Potatoes, closer than you think
A tunnel ambient by Lays chips saw real potatoes suspended from a patch of soil on the ceiling, as part of a campaign that shouted “Our potatoes are grown closer than you may think.”
We like it for its simple humour and quirky twist in execution, choosing the ceiling over the wall for the main attraction of the ad.
Speed Cameras for Anti-speeding Ads
Known only as ‘catchment devices’ speed cameras are seldom used in the event of promoting safe driving. The approach taken by a certain transport authority makes use of a speed camera that captures speeds at which the cars are driving at and makes them part of the message on a highway billboard, with a speeding consequence.
A clever use of copy however, for a static viewer but how much of it is getting into the heads of the drivers – this, only statistics will show.
Ads that speak savings
Under alternative medias and unconventional methods of advertising, there’s always one that makes good use of reverse psychology and the likes, to achieve their goal.
A recent low cost guerrilla by HomePro, a DIY company, does just that.
Making sense of it all with the consideration of medium cannot be better exemplified by this.
Try it on, in the mirror
It is relatively rare to see fashion items take on unconventional ways to advertise especially around the mall. Making use of instinctive vanity to spot mirrors, stickers of new product shots were blown up life size and stuck on mirrors, to let passerbys “try” the clothes.
As opposed to static images or traditional storefront displays, this is a passively interactive way to advertise, without incurring much additional cost, yet receiving increased public responses.
Dripping Juices
A good use of streetway ads are those that make full use of the medium and its surroundings. One simple example is a Orbit’s use of not just the paid adspace, but even the pole supporting it.
In the case of adshels too, the space underneath is creatively utilised in a simple yet effective manner.
Yet another showing of an unconventional take on conventional media!
Park at the Centre of Attention
Following the tiny leaf stuck into wing mirrors , Toyota’s iQ launches a ambient guerrilla playing on its parking ease. This time, set in Slovenia, life-sized cardboard cars were “parked” in public, printed with the tag – “Park in the centre of attention”. While such an idea is not uncommon, it is a practical solution for their problem of reaching a young urban population who spent their time out on the city streets.
Feel at home, when you’re on the throne
Lift wraps, cubicle wraps and basically any enclosed area that can be instantly transformed into another scene by changing the imagery, is by far the most effective in terms of personal visual impact. Although the reach at any given time is small, it has its unique advantage of a very concentrated attention to its ad.
Charmin, a toilet roll brand, chose to stickerise dul toilet cubicles and change existing toilet roll dispensers to their own. With a simple tag – “Feel at Home”, the idea was to let the user feel as comfortable as using their home toilet, hence reinforcing the brand as the choice product even at home.
The pictures surely do great justice to the visual and we must say – we really do feel at home just by looking at them.
Clean is the new Grafitti
“Di*sel – It’s no longer a dirty word”. That was the tagline Audi used for its TDI ambient ad, stencilled on pavements with reverse grafitti.
Created by washing off surface dirt with high powered water jet, it is technically not grafitti and on the contrary, rather eco-friendly.
If you have been in the know with regards to the use of reverse grafitti, it would not be much of a surprise since it use has been seen in various parts of the world, in more ways than one. However, most of these reverse grafitties played it down on the text and wit of the medium, instead focused on logos, branding or just street art. What’s really noteworthy is the creative word play with the word ‘Diesel’ and the fact that the car’s selling point is about being eco-friendly, and then using a cleaning medium to speak the point that it actually cleans.
It might take awhile to make sense of it all but we think its worth it.
Save Lives with 50cents
Taking interaction with posters to another level, is the Misereor Relief Organisation’s effort to raise funds and awareness for vaccinating children around the world against infections. Cleverly integrating a large syringe with a donation coin slot, the more coins it filled, the more vaccine there was in the visual. Complete with hand drawn doodle-like illustrations, the entire poster was a subtle yet effective way to encourage multiple small donations for a bigger cause.
The Haunt that never leaves
What a haunting sight it is to have a melancholic little child in red boots, standing at every corner of the road, as if to say “hi, do you remember me?”
