from the industrial age to the information age.

Morrisons, the fourth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, thought it would be really cool to project a 177 foot wide image of a baguette on the wings of the angel.

Gormley is not pleased and said, with resignation,”I’d rather the Angel is not used for such purposes, but it’s out there.”

Those against the move took to Twitter calling the stunt “cultural vandalism” and “philistine and disgraceful.”

Following the outcry, Morrisons issued an apology saying, “We’re sorry if you thought we got carried away by shining a baguette on the Angel of the North and apologize unreservedly to those to whom we have caused offense. We were trying something different which was meant to put a smile on peoples faces but clearly it wasn’t to everybody’s tastes. We’re so proud of our northern roots and the last thing we want to do is offend anybody.”

Ingenious stunt or lame-ass idiocy?

Last year FCB Mayo (then Mayo Draftcb Peru) teamed up with The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima, Peru, to create the world’s first water-generating billboard in the desert city. The innovative campaign generated a lot of buzz, and a lot of attention for UTEC. This year, FCB Mayo teamed up with UTEC again to create an air-purifying billboard, an answer to the construction boom in Peru.

The billboard, located at a construction site in Barranco, Peru, contains an air-purifying system, developed with Peruvian technology, capable of cleaning large volumes of air by removing dust, metal and stone particles that inevitably escape into the air during construction. The billboard cleans air to a level that is “apt for human respiration, according to international and national air quality standards,” with the cleaner air impacting within a file mile radius of the site, benefiting residents of the area as well as construction workers. Operating “by means of thermodynamic processes that occur in nature, such as pressure, vaccuum and decreasing temperature,” the machine is highly efficient, with energy consumption of 2.5Kw per hour.

“This billboard seeks to spark young people’s interest in engineering, said Jessica Rúas, director of promotion at UTEC. “It is closely aligned with the university’s mission of educating creative engineers who are sensitive to social needs and have extensive scientific knowledge that enables them to become researchers and find solutions to society’s problems.”

“Putting our own ingenuity into action gives us great satisfaction, because in addition to the creative challenge it presents, it enables us to raise awareness, inspire and innovate in our work as advertising professionals,” added Juan Donalisio, creative director at FCB Mayo. “UTEC is a client that constantly challenges us, because its approach is not traditional. The university represents change. Therefore, its advertising does as well, and that makes us think about what is nearly impossible to do, in order to do it.”

See the case study video above to learn more about the campaign, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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Hasn’t anyone learned anything from watching horror movies? Never, ever place one of your appendages in a hole. Alas, like everything else in life, that scenario has been co-opted by a marketer.

To promote its PS4 game, Infamous: Second Son, PlayStation placed an installation with three finger holes in Antwerp’s Central Station with copy that read, “Place finger here.” Those who kept their fingers in the holes for 5 seconds — and endured actual electric shock — were awarded a free copy of the game.

We get chills just thinking about sticking appendages in dark places. OK, well, perhaps not all appendages and not all dark places.

As if the Photoshop-perfect faces on outdoor ads weren't nightmarish enough, German street artist Vermibus ratchets up the horror by using chemicals to transform such posters into grotesque visions for an art project called "Dissolving Europe."

This guy's acid wash has nothing to do with jeans. He targets noses, lips, cheeks, chins, ears and eyes. By the time he's done, his subjects resemble nuclear-blast victims, their features twisted into misshapen parodies of the human form.

Of course, "ugly" is in the eye of the beholder. Some will find his creations possessed of a certain warped beauty that exposes the truth underlying our pervasive consumer culture.

That's a valid interpretation, and it's clearly in line with the artist's view as he traversed Europe, removing promotional posters from their displays and replacing them with his freakish creations. (You can view more of his projects on his website.) A 10-minute film chronicles his journey, and it's fairly hypnotic. The best scene shows Vermibus wearing a gas mask to protect himself from toxins, like some hybrid artist/terrorist, as he defaces/transforms an advertisement.

Of late, there have been many examples of public advertising being replaced or subverted to make broader social statements. There's Banksy, of course, railing against capitalism. And those fake ads about NYPD drones. Outdoor ads were swapped out for classic paintings in recent French and English installations. And Richard Sargent's photographs of decaying billboards in California were especially evocative.

Ultimately and unfortunately, these efforts become footnotes on the overloaded media landscape. They're fodder for thoughtful articles and blog posts, but all too quickly forgotten. Billboards brake for no one. Ad campaigns keep coming. There's always another pretty face.

Via Fast Company.

Photos and artwork via Vermibus.com.

Victors & Spoils eschews crowdsourcing or digital aspects for their new campaign for Bank Midwest.

