Category: Advertising

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Best print ads of 2012–13

See some of the winners from the Press Lions at Cannes…

01 Grand Prix: Apple iPad mini

Agency: TBWA/Media Arts Lab, Los Angeles
These iPad mini ads, released late last year, were placed on the back covers of several national magazines—including Time, Wired and The New Yorker. The tablet is shown actual size, with its display featuring that magazine’s front cover.

Grand Prix: Apple iPad mini

 

02 Two Gold Lions: Penguin Audiobooks

Agency: McCann, Mumbai
This campaign turned famous authors into headphones.

2 Gold Lions: Penguin Audiobooks

 

03 Two Gold Lions: Sunlight Dishwasher Detergent (Unilever)

Agency: Lowe, Bangkok, Thailand
Get that pig off your plate with Sunlight. An average idea, perhaps, but the illustrations are impressive.

2 Gold Lions: Sunlight Dishwasher Detergent (Unilever)

 

04 Gold Lion: Comedy Central

Agency: Grey, Buenos Aires, Argentina
These ads are an homage to Mad magazine’s “fold-ins.” Fold the page to meet the dotted lines… comedy ensues.

Gold Lion: Comedy Central

 

05 Gold Lion: Dove beauty products (Unilever)

Agency: Ogilvy, São Paulo, Brazil
What follows is one of the drawings from the famous “Real Beauty Sketches” campaign, which won the Titanium Grand Prix this year. At left is a woman as described to a sketch artist by the woman. At right is the same woman as described by a stranger.

Gold Lion: Dove beauty products (Unilever)

Courtesy Tim Nudd, Adweek

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Affordable 3D outdoor

PosterProps offer outdoor marketers a cost-effective 3D solutionMetromedia Technologies, Inc (MMT) announced today an exclusive partnership with PosterProps, the developer of a patented lightweight, digitally-printed material that clips over posters to create a spectacular 3D prop. PosterProps can be fashioned into any shape or size, and unlike traditional hard props, require no special equipment or crews to install, reducing both time and expense. The billboard or poster inflates on-site and installs by using existing installation crews without specialist equipment in under 30 minutes.

The best news for outdoor marketers is that this translates into lower costs than traditional outdoor “spectaculars.”

Tony Gearty, CEO of PosterProps said: “We are delighted to have found a partner of MMT’s caliber who share our vision of growing a market using our innovative and affordable props, which means so many more billboard locations can now justify a 3D offering.”

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Starbucks changes logo

Starbucks logos through the yearsIn March Starbucks will celebrate its 40th anniversary and rollout a “new” logo  (not actually new—a stripping away of the word ring, leaving the familiar siren unchanged but now in green).

Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ chairman and CEO, writes in an announcement on the company’s website, “we’ve given her a small but meaningful update to ensure that the Starbucks brand continues to embrace our heritage in ways that are true to our core values and that also ensure we remain relevant and poised for future growth.” By removing text from the logo, “international ubiquity”  and an exploration into non-coffee business ventures must have been listed on the team’s creative brief. But overall, reaction from the rank and file has not been positive. A typical comment on the site reads, “This gold card user isn’t impressed!”

Mike Peck, senior creative manager at Starbucks and his creative team admitted modifying the brand identity “was the project of a lifetime.” The logo was broken down into four main parts—color, shape, typeface and the siren. Peck and his team found the answer in simplicity.

In 1971, the company began selling coffee beans and spices in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. By 1992, the company became publicly traded.

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Noisy SunChips bag

SunChips 100% compostable bagIt took biochemists four years to develop the compostable bag for SunChips, distributed by US snack manufacturer Frito-Lay. And it took consumers a few short months to reject the invention, taking their gripe—that the bags are “too darn loud”—to the internet and that all-important sounding board, Facebook. The packaging is a marvel of molecular technology, made entirely from plant material. Despite its brittle texture the bag is remarkably strong. After the launch, I tested the packaging myself while dining at a local sandwich shop. True, the bag does crackle, not unlike the sound of glass breaking. But to remove it from the market because the bag doesn’t “make the right sound” seems a knee jerk reaction to fussy consumer focus groups and grumblers. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that sales of SunChips declined every month since the introduction of the new bags. American capitalists demand a quiet, yet compostable, snack bag.

