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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Nokia’s Seated Hangman

07 Aug 2006

Nokia placed placed a pretty cool ad for the Nokia 3250 at the Binnenwegplein in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They used the large ad surface to display a message with a non-intrusive and minimal design. Additionally, the figure of a street music performer hanging of the wall provides quite a sympathetic reaction to the ones spotting it. The copy of the ad reads “A new turn in music”. It’s a conversation starter for sure. You can imagine the talks: “have you seen this man hanging at the Binnenwegplein?” Nice counter for the urban spam that surrounds us these days.

Thanks to Oriol Pascual from Sustainable Rotterdam who sent me the link. Visit his blog for an update about what’s going on in Rotterdam. It’s a solid read.

 

World Record Balloon Fight

05 Aug 2006

In Sydney, Australia, the ad agency Lava create a commercial for the new XBox 360. Nothing really special, you’d think, but no, au contraire mes amis. Attempting to capture the “real life gaming experience” they’ve created the world’s largest water balloon fight. Coogee beach was the place to be and it seems like they entire crew had a wonderful time. 2849 people threw 51.386 water balloons in this challenge and wrote a page in the history books. Okay, it was back in April, but I totally missed it… so here you go :)

XBox Water Balloon Challenge

Check out the Water Balloon Challenge | via AdRants

 

Ford In Ice

05 Aug 2006

It’s been a bit longer than a year since I first wrote about a promotional stunt for a car brand where they’ve cut an entire model of out ice. Well, about one later they’ve done it again. Different brand though, and still pretty impressive to see. To celebrate the success of the Ford Focus – the UK’s most popular car – Roelant de Waard, the chairman and managing director of Ford Britain, revealed a life-size six-and-a-half-ton ice-sculpture of the new Ford Focus Coupé-Cabriolet last month at a fair in the UK.

Ford Focus in Ice 1

Ford Focus in Ice 2

Ford Focus in Ice 3

The creation took about 160 hours of work, but the team of sculptors had to work in a giant freezer where temperatures where as low as minus 10°C (-50°F), so the shifts could be 40 minutes at max. It took two weeks to create it in total. The sculpture is made of 120 separate pieces of crafted ice, was dismantled and then reconstructed on the Ford stand and weighs about 6.5 tons. Cool. (source)

Related on Marketing Thoughts:

 

Nintendo GameBoy

05 Aug 2006

Splendid ads for Nintendo GameBoy Advance. I love the Photoshopping on these, they really got me laughing. It’s so funny how they bring the message across. You can click for the larger images to fully grasp the humor and it’s totally worth it.

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather (Singapore)

 

BMW Ads

04 Aug 2006

These are two ads of which I don’t have any credits. One is from a Russian site somewhere (I forgot where it was) and the other was just hanging around in my archive for over a year. Since I now have two ads for BMW that are creditless, I figured I might as well bundle them and throw them online. I really like the one with the girl peeing against the tree. It’s like ‘the most obvious thing’ someone would come up with when comparing a man to a woman. That one really got me laughing. The other one is just ’so-so’. Perhaps because I don’t understand the copy at all. The only thing I can imagine is that it has got something to do with eject buttons. Maybe the seats come off when the car is jacked, I don’t know. My guess is as good as yours.

Brings out the boy in you
“Brings out the boy in you”

Ejects something

Agencies unknown.

 

Since 1856

04 Aug 2006

Please tell me this is a joke. I mean… yeah umm what do I mean? This is probably the worst billboard ever made. I just can’t believe this. I’m hoping it’s a Photoshopped thing, but I got it by email with a claim it was for real. So umm… yeah, what can a man write about this? Wool is great? Kind of itchy though. Let’s classify this under “please don’t do this again”. As for the creative mind that came up with it: Get help. Quick.

Since 1856

Thanks, Steven

 

Mini Palms

03 Aug 2006

Heheh. I bumped into this billboard via Brent’s post about the new MINI campaign (which is the previous post on this blog), and I thought it was quite funny. I wonder if they’d have tied the palm trees to the billboard or pulled them down to the ground. Or would the trees have been a part of the execution? Either way, I think it’s great! I love it!

Mini Palm Trees

Agency: CP&B
via Brent

 

Update On The Mini Case

03 Aug 2006

A few days ago I wrote about a special ad campaign aimed for MINI-owners across the US. 150,000 drivers were to be contacted for a new campaign that will run in magazines such as The New Yorker and Maxim. The ads would be encrypted, so that only MINI-owners would be able to understand the message.

The packages have been sent out. Here’s what Adverlab said:

Every MINI owner was mailed a little black box containing a book entitled, “A Dizzying Look At The Awsomeness of Small.” At the end of the book is a “secret” compartment hiding a few gadgets that are meant to be used with upcoming advertisements. One of them happens to be the magic window decryptor capable of showing us the secret text.

Pretty regular, but still funny.

Magic MINI Toolkit
Image courtesy of Ian Cull from GBMINI.net

The message hidden in the ads took the MINI riders to a funny webpage called ‘Citizens for Fair Insect Treatment’, which then again would lead them (after entering a code in the menu on the right?) to the MiniTakesTheStates.com campaign site (which redirects to MiniUSA.com). A popup window for MiniTakesTheStates reveals signs of what is going to become an epic coast-to-coast 4000 mile road trip of which the registration is already closed. The trip is planned to start at the West Coast on August 21st and comes to its end at the East Coast at September 4th. Campaign by Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.

More pictures of the kit
More info at Brent | via Adverlab