Archive
how to harness the power of celebrities in TV ads – BMW’s 2015 Super Bowl Ad
this is what celebrity ads is all about and how its true power can be used in TV ads. this BMW ad first takes us to 1994 whenBryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, hosts of the Today Show showed on air they were being stumped by this things called the “internet” and what this thing “@” meant in an email address.
fast forward to today (no pun intended) and the pair is inside a BMW electric car showing us again that they are being stumped by the BMW electric car, having the same kind of discussion as to what the car is all about. the ad ends with Couric once again calling a staff member to explain what it is.
just brilliant advertising!
TBWA\Hakuhodo Ad Agency’s 3-D printed ice cubes – a classy, classic and fascinating creative idea that works
we were floored, our jaw dropped and a word in our mind keep popping up “wow!” when we saw this idea TBWA\Hakuhodo thought of for its client, Suntory Whisky – 3-D printed ice cubes that you put in your glass to enjoy Suntory Whisky. it was hands down, one of the classiest, classic and creative idea we have seen for an alcoholic drink.
it does present Suntory as a very classy and above its class kind of whisky. the exact image and impression one wants when you are a whisky brand.
Suntory Whisky 3-D Printed the World’s Most Incredible Ice Cubes
TBWA creates landmarks and characters in miniature
Advertising craft doesn’t get more delicate than this. Check out the crazy ice cubes TBWA\Hakuhodo created for Japan’s Suntory Whisky.
The agency used what’s called a CNC router (and a process that’s kind of inverse 3-D printing) to carve the designs, which ranged from the Statue of Liberty to the Sphinx to Batman and everything in between. (There even appears to be, perhaps presciently, a Cannes Lion in the mix.)
Miwako Fujiwara of TBWA\Hakuhodo said the CNC router was chilled at -7 degrees Celsiusto keep the ice from melting. The agency used an app called Autodesk 123D to capture the 3-D images and prep them for printing. “A touch of chilled whiskey polishes the surface of the ice and gives a beautiful shine to the sculpture,” Fujiwara added.
more pictures here : http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/suntory-whisky-3-d-printed-worlds-most-incredible-ice-cubes-163782
heineken puts it’s money where it counts – consumer satisfaction
this is one of the boldest moves we have seen in marketing and one very strong show of confidence on the quality and desirability of their product – heineken will give your money back if you do not like it. the basic promise here is that it is the best tasting beer. and if you do not like the taste, they will return your money. it is brave. it is great.
ad visuals that kill interest – gross out potential subscribers
we saw this ad at facebook. it is an ad for an iOS app where all you do is say the foreign words and the app will translate the words into your preferred language for you to understand what they mean.
that is potentially a great idea for an app except that the app is being sold using this visual in the ad.
i don’t know about you but to me nothing in that visual is pleasing or inviting. it is gross, scary and feels very, very painful. i don’t know how many FB users will find that visual appealing or enticing for them to go to the app store to buy the app because of that visual.
one of the principles in good advertising is visuals that work hard. one way to achieve that is have an image that visualizes the benefit.
yes, okay that visual does the latter – the visual is showing the closed zippered mouth is being opened for it to be able to speak. that is what the app is supposed to do – open the mouths of a foreign language so you can understand them. a closed zippered mouth is something we will not be able to understand.
while the zippered mouth being opened is what the app does, the choice of the zipper on the mouth goes beyond the message. the visual delivers another message which we think is more compelling and more powerful – that of pain and being grossed out. we can have a tagline that says “it’s so good you will kill yourself to get it” to communicate strong desirability but having a visual to execute that thought with something like someone blowing your brains out with a gun will not do it.
this ad forgets that there are other considerations other than accurately visualizing the message. a great ad is a combination of many components and each of these components while they should work well together, all should also help the ad sell. one of the components not working for the ad and in this case killing the ad will make the whole ad fail.
this is a WAWAM!
