In a lengthy and thoughtful piece on MoroccoBoard.com, Nora Fitzgerald takes a look at a real estate billboard campaign featuring Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria and, what some consider, too much of her cleavage. Now aside from the fact Longoria really doesn't have cleavage, Moroccans consider that area of the body private and not for public viewing. Certainly not on ten billboards, one after another alongside a country road.
Finding the boards offensive, someone spray painted over Longoria's "cleavage." Then, apparently getting the message, the advertiser revised the creative to show less cleavage. That wasn't good enough for the detractors who further defaced the boards by ripping the paper off.
Apparently, the war between advertiser and billboard bandit has been going on for some time.
Possibly treading on the likes of Hudson, Denver-based FirstBank is out with a Diorama campaign in the Denver International Airport which offers travelers free books, crossword puzzles and Sudoku via a QR code which leads to a download. About 7,000 classics and puzzles will be given out during the TDA Advertising & Design-created campaign.
Based on the first week's results, the most popular books, in order, are Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Jack London's The Call of the Wild, and James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Least popular are Walden, Emma, and, at 8 downloads, Don Quixote.
We are a jealous bunch. We just can''t stand it when we see another succeed. So what do we do when someone steals out limelight? We make fun of them, of course. And that's exactly what Axe is doing to Old Spice right now with a new billboard campaign in Canada.
With the headline, "For men who'd rather be with a woman than on a horse," the campaign actually makes a but of sense. Because unless you're into bestiality, we think a woman is much more desirable than a horse.
Last Friday morning around 7:15AM, in preparation for a later flight over the Texas State Fair, a helicopter lifted a 53,000-square foot (about the size of a football field) banner above the Dallas Executive Airport. The banner was part of a promotion for Chrysler's Dodge Ram pick up truck.
While video shows the banner leaving the ground completely granting, one assumes, Chrysler the victorious achievement of having flown the world's largest aerial banner, the helicopter pilot quickly dumped the banner from fear the banner would endanger the aircraft or it simply snapped free and fell (reports conflict).
A Chrysler rep is reported to have said the record would be broken as soon as the banner left the ground which, according to the video, it did. The record was previously held by the United Arab Emerites when a 50,000-square foot banner was flown over Abu Dhabi.
more »
Launched yesterday in Israel by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive, a giant "reality board" will house Big Brother winner Eliraz Sadeh and Survivor winner Natan Bashevikin who, each allocated have the living space inside the board, will battle to maintain their living quarters.
Breathing new life into an old medium, each contestant will perform assignments and tasks while living inside the board using Twitter, Facebook, smart phone applications, a website and SMS. The winner will have his living space increased and a partition will slide over decreasing the size of the loser's living space. The game will continue until one contestant runs out of living space.
The human inside a billboard thing has been done before but this takes it to a new level both in physical scale and with the inclusion of an actual social media-fueled reality game.
The public can watch live and participate right in front of the board or check out the action on one of three websites: a Yellow Pages minisite, Mako Channel 2 and Walla.
- This Advertising Hottie is indeed a hottie.
- Netflix planted actors in the audience of a press conference for the launch of its Canadian web video offering. It didn't go over very well.
- The just can't be good. No. Not at all. An online cookie that just won't give up, respawning itself whenever a user deletes their cookies. No. Not good at all. Not one bit.
- During Advertising Week, Sprout will introduce AdVine. AdVine publishes ads simultaneously in Flash and HTML5 which Sprout claims will help agencies save time and money building for desktop browsers, mobile browsers, and in-application all at the same time.
- Naked bus wrap titillates to sell Casio Watches.
- Disney is out with Let the Memories Begin, a user-generated campaign playing out on DisneyParks, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace.
A billboard for Summit Brewing ponders which is the better social medium; Twitter of beer. The billboard is part of an ongoing campaign which sought creative submissions from people. Winners would receive a $50 gift certificate and have their creative featured on a billboard.
This particular board was created by Fast Horse designer Hilary Heinz.
So which is it? Real world socialization lubricated by alcohol? Or online socialization lubricated by the ability to portray yourself anyway you choose?
You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach you get when a client calls and says, "Um, we have a problem?" Even after you know everything has been triple checked four times over by 20 different people? Well, Blue Waters Group President Patrick Strickler was feeling a bit of that this week when he realized a billboard his agency created for SouthBendOn read "pubic school" instead of "public schools."
Yes, these things happen. Annual reports go out with errors in the first sentence. A nipple slip causes an uproar. A store sign touts a body part rather than a burger special. They just happen and there's nothing we can really do about it.
more »
A billboard in Sioux Falls for Avera Health's WhyImAlive.com which touted the importance of having a family emergency medical plan showed a woman sitting on a gurney in front of a smoking car after an accident. The agency that created the board, BVK, put a smoke machine behind the billboard so the smoke on the billboard would appear to continue upward into the sky.
While the billboard drew many people to the website, the local fire department wasn't too happy with the stunt and had the smoke machine turned off after just two days. The campaign is still up and running but it's now smokeless.
Now this is funny. That Wonderbra 3D billboard has the UK's Institute of Advance Motorist up in arms and complaining the board could cause problems on the roads because, well, people like to stare at boobs. And if they're staring at boobs, their eyes aren't on the road. So, we guess the organization has a point.
There is precedent here. Sixteen years ago, a billboard featuring Eva Herzigova looking down at her cleavage above the caption, "Hello Boys," caused quite a few accidents.
The organization's concern with the billboard isn't entirely with boobs, per se. IAM Spokesman Vine Yearly (now that's a name) says the board's blurry image, when viewed without 3D glasses, may cause motorists to spend too much time trying to interpret the image.
Let the accidents commence.
|