One would hope given half a chance, snackers would become accustomed to its sound and feel, and who knows, perhaps other chips would follow suit. How many plastic chip bags clog up the nation’s landfills each year? I do not have those numbers handy, but I’d guess in the millions, and at 100 years per bag to degrade, that’s a lot of waste.

My solution is groundbreaking: empty the chips from the bag into a bowl, plate, or napkin, and discard the bag… (And concessionaires should avoid selling SunChips at concert venues or movie theaters!)

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Urban Outfitters’ new “branding”

Urban Outfitters websiteHot on the heels of the Gap’s infamous lazy logo redesign (since withdrawn) comes another epic fail, Urban Outfitters. Usually reliable for being ahead of trends in clothing design, merchandising and communication, the apparel giant unveiled a clunky new look for its logo and website. The logo is a masterpiece of asymmetry and plainness, while the website’s sidebar navigation willfully mixes extended and condensed typefaces. Many critics have cited the logo’s similarity with Word Art examples found inside Microsoft’s Office suite, enabling amateurs everywhere to curve and bend type to create their own corporate logotype.

I would bet that by year’s end there will be an “emergency” logo design revamp, because this dog won’t hunt!

UPDATE
Since this was posted, UO has changed to a similarly bizarre branding scheme—at least for its website. This time round, clearly the same retail marketing team are conjuring 1991 with all its dots and squiggles. What do you think? Leave a comment below…
—Scott

Urban Outfitters 2013 home page

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A look back at the UPS whiteboard

UPS whiteboard guyNearly three years ago, shipping giant UPS launched its “whiteboard guy” campaign. The guy—with distractingly long hair—demonstrates various features of UPS’s services by drawing on a board with a brown marker. (Perhaps creative inspiration came from FOX television’s hit hospital series, House M.D., whose main character played by actor Hugh Laurie uses a whiteboard to great effect.)

The “guy” is no actor but Andy Azula, the creative director at the Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia. According to Azula, he pitched the idea to the client with himself at the whiteboard. “[UPS] liked the idea and went to work to try to find someone to talk and draw like I did in the demo.” When UPS left the decision to consumers in a focus group, they picked Azula.

UPS announced that New York’s Ogilvy & Mather has since taken over the account, not due to lack of success, however. According to spokesman Norman Black, UPS wants an agency with global offices, and the Martin Agency only maintains U.S. operations. Martin has handled the UPS account since 2001 and is responsible for its “What Can Brown Do For You” tagline. (This bizarre tagline could be fodder for a blog post of its own.) The whiteboard tv spots were widely spoofed on YouTube, and, as the sincerest form of flattery, on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

This story has an ironic musical footnote. The soundtrack for the tv campaign is the instrumental intro of the song, “Such Great Heights,” recorded by electronic indie pop band The Postal Service. The group is so named because its two members—Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard—produced much of its songs by collaborating remotely via the United States Postal Service. (Not by UPS, apparently).

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Does AT&T “rip off” artist Christo?

AT&T campaign and "The Gates" by Christo

Months ago I began noticing AT&T’s recent campaign, “Rethink Possible.” I was immediately struck by its similarity to the work of environmental artists Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude. In the tv spot, people are seen draping various American monuments with massive sheets of orange fabric. It bears an undeniable similarity to pieces by the artists, specifically their 2005 installation “The Gates” in New York’s Central Park. (In the image seen above, compare the top image from AT&T’s spot with “The Gates” by Christo). The draped fabric was a metaphor for AT&T’s broad cellular phone “coverage” in the United States. (Click here to view the spot.)

