Cool Marketing Thoughts

There was something the street guerrilla of Mr.Clean reminded me of. I just couldn’t picture in my head where I’ve seen this before. There was something familiar about the campaign. So I’ve been digging in my collection of guerrilla ads and it turns out Procter & Gamble already played this card in Eastern Europe. The weird thing is, back then it was for oral hygiene (Blend-a-med Whitestrips) and it was deliverd by Saatchi. The ad execution was in Poland. I wonder if Grey Worldwide GmbH / Duesseldorf knew. I also wonder what P&G thought about this, receiving almost the exact proposal for two of their brands by different agencies. :)

The purpose: to find a unique way to build awareness of the unique form of Whitestrips and position them as the most efficient dental whitening product.

The Background: the drab, grey and urban environment in Poland after wintertime is a good backdrop to any form of renewal or ‘whitening’.

Solution: whitening the stripes in a pedestrian ‘zebra’ crossing in two stages. First stage: one stripe was painted white and the brand name was added with following tagline: “Sponsored by Blend-a-med Whitestrips”. In the second stage, one week later, the rest of the stripes were painted.

Result: Full integration between the unique form of the product and the medium (the stripes). The action left a lasting benefit for the community – the stripes were left white.

Agency: Saatchi&Saatchi

There’s something about ads for toys that really touches me every time I see them. Maybe it’s because I’m still longing for the days I could play around without worries and not a care in the world. Maybe it’s the innocence or the childhood dreams. Maybe I’m just becoming soft and want to have kids of my own to play with and teach them about life. I don’t know. Then I always wonder if this sort of ads is actually targeting kids or the grown-ups who recognize a certain situation and want to project those feelings onto the kids for whom they’re going to buy the toys. I think it’s a bit of both. This ad is so simple, yet so loaded with stories and dreams. I love it. The power of imagination is one of the greatest motivational factors to help increase sales, without any doubt. Seeing this ad brings up all types of stories from Jules Verne’s ‘Secret of the Nautilus – 20.000 miles under the sea’ to the magnificent ‘Das Boot’, a book by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, which I’ve read when I was 12. I’m going to dream well tonight. :)

Type Of Advertisement: Newspaper
Category: Entertainment & Leisure
Title: Periscope
Advertiser: Lego
Product or Service: Lego Construction Blocks
Advertising Agency: FCB Johannesburg
Country: South Africa
Creative Director: Brett Morris
Copywriter: Lance Vining
Art Director: Lance Vining/Charles Foley
Photographer: Gerard Turnely
Typographer: Lance Vining
Account Supervisor: Joanne Donald
Advertiser’s Supervisor: Gavin Mansour

via MarketingPost

From the archive of The One Show comes this street action for Mr. Clean (in some countries better known as ‘ugly bald guy’ or Mr. Proper). Although I’m against any advertisement on dangerous places like this one, it’s a very recognizable and remarkable execution. Which is probably why it got a merit award for Innovative Use of Media (Outdoor). I think the streets are a dangerous place. I trust myself and a few others, but the other 99% of the people that cross my path are unpredictable and thus marked as potentially dangerous. If there’s one place where you’re not supposed to stand still to wonder what you’re looking at, it’s the middle of the road. This ad is maybe an exception on this general fact because it doesn’t use words but only a clear image and a nice pun. Mr. Clean gets things white. Really white. Almost everyone recognizes the bald hero that delivers a fresh scent, and the statement of the ultra white line on the zebra crossing is clear enough. I wonder if it the smell of lemon or summer flowers was added so you’d have a nice fresh breeze instead of exhaust gasses and smog when you crossed it. Now that would’ve been something.

Art Director: Jochen Heimann
Writer: Marlo Horn
Creative Director: Lars Riebartsch
Agency Producer: Kerstin Novak
Content Strategist: Carsten Huschert
Client: Procter & Gamble (brand: Mr. Proper)
Agency: Grey Worldwide GmbH / Duesseldorf

Timewaster of the day is this AXE Dry Pits Game, a simple branded Tetris game that was originally intended for a mobile campaign. The competition’s already over, but you can still play the game online, without having to register. In case you didn’t know how to spend your time, feel free to try it. I never made it passed level 5, but then again, I never really tried. I just liked the cute little PitMan. It’s an armpit with cute little feet. :)

Here’s the game site, where you can select ‘play without registration’ next to the password box.

And here are the really cute images of PitMan in action:

Check out AXE Pit Madness | Play The Game

These three ads are part of the AXE Touch campaign that ran a while ago. Nice work, as usual, and good for the collector archive I’ve been building here. :) I added the large sizes to Flickr, in case you wanted to download them. To see the commercials and play the advergame that also were part of this campaign, go here. If you finish the advergame, you’ll get to see a ‘limited edition’ commercial that never aired, but in facts it’s the extended version of the three exisiting clips.

A few months ago, a rather spicy marketing campaign kicked off to promote clothing. Shai Clothing made some interactive Quicktime movies with an innovative “pause to browse” technique and hot action to catch the viewer’s attention. Yeah, sex sells. We all know that. It didn’t take long for any followers to come up with a similar approach, this time for ‘techy stuff’. Electronic gadgets in an NSFW jacket await you if you go visit Cosmos’s Hitech Fetish catalog. All the images are downloadable as wallpapers, but I don’t think it’ll be wise to decorate your corporate environment with it. You’ve been warned.

Store: Cosmos, Austria
Thanks, Ben

Here’s some splendid art work from the archive of the Miami Ad School. This creation received an Addys award, but I’m sure it could’ve won much more recognition if it got sent to a few more shows. I like this ad, because my first impression was that it was going to be something for the 3rd world, or some organisation that helps local farmers in poor countries to build a better life. That’s what triggered my attention. However, when I clicked the thumbnail to check out the ad and read what it said, I was surprized that it was in fact publicity for Perrier, the crazy bubbly water.

Copy: “Perrier, Vital to Life”
Art Directors: Kevin Koller, Tushar Date

You just gotta love the way Panasonic advertizes the latest 50 inch plasmas. At first glance, these ads look so dull, but when you click for the large versions, you’ll see how truly funny they’ve made it seem. Very creative and a very original take on ‘offline television advertising’. The copy reads: “New 50 inch Plasma TV Viera HDTV. Bigger than the biggest thing you’ve ever seen. Panasonic, ideas for life.” and the ads were made by Lowe Porta, Chile.

Creatives: Kiko Carcavilla, Rafael Saits, Cristian Kemp
via AdsOfTheWorld