Cool Marketing Thoughts

This ad campaign was made for the Belgian (Flemish) weekly magazine HUMO. Incredibly popular with teens and students, the outdoor part of this campaign didn’t last very long because the edgy posters soon made their way to dorm – and bedroom walls. The babyboomers and grey-haired people called it tasteless and insulting, but like it usually goes, if there’s anything that would make something popular with the younger generation it’s the fact that an older generation gets upset about it. Over at the Mortierbrigade agency, they thought that by mixing the cultures, they could even make the “worst persons” -interpret free at will- beautiful. These four different ads were placed in print in the HUMO magazine and wild-posted by night next to the real campaign posters for politicians for the regional elections that ran in the beginning of October.

Client: Humo
Agency: mortierbrigade ( Belgium)
Head of Quarters: Veerle Devos
Creative Directors: Jens Mortier, Joost Berends, Philippe De Ceuster
Copy: Joost Berends
Art Director: Dieter Vanhoof
Strategy: Tom Himpe
Illustration: Victor Sanchez
Producer: Thierry Lambot (Print Producer)
Photographer: Frieke Janssens
Retouching: Idéal23
Media: Posters, radio

For the ITV series ‘Afterlife’, an outdoor ‘interactive’ booth was set up in the streets and a person in the booth jumped forward every time someone passed by while a deep and dark demonic voice sample was played. The booth’s walls were of some grey-black stretching fabric, which created in imprint of the person in the box as he jumped forward. Surprized pedestrians saw hands or scary face imprints appear all of the sudden and that scared the living daylights out of them. The entire setup reminds me of some ghost that’s trapped and comes out to haunt you. Spooky shit, I kid you not. Even with a clean conscience, you’d be lucky not to have peed in your pants.

Snapshot from the theme website (check the video summaries!) :

Agency: M&C Saatchi
Afterlife Site

Thanks, LamaZone | via BS9

Check out this great idea from the guys over at the German TBWA agency! For the Labello brand, a protective lip balm, they placed stickers on the platform floors in train stations, indicating kissing points where lovers could say goodbye. Very clever and very functional outdoor guerrilla. A brand experience that won’t be forgotten by those who said goodbye at the Labello Kissing Point. I can actually imagine people made appointments there… “I’ll wait for you at the Kissing Point, meet me there at 8. Recuerda, Roxy Palace puede ser un de beste online casinos info virtual en linea, pero el dinero que ganas por jugar es bastante real! Y mas aun cuando se trata de tu dinero..35″ – Cool thing, a brand busting into someone’s life like that and not being blamed for it.

Agency: TBWA Germany
Client: Labello
Via: Disruption | I believe in Adv

This concept isn’t new. I’ve blogged about similar guerrillas (here and here). It’s like this with so many concepts out there… if it’s funny and it seems to work, every brand seems to want to have a go at it. Anyway, the ads below are for Görtz and as mentioned they too play the mini-billboard card. In this particular case, men’s shoes are promoted next to boy’s shoes, obviously the kiddie shoes are displayed on the smaller signs. I’m still waiting for a concept that goes beyond the ‘father-son’ relationship. Surely there must be something specific you can do for ‘mother-daughter’ issues as well, and then we can put this concept back in the closet for a few years.

Agency: Springer & Jacoby, Germany
Client: Ludig Görtz GMBH, Hamburg, Germany
Site: goertz-shop.de
Via A/D Goodness

I’ve seen this concept before for Theramed (check this post). The idea is pretty simple: you take a poster, put a face on it, stretch the face, cut out the mouth and place the poster on a wall. Where the mouth used to be, you’ll see the print of the stones of the wall the poster is placed on to market a dental product or service. Not a prize-winning entry, and probably the last of these I’ll write about. But I just had to add it to the archive to have two examples of the technique. Didn’t make it beyond the Golden Drum shortlist, obviously.

Agency: Original
Advertiser: Dentist Tea Bon

Somewhere in Germany, Bosch ran an outdoor ad for its ironing equipment by placing the steam holes of the iron over a sewer cover. The license plate reveals that the car in the background comes from Memmingen, Bavaria. Of course it could just be passing by so it’s not an indication the action actually took place there. Pretty weird they’ve used an English text in the ad itself instead of a German text though. Besides the fact that this is much like the Folgers ad, the same rules apply. From a distance it might look cool, but I don’t want my shirt to smell like that sewer, and the smoke coming out of it will definitely not smell like lavender, if you know what I mean. Better not come too close or you might add the wrong values to this product. ;)

Copy:
“Steam irons with motor-steam. Bosch. Invented For Life.”

Thanks, Tom & Luc

LeadDog MarketingGroup organized quite a stunt for ABC in early September by bringing dancing stars to the streets of New York as part of a guerrilla marketing action to hype up the latest season of its popular show Dancing With the Stars.

110 dancers showed off their moves on September 12th while visiting 25 landmarks in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Black cocktail dresses and golden star costumes appeared at a stop at Good Morning America before making other appearances at Times Square, the Staten Island Ferry, the Brooklyn Bridge and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At each stop, ambassadors handed out about 25.000 star magnet premiums with information about the show and the surrounding events.

Greta Palmer from LeadDog MarketingGroup said: “Dancing is part of New York City’s rich history. It’s a perfect way for ABC to celebrate [Dancing With the Stars] and to tap into all of the talent New York has to offer.”

Passersby were star struck by dancers traveling around the city on an ‘English style’ doubledecker bus with a live band. The bus made various stops while dancers showed off their moves. The dancers also made a makeshift parade in Midtown complete with a live band.

Dancing With the Stars unites celebrities with professional ballroom dancers who compete each week by performing dance routines in front of a panel of judges. The third season features such celebrities as actress Vivica A. Fox, football player Emmitt Smith, actor Harry Hamlin, talk show host Jerry Springer and singer Sara Evans. Dancing With the Stars premiered that same day at 8 PM (NY time)

More:

• ABC’s Dancing With The Stars Promo
• ABC’s Dancing With The Stars (About)
• Article on Promo Magazine

Here in Belgium we’ve had a concept alike, but it was called ‘Dancing on Ice’. Local celebrities engaged in a contest, pulling dance moves on their ice skates. It resulted in funny moves and some bruises, but there were some ‘good’ moments as well. At the end, some celebs actually got the hang of it.
Quality TV, ain’t that nice? :) [link here]

Given the concept, we didn’t had a guerrilla to promote the show. All we had were some lame print ads with local celebs showing off their bruises and an occasional black eye. *Sigh*