~~~mindscape landmark~~~
carlo arvisu
consumer data is king, consumer insight is the queen
“consumer-driven-data” – that is a principle in marketing that is central in any marketing or advertising plan. it is also often used and referred to in many marketing and advertising plans and yet in reality it is hardly used and even more often very few really know what it is and how to find it. it is in many ways something of one of the most “lip service” done in marketing and advertising (“strategic” is another lip service”).
here is one article we found at the Washington Post on fashion retailer Timberland where consumer data is king and was used to renew and in many ways reinvent the brand to a successful turn-around. while consumer data is king, the consumer insight is queen.
always, it is not enough to have consumer data, what is equally important and to some degree slightly more important is to know how to understand, interpret and translate consumer data into a consumer insight that is used in marketing and advertising plans.
it is in that bridge between consumer data and consumer insight where most marketing and advertising practitioners fail at or are weak at.
How Timberland used customer data to reboot its brand
STRATHAM, N.H. — There are few shoes more recognizable than theTimberland yellow boot. You know the one: The high-top styling, the sturdy-looking nubuck leather, the rubber lug sole to protect feet from sheets of rain or piles of snow.
But the durable boot — and the rest of Timberland’s footwear and apparel line — was having trouble weathering a fast-changing retail climate.
Timberland’s revenue was basically flat from 2006 to 2012. It was losing market share in the Americas, its home turf and most crucial market. And it was barreling forward with a confusing and slapdash patchwork of marketing and product strategies.
Here in the United States, it had become something of a hip-hop brand as rappers name-checked “Timbs” in countless songs. In Asia, it was thought of as a comfort brand; in Italy, it was more fashion-oriented. Still more customers perceived Timberland as gear for the rugged outdoorsman, the kind of guy who hikes in the woods for days with nothing but his backpack and his Eagle Scout skills.
“The brand had become stale in many ways, and the focus wasn’t there,” said Stewart Whitney, Timberland’s president.
In the past year, though, Timberland has staged an impressive turnaround, with salessurging 15 percent in the most recent quarter even as the broader retail industry has posted only modest growth. Its sales have improved in every global market and every product category, delivering a fatter profit margin — about 13 percent in 2014, up from 8 percent in 2011.
Timberland has revamped everything from its product design to marketing to merchandising strategies. And data science provided the fuel and the framework for each of its changes.
The company says that the cornerstone of the comeback has been a two-year customer study in which it collected data from 18,000 people across eight countries. In analyzing the trove of responses, Timberland was able to diagnose its problems and to zero in on its ideal customer — an urban dweller with a casual interest in the outdoors.
“Research wasn’t a driving factor as much in the previous 20 years,” said Jim Davey, vice president of global marketing. “It was kind of a product-driven organization.”
This data-driven approach was implemented after the family-run business was bought in 2011 by VF Corp., an $11 billion apparel company based in Greensboro, N.C., that has undertaken a similar analysis at other brands, including the North Face and Vans.
read the rest here : http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/01/02/how-timberland-used-customer-data-to-reboot-its-brand/
what is this queen? how do we define and how do we get this queen that is consumer insight?
1. consumer data is not consumer insight – results from consumer research, be it quantitative or qualitative is NOT yet consumer insight, they are just raw data on consumer information, attitudes or preferences. these are just raw data that needs to put into some kind of a mental machine that will churn own consumer insight. many confuse “consumer data” and “consumer insight” as one and the same as when they certainly are not.
for consumer data to become consumer insight, you need to put a few of them together, connect them into a sensible whole and get them to jump out of a trampoline. consumer insight is something that needs to leap out of something, a composite of many points where eventually what comes out is very different from what came in.
2. your experiences or observations, those of the advertising and marketing executives, from the client or from the ad agency is NOT consumer insight nor is it the penultimate consumer data – okay, fine what you or your client think may be part of consumer data and consumer insight, it is not in no way the whole thing or even the core of what consumer data and consumer insight is. a person or even several people’s points of view, experiences or observations are of course valid but they may not be what most of the consumers think and feel. they may or may not be the prevailing and most dominant among the target market. the real and maybe the painful truth is that we, those of us in marketing and advertising are NOT the target market or target audience. our views and experiences are at best anecdotal and taking them as THE consumer data and consumer insight is like playing russian roulette.
3. once the right consumer insight is discovered, it becomes magic where everything makes sense, it gains power on its own and everything flows – that is how powerful consumer insights are. once you find it, your marketing and advertising plan will flow very smoothly from start to finish. you will see that ideas, concepts and strategies build on each other, on to like a strong pyramid. that is how consumer insights are used – they become the core of what you do,
it is possible to have several consumer insights and several may be used in a marketing and advertising plan but there will be a very clear order of things where the weight of one is the shadow of the rest.
we have been witness to just how powerful a consumer insight is. finding it defines the success of a brand. do not use it as lip service, take it seriously, its discovery will make you.
