Wexley School for Girls, in partnership with design firm General Public created The Washington Mutual E-bus, a full size commercial bus, retrofitted as a self-contained, mobile technology center with computer workstations and Internet connectivity through satellite. The E-bus brings the bank to the people and offers access to credit reports and homeowner education
Wexley photographed a house, wrapped the bus on all sides and set a world-record for "Largest Door Mat" which measures 10 feet tall by 36 feet long. The E-bus started rolling two weeks ago, and will operate in Southern California where it will tour over the course of six months.
Writing on TalentZoo as a guest columnist, copywriter, brand consultant and author Hadji Williams brings to light the rampant dismissal among major agencies of multicultural advertising and explains how "ethnic" agencies are brought in by AOR's at the last minute to black/Latino/Asian-ize campaigns only to have them end up looking stupid and perpetuating stereotypes. It's an insightful examination of the practice and one I can admit to engaging in having done my fair share of minimizing the importance of the ethnic portion of a campaign.
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Seems The Donald has a clothing line at Macy's and is advertising it in the Wall Street Journal. It's his "signature collection" which Not Only But Also said is ridiculous because A. Trump nor his personal shoppers even know where a Macy's is; B. Trump is clearly fashionless and C. Success doesn't equal fashion authority which may be true but most people are happy to latch onto the latest celebu-fashion statement. Oh well, we're sure Trump will make money. He always does. Oh wait, he loses a lot too.
Product Invasion, the folks behind Subservient Donald are, again, taking on product placement proliferation, this time with Survivor, and have created some spoof footage of Survivor's Jerry Manthey in which producer's urge her to shill for Home Depot, Scope, Dawn, and Pepsi. While it's a bit over the top, it still calls attention to the maddening and overly forced attempts by marketers and networks to shamelessly shill.
The sidewalks of New York are always filled with interesting postings, odd imagery and, yes, ads. Bucky Turco spotted one of those "I've lost my cat" type postings on a street pole which turned out to be a promotion for Sci Fi's new show, Triangle. The posting shows a picture of a sock with the headline "Lost" and provides tear off tags with a link to nothingstayslostforever.com, a promotional site where visitors can enter a sweepstakes to win a home theater system, a television and an Xbox 360. Actual "lost socks" with the logo were placed in various laundromats too. Cunning created and executed the promotion.
Turco didn't like the Xbox tie in but we think the over all promotion is intriguing enough to warrant notice and create awareness of the show. Only time and Nielsen will answer that question.
Hostway, the hosting company that brought us Bob's Cube has, with the help of Fifteen Letters, created another cube-like online environment called Leroy the Hand which features, yes, a talking hand. Apparently, talking hand Leroy Koslowski is an under appreciated sibling of a famous advertising icon who has found success becoming the spokeshand for Hostway. There's all sorts of things to check out in Leroy's room including videos of how he started his career, self-help books for hands, a memory book with all sorts of hand-related stuff, a book manuscript, a rock paper scissors game, a GE Pen-like drawing board where visitors can create a drawing and view other's drawings, a link to Bob's Cube of course and some unintentional product placements. It kept us busy for a while and that's saying a lot.
Bringing together two talking cars and a talking gas pump, Mazda is praising its new, fuel-efficient Mazda5 with Mazda5GasBuddy, a website that lets visitors search for the lowest gas prices in their area.
To recruit for this year's Wieden + Kennedy 12, a school to teach aspiring creatives the business of advertising, Wieden + Kennedy has "hidden" 240 copies of a book called What We Learned, a book documenting the first year of 12, with creative folk around the country and with owners of coffee houses, stores and galleries.
Application instructions for Year 3 are sealed inside the envelope attached to the back cover of these books. This is the only place that the instructions can be found. Those that aren't lucky enough to be friends with Sagmeister or John Stewart (apparently two of the folks the book hidden with) can visit the school's website and get clues as to the location of the hidden copies.
The book and the school are being talked about here and here and we had a few things to say when the school first launched.
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