The ambient campaign for road awareness began with the first 3 weeks of a young girl around the streets. 3 weeks later the message was revealed after much media coverage of the mysterious sighting.
It simply read “The Kids You Kill Never Leave You”. Impactful in a somewhat creepy way and arresting for its approach to create this awareness.
Fresh as Fish
Adshels have become more and more exciting and we could not be happier to know that these advertisers have also taken an unconventional approach when filing these adshels with their message.
One look at the ad and even children can tell what its selling. The picture doesn’t quite do justice to the live fishes swimming across the plate. Live Fish! What more could you ask for when selling the message of freshness?
We reckon its about the best we can find yet .
Create Space. Organise.
Yes.
We are fans of Ikea’s style of advertising and we aren’t ashamed to rant about it all the time.
This time, they’ve taken it to the stairs in an innovatively pleasant way to promote their storage solutions. Stickerising each step to be a neatly packed shelve, from the base of the stairs, it appears to be a chest of drawers with the words “Create Space. Organise.”
Only upon walking on the steps will you see colourful displays of clothes and whatnots and although we aren’t there we know we’d probably go “Oooooooh, nice.”
Superglue Holds
An interesting installation for Superglue sees a giant tube stuck onto a suspension wire of a bridge, obviously wanting to display its USP of super strength.
Quite an unusual sight to have along the dreary grey roads and perhaps this is all it takes for everyone to recognise the little tube as something really underratedly small but mighty.
The Ad That Watches You
Is this cool or what?
Amnesty International, known for their very creatively executed ambient efforts for awareness campaigns, has yet to disappoint for the cause against domestic violence.
The poster/adshel features a small photo of a man abusing his wife but when the viewer looks at it, a small camera detects the eye which is connected to the digital poster and after a brief, pre-programmed time delay, it changes into a photo of the couple pretending to be happy.
This drove home the message very strongly that domestic violence is often hidden from view and gave them a first hand experience of it in a non-intrusive yet interactive manner. Some people interacted with it for several minutes, with each contact leaving a strong impression. The ad was also picked up by the media and many blogs which were similarly intrigued by the campaign.
Seriously we can’t help but say this again – Is this cool or what?
Bleeding Billboard
The first rain after summer brings about the highest death toll on New Zealand roads. To curb that, a giant billboard was errected along the roads in that season.
The disturbing ad features portraits of children that bleed from the eyebrows, nose, ears and mouth when it rains.
The effect is startling and transforms fresh-faces into car crash victims above the strap line: ‘Rain changes everything. Please drive to the conditions’. When the sun shines they return to normal.
The billboard may be terrifying but District Council claims that since they went up over Easter – traditionally the worst time for fatalities because of the holiday rush and first heavy rains after summer – nobody has died.
Our take is that nothing has become too morbid for today’s society and perhaps the only way to work around it is to make ‘morbid’ work for its own good.
The Price for Vandalism
The awareness campaign against vandalism in Pamplona Town Hall, Europe was indeed an interesting one. To put across the message that the ‘monetary consequence of non-civic minded behavior was hefty’, bright pink price tags were left at likely vandalised areas, showing expensive prices.
It read – “Taking care of your city has no cost for you. Pamplona pays 1,500.000 euros”.
From dog poop on the grass to shelters, the awareness campaign was done at low cost but was covered by various media – newspapers, television, radio and online. It continued to obtain economic repercussion on the media at an estimate of over $16,000.
Benches – Part 3
Our third part of the ‘Benches’ feature continues to see a handful of interesting uses for adverting on a bench. Be it modifying the surrounding of the bench and leaving it untouched or entirely modifying the bench, they’ve all caught our the attention (and the public’s, of course).
Passive advertising, as we like to call it, for a ski lodge.
Not quite sure the effectiveness of this one but our take on it is that we could really do with the whole bench sometimes. Then again, it does acheive its purpose to convey the message.
This one, though not exactly a bench anymore, is a complete reworking of a bench in the product’s advantage. Probably birthed from fiddling around with the product after a long time, still good nevertheless.
The last of its kind – a bench sponsored by a dieting supplement. Interesting stuff we must say but perhaps a can of its beverage placed by it’s side would reinforce the brand recall better.