~~~mindscape landmark~~~
carlo arvisu
Most Viewed Video Advertising Campaign Of 2014
Top Ten Most Viewed Video Advertising Campaigns of 2014
While First Kiss tops the chart, the other 9 places belong to well-known brands, veterans of successful marketing campaigns. 4 of the 10 most viewed ads revolved around the 2014 World Cup, with Nike, Samsung, and adidas attracting 306 million views between them. The average World Cup themed campaign ad generated nearly 3x the amount of average views for a branded video campaign compared to 2013.
- Wren’s “First Kiss”: True Reach of 156,670,932 views
- Nike’s “Risk Everything”: True Reach of 138,929,384 views
- Nike’s “The Last Game”: True Reach of 122,249,570 views
- Samsung’s “Galaxy 11 The Training”: True Reach of 78,130,824 views
- Always’ “#LikeAGirl”: True Reach of 60,281,400 views
- Turkish Airlines’ “#EpicFood”: True Reach of 59,549,152 views
- Budweiser’s “Puppy Love”: True Reach of 59,074,980 views
- Dove’s “Patches”: True Reach of 58,645,812 views
- Samsung’s “Official Introduction”: True Reach of 52,692,263 views
- adidas’ “The Dream”: True Reach of 47,828,815 views
source : http://www.reelseo.com/first-kiss-viewed-video-advertising-campaign-2014/
Wren’s “First Kiss” Overtakes World Cup Campaigns as The Most Viewed Campaign of 2014
read here : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wren-first-kiss-overtakes-world-140000694.html
Coca-Cola’s Fairlife Milk ads – sexist, sexy, senseless or strategic?
yes, you read it right – it is “Coca-Cola”. the drink company that we all know for its Coke drink in that familiar red colored bottles launched a brand called Fairlife, a milk product and the advertising campaign they launched it with is calling a lot of attention. the ads are called even by the company as “pin-up girls” and that is a great summation of what the ads are – they are a throwback to the 50’s pin-up girls of the Marilyn Monroe type of pictures and posters US soldiers used to have in their lockers while at war in Europe. for these ads, pin-up means sexy girls showing a lot of flesh, long legs in particular but this time liquid milk is covering the bodies of the pin-up girls.
first time we read about it, the article described the ads a “naked girls covered with milk”. that of course caught our attention but when we saw the ads, we thought the description was too much hyped with imagination, “naked girls” is something that did not come up to our minds. yes of course with the liquid milk as the clothes of the women, it means the girls are naked under the liquid milk. but then again aren’t we all naked under our own clothes?
the over-imagination aside (pun intended), we looked at the ads and asked ourselves several questions:
are the ads sexy? no, they are not. sure they show long legs and the women in them have bodies that will allow them to join beauty contests but sexy is not what we see in the ads. it did not inspire us to think sex when we saw the ads. what we saw were good looking women in the ads. not seeing sexy or sex in the ads may be a function of the proliferation of images in media and the internet that are far more sexual and body baring than these ones. heck, we recently saw the magazine cover of Kim Kardashian in full nude. compare these images to that and these are not at all sexy. it also helps that the over-all concept of the ads is the 50’s pin-up girls. it did not make me think of my grandmother but there is a certain playfulness and innocence when you think of the 50’s now that it is 2014.
are the ads senseless? no it’s not. it does make a good argument for being sensible as an ad. what it is doing is equating health with looking good. health to many of us humans is invisible and we need a lot of help to visualize health. doctors and science give us a picture of “healthy” through lab tests and numbers that show how much cholesterol we have in our body. but after a few seconds of seeing those numbers, we quickly forget how healthy looks like. seeing abs, muscles and in this case well proportioned bodies and long legs are excellent visualizations of “healthy”. they are memorable images that we usually keep in our minds as our goal in life and as we age.
are the ads strategic? yes, we think it is. the choices of the elements in the ads – liquid milk, nice looking bodies, women and health do have a certain strategic flair to them. this is the first time we are being asked to look at milk and what it does to our health in this way. what we are used to are children, cows and nature. the imagery is very eloquent.
are the ads sexist? first, the word “sexist” is one that can be very confusing to many. perhaps because it is a word that has been used as a weapon too many times and that it carries so much emotions that the real meaning of it has been hidden from many of us. if your target audience is women, it is not sexist at all. milk is a health drink and it is most useful for women for its calcium content and its importance to women. it can’t be sexist if women are the brand’s primary target market and target audience.
in essence this is what we are saying – we all got to chill! and yes, we do like the ads.