Centered around a few television spots,  the campaign emphasizes the human side of Bank Midwest.  The above spot “Listening” focuses on a bank worker on the phone with a client, saying things like “okay” and “uh-huh” before the word “Listening” comes on the screen, accompanied by triumphant music. It’s meant to show that in today’s environment, an actual human listening to you at a bank seems revolutionary. Clearly, this campaign is targeted at an older audience than Victors & Spoils typical work, which explains the more traditional approach. The spots “Knowing Your Name” and “Answering The Phone” follow a similar approach. The campaign, which started running in Colorado and Kansas this week, also includes billboards with simple messages, such as “Listening!” and “Mortgage Experts Who Listen.”

“In a time when so many businesses have stopped focusing on consumers, it’s really exciting that we get to help celebrate the fact that our client, NBH Bank, N.A., still treats people like people. This makes for some pretty revolutionary work,” explained Victor & Spoils Creative Director Chris Cima.

For a campaign described as “revolutionary,” though, the strategy sure calls to mind Tierney’s work for TD Bank in their “Human Truths” and “Bank Human” campaigns. Stick around for “Knowing Your Name” and “Answering The Phone” after the jump. continued…

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Following the recent launch of a New York Metropolitan Transit Authority campaign for a Queens-based plastic surgeon, Howard Glaser, aide to New York Governor Cuomo issued a stern letter to the MTA urging the authority to revisit its advertising standards.

In the letter, Glaser wrote,”Tens of thousands of children ride the transit system every day to go to school. The MTA is a public conveyance, subsidized by $190 million annually in the state budget, plus over $5 billion in dedicated taxes. The public has a right to expect that the MTA will strive for a family-friendly environment.”

The MTA initially defended the ads then back peddled. On Tuesday, MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said,”The MTA understands the concerns that Governor Cuomo and other parents have raised about this advertisement and about maintaining a family-friendly environment on our trains and buses. We will revisit our standards for advertisements and our process for reviewing them.”

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with boob jobs or cleavage but Glaser does have a point. Do children really need to be subjected to the sort of suggestion that they are somehow inferior if they don’t have bulging cleavage like the woman in these ads? Kids have enough to deal with. There’s no need to add to the pile.

To stoke viewers’ (already feverish) anticipation for season 4 of international hit Game of Thrones, DDB New Zealand has crafted a unique social media/experiential event for SKY Television’s premium entertainment channel SoHo, entitled “Bring Down The King.”

With help from production company Finch, DDB has erected a seven meter statue of the show’s much hated King Joffrey in Aotea Square, one of the largest public squares in Auckland. A rope is positioned around the statue’s neck, attached to a winch, and fans are challenged to topple the statue using the hashtag #bringdowntheking on Twitter. For every tweet using the hashtag, the statue will be one step closer to toppling, but it will take one million such tweets to bring down Joffrey.

“Game of Thrones is a worldwide phenomenon and King Joffrey is quite possibly the most hated fictional television character of all time,” explained SKY’s director of programming, Travis Dunbar. “It’s exciting to give fans an opportunity they are dying for; to assist in the demise of the King of the Iron Throne.”

DDB executive creative director Shane Bradnick was equally enthused, saying, “It’s great to be working with clients that want to create ideas that bring the fictional, digital and real worlds together. Let’s bring the bastard down!”

You can keep up with the campaign at bringdowntheking.com. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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Full-service integrated marketing agency Neighbor Agency recently launched a campaign for Tillamook’s new line of Greek yogurt, Farmstyle Greek, which was led by the agency’s new creative director, Jodi Pierce, who began work with Neighbor Agency late last year.

The campaign, entitled “Slow and Steady Wins the Taste,” is “a digital-centric campaign that also includes out-of-home billboards, radio and experiential engagement through a sampling tour.” But Neighbor’s involvement began long before that, with the agency collaborating on “product development, ingredients, flavor profiles all the way to creative conception and execution of the campaign.”

Video vignettes introduce viewers to Tillamook’s Farmstyle Greek yogurt by showing simple recipes, rooted in the brand’s “slow and steady” philosophy, that complement the yogurt, like homemade granola and blueberry jam. It’s an interesting approach, one that emphasizes Tillamook as a lifestyle brand while providing viewers with information to better enjoy the product.

“We’re proud to debut the work that our creative team, and new Creative Director developed for Tillamook’s Farmstyle Greek Yogurt,” said Chad Seymour, CEO of Neighbor Agency. “The hire of Jodi is one that we took very seriously, and didn’t fill the position until we found the perfect fit for our agency, and our clients.”

For more information on the campaign, head to the brand’s Farmstyle Greek website.

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To get their hometown of San Francisco in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, Riney ACDs EJ Slody and Alex Palomo are now sending out a drone carrying a bag of real four-leaf clovers “flying over key locations” in the city.

Dubbed the Good Luck Drone, the UAV will fulfill its mission of spreading just that over the city by flying to any destination given to it through Instagram. Visitors to http://instagram.com/goodluckdrone# can simply type a location on its flight map pic and the drone will fly to the destination and send you a pic or video to let you know that luck was spread to the desired location. The project has just started, so if you live in San Francisco, why not head on over to Instagram and give it a shot? It could give your St. Patrick’s Day an extra touch of drone-spread good fortune.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.