Here's an interesting one. Billboard Advertisers are Idiots is an effort to get billboard advertisers to stop "blighting" the landscape with their ads.
The whole thing is a little muddly - offending advertisers are listed as "not idiots," with an image of the board and contact info of the media planner if available. The idea is to wage peaceful war by calling these people and getting them to promise not to advertise on billboards anymore.
Apparently this move wasn't the greatest, considering around August the site seems to experience an identity crisis. It decides to call it quits, and then comes back, determined to be ridiculous and not vindictive.
Well ... good job!
Our dirty-minded friend Freud once said a cigar is just a cigar. But there's something deliciously perverse about the outdoor ads for Camel's new menthol Wides, which are "big fat delicious."
For some, it may be all too tempting to set a new Wide between their lips and...
Suck?
Blow some smoke?
Light that fire?
There's no way this can end nicely.
We were stalking the streets of NYC one night when we saw this compromised poster that said "Windorphins are like a ticker tape parade for your soul." A ticker tape parade is too exciting to turn down so we dashed drunkenly home and plugged windorphins.com into our browser.
After 10 or 11 tries we arrived at the site and discovered that Windorphins are a "natural byproduct of eBay" and are the hormonal result of a victory. The site features studies, celebrity comparisons ("Who's got more Windorphins?"), an opportunity to make your own "Windorphs" (like Weemees, except in your bloodstream!) -- and of course a place to conduct searches on eBay.
The campaign wasn't super-imaginative but we're fairly sure it's more successful than a lot of online efforts out there, mainly because eBay advertises outdoor. Which brings up a good point: just because you're running an online campaign doesn't mean you should only advertise over the internet.
H&M, the low-cost clothing brand for those who still want to feel high-end, isn't picky when it comes to selecting a figure to sport its duds.
Toronto has become the apparently unhappy host to a set of buses entirely H&M'ed-out, featuring transparently peppy messages like "Everyone on board is going to our new store!"
(We seriously doubt that, H&M. Seriously.)
Is it just us, or does this AIDS Walk ad just scream worker's revolution? Everytime we see it, we feel an irresistible compulsion to mobilize.
Visitors to the "top of the Rock!" (er, the Rockefeller building) in NYC may have noticed a really interesting spaceship-type thing on their way back down.
This strange little room, dubbed the Target Breezeway, can apparently sense the number of people wandering mystified in its midst and associates each person with a color that then generates distracting, if not dazzling, reactions along the walls.
Most of us walked around like zombies trying to place our palms on the occasional Target symbol that appeared. Every few minutes, and with enough warm bodies, the Breezeway lights up in a display that would put Times Square at New Year's to shame.
We've always maintained that the best way to ensnare a small population would be to draw them into a secluded space with shiny objects. The Target Breezeway is an ingenious way of demonstrating that possibility.
We were definitely sucked in.
If only New York's trains were actually this cool all the time. Deutsch (yes, they still do stuff) tricked out Grand Central Shuttle trains for Westin Hotels making the train interiors look like the Caribbean, the rain forest and Iceland. Very cool stuff. Check it out here.
- If you care, Facebook's heretofore "non-existent" ad rates have been leaked.
- Pepsi's Alan Pottash, the man behind many successful campiagns such as Pepsi Generation, Pepsi Challenge and all those celbu-commercials, died July 27 in LA at the age of 79.
- Toto's Times Square bare asses have been covered - quite creatively - following complaints from Reverend Neil Rhodes of the Times Square Church.
- This is what happens when an ad agency with just ten people and three accounts has too much time on their hands.
Here's an ad that's generating a bunch of icky reactions. Rekindling It phobias and sparking court jester jokes, apparently Pepsi will add a little (too much) color to lives that would otherwise fade into grayscale.
How in hell did this get past the pitch room? Maybe somebody thought lips in brand-colored trappings would be a natural nod to the distinctive Pepsi logo. And because we know somebody's going to step forward and go, "Hey, guys, obviously it worked because people are talking about it," we're going to roll our eyes in advance and STFU.
VLAN! drew our attention to this 3D billboard for the iPod (and iTunes), which is perched somewhere above the streets of New York. We can see a few album covers in our own collection, including Sinatra and Jack Johnson, which definitely gives the ad a double-take quality.
Is it just us, or does it look like the wee white device is vomming media? Guess that's apt.
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