Miele Outdoor Board Looks Photoshopped

Every ad blog today is loving this Mile vacuum cleaner billboard that illustrates the powerful suckage of Miele vacuums with the image of the vacuum cleaner pulling a hot air balloon out of the sky. It's a great looking billboard and a nice concept except we're not sure it ever physically appeared on a billboard. Look closely. The whole thing looks very Photoshopped. Anyone care to comment?

Poorly Marked Netflix Insert A Promotion For VH1

When the latest Netflix envelope arrived in the mailbox, it contained an ad on the inside sleeve promoting some sort of concert broadcast honoring Kiss, Queen, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. We saw that the broadcast was set to air Wednesday, May 31 at 9PM. Maybe we're just dumb, but we had to stare at the ad for several minutes before we figured out the broadcast was occurring on VH1. The logo was tiny and buried in a way that was very hard to see.

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Nutrition Label Delivers Homeless Message

With the health conscious continually checking the Nutrion Facts label of food packaging, the label seemed to BBDO Atlanta a likely place to put a message for helpthehomeless.com. We'd agree. AdArena, whose "sex sells" tagline sums up the entire industry, found this one.

Visa Funds, Leverages Starving Artists For Campaign

Now that Visa is in on the whole graffiti thing, graffiti artists might as well throw aways their Krylon, call it a day and move on to some new, yet to be tinged by marketers form of expression. Visa, with help from artist Trish Grantham is taking its "Life Takes Visa" to Greenwich Village in the form of of a giant wall mural with the tagline, "Life Takes Expression." Below the mural, Visa will display other artwork in the form of sculpture, furniture, fashion and more graffiti from artists Christopher Natrop, Jeff Soto, Andy Diaz Hope, Anne Faith Nicholls, AXIS, Erik Pawassar, Parvez Taj, Ron Reihel, Christopher Cuseo, Eric Joyner, Elizabeth Paige Smith, Charlotte Ronson, Dario Antonioni and Hayley Starr.

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IKEA Improves New York Bus Shelters

Curbed has noticed the recent bus stop installations that IKEA has placed around the New York City area making the bus a thing someone might actually want to use to get from point A to point B. Now if they could only do the same thing for cabs.

UPDATE: Deutsch, which created the campaign, informs us, "In preparation for Design Week in NYC, IKEA teamed up with Deutsch to make 'everyday fabulous' for New Yorkers. With more than 650 different experiences during this 5-day, city-wide guerilla marketing event (including padded park benches in Union Square, oven mitts in the #6 train, bus shelters designed for comfort and flair and doggie bowls for our four-legged friends) IKEA proves that good design can make every day even better."

Check out this page for some very cool images of the effort.

Sexual Relationship Improvement Billboard Refused

Anytime the subject of woman and orgasms arises, everyone jumps on the topic and goes nuts. Everyone's writing about a company called Surprise Parties which hosts parties for women to sell sexual aids and discuss means to rekindle their romance. Recently, Carr Knowledge, an agency with offices in Nashville placed a large billboard buy for Surprise Parties that contained the company's new headline, "Stop Faking It." Nashville outdoor companies CBS and Lamar have refused to accept the buy. The 41 other states Car Knowledge placed boards had no issue with the ad which features company's seven senior managers dressed in pink under the headline. The only skin showing on the board are hands and faces.

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Art Exhibit Created From Stolen Outdoor Ad Structures

New York artist Jordan Seller has created a PublicAdCampaign gallery consisting of outdoor advertising frames he "removed" from various areas in the city to create a statement against the proliferation of outdoor advertising and to "reclaim public advertising space form commercial forces." In a statement, Seiler said, "New York City's public environment is a carnival of commercial influences and private concerns. Each step brings new desires and unwanted needs. By replacing public advertising with artwork, PublicAdCampaign temporarily alleviates a fraction of this burden while attempting to cultivate more personal interactions between public individuals." He's got a point. See his work here.

Mini Supports Mother Nature

Here's a nice BMW Mini billboard sent to us by University of Texas Austin student Nancy Jeng on which the Mini has made room for mother nature by donating 2/3 of the billboard space to The Nature Conservancy.

All Drapes Buses With Clothes

In a move far more effective that a typical "All gets your clothes cleaner" before/after :30, All Detergent is staging a promotion in New York over the next two weeks that has two buses, draped with dirty laundry roaming the streets of the city. People who see the bus can text message All and enter a sweepstakes to win $200 and a $5,000 grand prize for a shopping spree. A website accompanies the promotion and has videos, product info and a bus route map to make it easier to spot the vehicle.

Outdoor Companies Continue to Lack Common Sense

In the ongoing saga of documenting marketers' and outdoor companies' seemingly care free attitude regarding an modicum of common sense when it comes to positioning competitive advertisers, our eye on street, Bucky Turco, sends us yet another awkwardly placed set of outdoor posters. This time, two watch companies vie for attention on the same public phone booth. While we can't imagine anyone still uses a public telephone, that certainly hasn't stopped people walking past them. Wake up and smell the competition you knuckleheads.