Where's The Dirt, Dude?
Our intrepid NYC informant, ex-bike messenger and publisher, Bucky Turco, points us to another ad campaign that has latched onto bike messenger street cred. Just a short time ago, Lincoln used real bike messenger's names without permission to promote their SUV. This time, Coors Lite has used bike messenger imagery on a large, lower Manhattan billboard. The billboard shows the messenger riding along, scraping ice off the billboard.
Turco tells us the ad looks OK until you look more closely and, if you know anything about bike messengers, things are a bit off. "At least they didn't make the mistake Lincoln made by actually trying to co-opt real bike messengers. It seems Coors was content with a softer, safer, and extremely unrealistic looking courier. Kudos to the art director for adding the dirt patterns on the messenger bag, too bad they missed the clothes and fingernails."
While most of us might not notice these details, to a bike messenger, they seem to be important. Turco was a bit put off by the way the messenger in the ad was portrayed saying, "...what self respecting bike messenger rides through the city without a lock and chain around his waist? Don't worry we won't get into the fingerless gloves, goofy helmet, and J-crew like model."
Ouch. Additional images here and here.
As flicker user Bahi P comments, in reaction to a British Airways billboard with the headline "Rarely is check-in as quiet as a mouse" accompanied by an image of an Apple mouse, "Rarely is one company's logo so prominent in another company's advert." We're sure there's a co-marketing agreement here but the commentary was too good to pass over.
GM (via Modernista! one assumes) is using street art to promote its new contradiction in terms, the Hummer H3. We suppose line extensions are the natural path for any product to take but a small Hummer just doesn't thrill the same way a big Hummer does. This street art was spotted by flicker user Runs With Scissors. The work was done by long time graffiti writers TATS CRU, Inc.
We'd be happy to link you to the H3 microsite but it's buried so deep under layers of fancy, slow loading Flash, accessible only from the Hummer.com front door, we'll spare you the agony. Take our word for it. It's there but it doesn't have near the amount of informative information as one might find in this Car and Driver pre-production review.
Several more anti-McDonald's billboards were spotted by flickr user Eric in SF over Memorial weekend in San Francisco. With the headlines "McSoylent Gold is Cattle" and "Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone Injected Cows Are The Mother of All Milkshakes," Billboard Liberation Front was quite busy.
While we knew the website that promoted an undersea train/subway from Paris to New York was a hoax all along, Adrants reader, Bruno points us to a story in LeJournalduNet which reveals the prankster to be a travel site called Voyages-sncf.com. Apparently, a supporting campaign has been launched which, today, revealed the truth behind the hoax and includes online and transit elements.
ANIMAL Magazine publisher Bucky Turco tells us he's heard from an industry insider legendary graffiti artist COPE2 has been hired by Time Magazine to bomb a billboard on Houston and Wooster in New York. We're told Fallon arranged the deal which calls for COPE2 to bomb the billboard with tags over a four week period culminating with the application of the Time logo and promotional copy. In a world where Paris Hilton sells hamburgers, the source comments, we shouldn't really be all that surprised staid Time, Inc. might do something like this. Full sized images here, here and here.
In a direct approach to getting the attention of GM CEO Rick Wagoner, Kidz Magazine has placed a billboard in Detroit with the headline, "Mr. Wagoner, why isn't GM talking to the people who make 60% Of The Family Car Buying DECISION? Go To http://MrWagoner.SincerelyScott.com for an Epiphany. Sincerely Scott." Scot is Scott Smith, publisher of Kidz Magazine, a magazine "written by kids for kids." While Scott cites GM itself will be able to confirm the figure, it's unclear what, exactly, that 60 percent represents. Some would say this is as an odd way to ask an advertiser for money, but we all know kids were born to beg and do hold great influence over their parents.
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Boing Boing points to Laughing Squid who covered The Billboard Liberation Front's culture jam activities Memorial Day in San Francisco when the group changed a billboard to humorously illustrate what some think McDonald's has come to represent. The billboard, with the headline, "To Serve Man," had an animatronic Ronald McDonald force feeding a fat kid. Laughing Squid has the whole story and tons of pictures.
OK, there's something just a bit too sexual about this billboard/ad headline which, we assume, is a promotional campaign for Greece. Oh never mind. It's just our sick mind at work. You may now return to your pre-Memorial day weekend Friday slack off.
While we're sure this technology's been around for a while, it's exciting to see it in use. Over the Preakness in Baltimore May 21, five planes delivered precise puffs of smoke to form the Geico logo. Commenting the planes looked to be computer controlled flying wing to wing, flickr user spike55151, who took this picture, dubbed the skywriting dot matrix clouds.
