Today, Bucky Turco was walking down the street and noticed a new ad for New York Sports Club. It was a series of wild postings in groups of 4 that said "________Better" and were accompanied by various images supporting the copy that was printed but looked like it was written in with marker. They copy read: Oh my God Better, Scram Better, and Play Better.
One of the spaces was blank so Turco decided to write in BLOG Better just for fun with a marker. Turco wonders if this could be construed as breaking the law by defacing property paid for by an advertiser and also wonders whether advertising that encourages people to interact or write on it, could classify the writing as graffiti, an art form many consider illegal. Certainly, it's a gray area yet encouraging people to interact with advertising can have it's benefits.
As part of her sentence for screwing with Ogilvy billing, Shona Seifert, like a school kid writing "I will not snap Sally's bra strap in class" 100 times on the chalk board, has written a code of ethics for the ad industry which is available for download here. Enjoy.
Heather of Mock On points to yet another contextual advertising oddity, of which there have been many, alongside news coverage of hurricane Katrina. Heather took a screenshot of a CNN story about hurricane refugees living in the New Orleans Superdome being bussed to the Houston Astrodome. Alongside the story appears an ad for price comparison site Nextag with the headline, "New Orleans Superdome - Cheaper Prices." While the ad itself may not be all that offensive, it's not like anyone's going to be using Nextag to travel to New Orleans anytime soon.
Paris communications agency Antonia has launched a trailer for Life Kino, a web based art and design experiment. Basically, it's a music video filled with stills. Those behind Life Kino say their aim is to create a community of users by inviting the public to submit "loops" or filmed snippets of their lives that will be uploaded on a randomly generated basis and viewable by all who visit the site. The idea behind it, says an email from Life Kino, is to create links between people and places that would never have met in the real world. We don't really get it but, then again, we don't get a lot of stuff. But we did announce it first. That's gotta count for something.
Since way too many Adrants stories feature scantily clad women in ads begging people to buy stuff, we thought we'd give a proper nod to our sizable female readership and share this outdoor board for Philippine fashion label Bench Body.
Oh joy! Another stealth marketing effort. This red circle sits atop the Chase Manhattan bank at 423 Canal Street. As with all efforts like this, we'll just have to wait and see who's behind it. Of course, it could just be someone's idea of art. Target?
Clearly the result of waring factions caught up in weeks of pompous, self-important, white-boarded, conference room mission/vision/essence/position marketing pontification, Sprint, today, launched its new look incorporating its recent acquisition of Nextel. The new logo features the word "Sprint" along with an innocuous graphic and the words, "Together with Nextel." Huh? Which company is this? Together with who? Sprint? Nextel? Help. We are very confused. And we actually know what's going on. Pity the poor consumer who has to wade through this morass of compromise. Please let this be very temporary.