Like to see more exploration of advertising on benches?
Open-air
The Nissan “Ceiling Commercial” runs itself on the ceiling instead of the usual screen on cinemas. Reason being, its new USP is about how much more you can see with an open ceiling in the car. To complete the user experience, the commercial showed skyviews of a typical noon time drive from the top.
We think its a nice way to make use of cinema air time, unconventionally.
Beat The Downturn Billboard
The advertising world concluded that the biggest losers of an economic downturn are those who choose to cut their buck on advertisement. It seems that the Financial Times too, agrees with this.
Their recently spotted rundown billboards were in fact, specially commissioned to look as if they were torn down. It sends the message out to question the logic and wisdom of slashing marketing budgets in the downturn with a copy that reads – “Global downturn. What’s the first mistake businesses make?”
There is alot of symbolism and wit behind this simple act which definitely resonates with FT’s targeted audience. For one, the site provides factual evidence to suggest a comparison between 2 brands – 1 which took a cut in budget and the other which did not. The latter then proceeded to dominate its market for the next half-century.
Take a Peek
How sweet it would be to be greeted by a friendly zebra when you start your car, bright early in the morning. As compared to a leaflet for carwash, this is a pretty sight that is unlikely to go away unnoticed.
To communicate that Zoo Safari is not a common zoo, because the animals run free just like in a safari, they created electrostatic stickers containing animal pictures. These stickers make the visitor imagine what it would feel like to be so close to a wild animal, “up-close, no cages, more fun”.
Mentos makes the world go round
A recent mentos truck stunt took place, releasing red balloons resembling giant mentos. We’re not quite sure what else is up the sleeves of the mentos campaign but we hope it isn’t a hit-and-run stunt, since done by the ‘freshmaker’ because we really want to see more.
Apparently, it is part of their ‘Make your world go rounder’ campaign with various other stunts performed around the city.
Hoards of mentos stunt participants were clad in full white head to toe, seen bouncing on red rubber balls along the streets of Vancouver. They stopped at open fields, doing random acts and pretty much catching the public eye.
Although we aren’t too sure what is going on as yet, it seems like something we’d want to get our hands on, just to get a feel on the extensivenes of a new mentos campaign.
See more here
Melody Road
“Melody Road” in the Nagano Prefecture of Japan is a stretch of road that makes music when you drive along its safety speed limit. An awareness campaign by Dunlop tires, the melody is a resultant noise from different asphalt grooves on the road that makes noises in differnt pitches (think safety tracks/gutters). When driven at 40km/h, a melody is enjoyed from within the car and in turn, successfully makes drivers keep within speed limits – willingly.
When the road was opened to traffic, it picked up a fair amount of press coverage and turned out to be a successful safety campaign and tourist attraction, resulting in decreased accident rates and improved tourist traffic.
Although some may argue that this isn’t a completely new idea, it is still relatively unused, interesting and more importantly, a solution for an existing problem.
Watch the Honda Civic version done in America here
Strewn by the adshel
Given the constraint of having only a static adshel, how can it be transformed into something unusually attractive?
Fiji Travel puts a clever thought to the use of adshels by showing literally, the ease, speed and promise of a holiday. Almost as if to urge you to act on impulse to travel, the strewn clothes by the bus stop will definitely catch attention and instantly make good sense when led to the ad.
It is one of the first we’ve seen, an unusual way to make use of an adshel in an unconventional manner. How effective, we may not know but surey worth a note!
Ads on Board
For all the budget given to media advertising, why not make something creative out of it? A bus ad is more than just ‘a big moving adspace’ when you consider the medium-specific qualities of it to play around with. Opening and closing of the doors, placement of passengers by the windows, wheels and even the exhaust pipe.
This is what we call, making full creative use of ad space. It may take a fair bit of time, staring at sharks and then staring at buses. As opposed to staring at the brief on screen however, the results would be very much different.
Should the budget only allow a back panel, don’t let the exhaust pipe get away unnoticed.
This is just one of the reasons why creatives are special – they live just like every one else but see everything in a different manner.