Christo and his lawyer filed a complaint with AT&T, and the company has since added a disclaimer to the end of the commercial stating, “The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with AT&T.” (One could imagine the two parties arguing over the type size of the disclaimer; it is indeed rather prominent.)

Christo made a splash in the 1980s while I was a youngster living in Miami. Christo’s “Surrounded Islands”—an installation where the artist surrounded eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay with giant pieces of floating pink polypropylene—was best viewed by helicopter, and dazzled us for two weeks.

Special thanks to Huffington Post for its assistance with this story.

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“I put that $#!+ on everything!”

Frank's RedHot sauce“I put that [splat] on everything!” That’s the message in the latest tv and radio spots for Frank’s RedHot sauce—its delivery is as bold as the product. The juxtaposition of the typical, bespectacled old gran spewing a barely-concealed, vulgar turn of phrase is the thrust behind a recent campaign for the spicy condiment making the rounds on YouTube. Which, of course, is what UK company Reckitt Benckiser—the current marketer of Frank’s—is banking on.

Using bold language in media is certainly not a new concept, but just how many people are complaining? The Oxygen cable television network presents a series called “Dance Your Ass Off.” One of Oxygen’s execs, Jason Klarman, admits: “The title is a little bit controversial… in cable, almost anything that is successful is usually a little polarizing.”

So in an era of media saturation, branding experts have to be “bold” with hopes of creating a memorable message. But certainly boldness employed by a cable tv network aimed at young women is less risky than doing so with a mainstream supermarket product, likely to be purchased by a wide spectrum of consumers. However, hot sauce buyers seem to be smiling at the message and continue to place Frank’s among the top leading hot sauces in the world.

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The logo is (not) in the bag

Bottega Veneta handbagAre you a patrician, parvenu, poseur, or prole? Old money or new money? A recent study by the USC Marshall School of Business examines levels of wealth, social status, and wealthy consumers’ desire to associate with those in their own caste. After studying preferences of luxury goods, the authors sorted consumers into four categories according to the subjects’ affinity for “loud” goods or “quiet” goods. The categories are:

  • Patricians — wealthy consumers who prefer quiet goods that only other wealthy can recognize. (The $2,000 Bottega Veneta handbag shown above is an example; the logo appears only on the inside.)
  • Parvenus — wealthy consumers who desire status and flaunt loud luxury goods in the face of the less affluent. (Many Gucci products sport screaming logos, as do Louis Vuitton’s.)
  • Poseurs — consumers who can’t afford luxury goods, yet buy counterfeit luxury goods to “emulate those who they recognize to be wealthy” (e.g., that “Rolex” watch offered for sale by the man on the sidewalk.)
  • Proletarians — those “not driven to consume for status’ sake”

These findings will present challenges for marketers of luxury goods. USC’s study reveals that shrieking designer logos may actually reflect a lower price point than their more subtle counterparts. The authors call upon manufacturers to develop subtle cues to distinguish the brand, such as Gucci’s use of bamboo rather than its insignia. Also, ubiquity may in fact tarnish the brand and promote loss in value. And finally, the study recommends marketers resist the “pyramid” approach to luxury and to consider marketing to all consumers.

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Hotel photo fake-outs

Amateur photographers/contributors to the hotel review website The Oyster visit luxury hotels worldwide to serve as consumer watchdogs. Are the hotels’ own websites, public relations materials and brochures accurately portraying their accommodations? Numerous side-by-side photo comparisons prove otherwise.

Some examples are subtle, while other photos clearly appear doctored, are the victim of the stylist, or are shot through the lens of obfuscation. Examples include missing room accoutrements, crashers of “private” beach weddings, rooms with an unintended view, hot tub-sized pools cropped to appear larger, crowded beaches rather than tranquil views, or traffic signals and signposts removed from exterior façade shots.

The point of Oyster’s posts is to keep hoteliers honest, and to provide real-life visual documentation to augment typical hotel reviews, so its members “can see the truth before they book.”