Hasta La Creative!

There’s a grand tradition of marketers building fancy vending machines, but it’s not every day you see one that doubles as a piano.

For the Alfa Jazz Fest in L’viv, Ukraine, this past June, mineral water brand Borjomi and its agency, Banda, set up a publicity stunt inviting passersby to play a sideways keyboard in exchange for free product.

The new video below shows some people eking out melodies and others banging out full-blown performances while crowds gather and cheer. It has some of the dubious over-enthusiasm of heavily edited case study videos—people get really, really excited, and jump up and down—despite (or maybe because of) how awkward it must have been to hit the right notes while craning over.

Then again, a piano-playing machine made of razors is probably still weirder.

The Vice News reporter Simon Ostrovsky, who has produced a series of vivid dispatches from Ukraine in recent weeks, was detained by pro-Russia separatists in the town of Slovyansk on Tuesday.

Misinformation, exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and outright lies about the political crisis in Ukraine have emanated from the highest echelons of the Kremlin.

Russia’s general prosecutor ordered three websites and a blog closed, saying they encouraged “illegal activities and participation in public events held in violation of the established order.”

Russia’s government-operated networks are led by executives who have helped promote President Vladimir V. Putin’s agenda, but they are facing fact-checking over coverage of Ukraine.

Advertising Agency: van der Buzz, Kyiv, Ukraine
Art Director: Mykola Maliy
Released: June 2008

Art Director / Illustrator / Photographer: Savchenko Denys
Copywriter: Ilya Lemekhov
Published: 2007