Business in Your Face
What better way to grab attention than to send a giant business card to potential clients – a simple and straightforward but seldom used method to inconvenience your target audience. Sent by courier straight to the front desk of various corporations. To some, this effort may appear to be almost silly but is makes a lot of difference between being overly creative for creative sake and being creative for effective sake.
As opposed to tacky direct mailers or conventional ones that tend to get ignored, some solutions to tricky problems are often glaringly simple that we ignore them. This is one of those that adopted a simple solution for a simple problem, fuss-free and effective.
Strength in a string
As advertisers, we often need to find new ways to work around the same old problems, with the same old set of mediums (and budget). Boring as it sounds, it really isn’t the case at all. Targeting corporate individuals in corporate settings is often a challenge, especially for direct mailers which tend to get lost in the mail even before reaching the intended recipent.
Faced with such a problem, a smart solution to fix that would (possibly) be to catch their attention with the envelopes instead. Of course although that was not exactly Pantene’s primary intention, it still is a good idea to exploit. Whether it be sponsoring envelopes which contain totally irrelevant content that HAD to arrive in the recipent’s hands, or designing a direct mailer, the devil is indeed in the details.
For Pantene, the brief was simply to emphasise its branding about strong hair and at the same time deliver their latest product range and related information to clienteles. By designing the back of the envelope to exaggerate hair strength from pulling at a string, it definitely caught the attention of consumers and by far – is one marketing idea that hasn’t been used much.
Print what you speak
Seeing the ecological awareness in recent years, companies and individuals have grown in wit and ideas to promote their “pro-green” efforts even in corporate branding. Simple as it appears to be, the idea of creating just a self inking stamp for namecards is really clever. Working particularly well for this ecological friendly company, every employee would (likely) have a stamp and ink them on recycled paper or anything within reach. Interesting and impressionable, its bound to stick in clients minds long after a meeting.
Business Cards
Who said corporate identity had to be boring?
Business cards – often overlooked and undermined as a stepping stone to creating great first impressions can go guerrilla too. Wit never goes down unnoticed with any worthy client (regardless of how brainless the product is).
Headhunting Agency – An edible paper card that would make perfect sense since all evidence needs to be destroyed!
Couple’s Therapist – Desined to be a definite ice breaker.
Physical Trainer – Elastic Card which practically says ‘WORK IT’.
2nd hand store – The guerrilla of the lot. Personally, my top favourite for a simple, subtle, witty business card. Its this spirit of nonchalence that totally gives any design a WOW factor.
Yoga Trainer – As interactive and casual as it can get, this card is bound to stay in the hands of any client untill… he has to better use for them.
New York Underwater
Nothing stirs the mind like a good swim and being swept into the whole Ad experience. HSBC wanted to bring into awareness their initiatives to be carbon neutral and by placing an arial view of the city into a pool, it created both the interactive and visual impact that is not soon forgotten on the effects of global warming.
Bus Ticket Namecards
For an industry that eventually would need to be eco-friendly, it kills 2 birds in 1 stone when recycling is part of its corporate shoutout.
Belgian bus company De Lijn has changed their corporate namecards to be printed behind bus tickets in a friendly tone, saying ‘With this ticket, you can always reach me.’ Definitely a topic starter for meetings but let’s just hope the clients don’t mistake them for thrash too soon!
via AOTW