Nike’s Together-LeBron James TV ad works with its powerful visuals
TV is a visual medium and so are TV ads. TV ads are at their most powerful when the visuals deliver. this Nike ad of LeBron James and for the city of Cleveland has exactly that – powerful visuals.
it is a welcome back to Cleveland TV ad for LeBron. LeBron is front and center getting his teammates to join hands as a team to play for the city. soon enough people in the stadium and the rest of the city join hands with LeBron and the team. the ending is the idea that the whole city of Cleveland has joined LeBron and the cavaliers on their quest for the championship of the NBA.
the ad in black and white is an excellent choice. it ads a lot of drama and grittyness to the ad. the only weakness we see in this ad is the copy. it’s a long ad, it’s almost 2 minutes and the copy was too repetitive and lacked depth and interest for the time that the ad was running for. it’s either the copy was too sparse or the commercial too long. either way, we thought the ad somewhat suffered with poor copywriting.
the poster that was shown at the end was just as powerful too. the poster says it all and says the message very well.
neastea’s layers upon layers of leap of logic TV ad that fails – “say yes”
we think the intent of this ad is to be cute and amusing, then after that to be memorable to build a brand image for nestea. but on the road to achieving those goals, we stopped way ahead of it – we didn’t understand the TV ad.
we did not get the ad after seeing the ad once for the first time. it took us a few more times watching it to understand what was going on in the ad.
ads that you don’t get on the first time you watch it are weak ads. good ads work even after seeing it only once. that didn’t happen for us on this ad. and even after seeing the ad several times more and being able to finally get what the ad is all about, we still didn’t get the ad.
there was too much leap of logic in the ad. layers and upon layers of them.
what we didn’t understand was why did the male lead who was making the presentation break into song on top the table after the boss who was seated at the end of the table saw a picture of his daughter with the male lead on the screen?
we got it that the male lead mistakenly showed a picture of himself and a girl on the screen who turned out to be the daughter of the big boss.
why did the male lead break out into a “say yes” song? and even the people around the conference table also broke out into song?
nestea a tea drink positioned here as having the ability to cool things off in “hot situations” apparently led the male lead to sing.
forcing ourselves to understand the tv ad, we think the story in the ad was that to save himself from the embarrassment of accidentally showing a picture of himself and the daughter of the big boss, the male lead led him to propose marriage.
yes, propose marriage not to the big boss who was a male but to the daughter of the big boss who was in the picture with him. but the daughter was not in the conference room, just the dad and his office mates. since the girl was not in the room, to whom was he proposing marriage to? the song had the lyrics “say yes” which we are thinking it meant “say yes to my marriage proposal”. marriage proposal to whom? the dad? nope. to the daughter. but she is not in the room.
the above explains why we did not get the TV ad. the ad has layers and layers of leap of logic. the ad is asking the audience to accept too many things and not only that, to make their own conclusions not only once but many times about the story in the ad.
TV ads are usually just 30 seconds. it is such a short time that effective ads are those that deliver the story of the ad, the message in a memorable way and finally to impress or capture the audience in just 30 seconds. this ad fails right at the very first stage of the process.
we are wondering if this ad was tested. we think this ad will fail miserably on understandability and recall. it will probably come at par or score close to likeability but its over-all score will be bad.
the likeability score will be its best score because of the song. while the production value of the song is poor, it’s obvious the male lead was not singing the song, the melody is interesting enough to make it okay on likeability,
we also think the ad was made because of the song. we are guessing the creatives and the client liked the song a lot, and when they fell in love with the song, they somehow convinced themselves it is a good ad.
and then propose marriage just to save yourself from embarassment of showing a picture with the girl? come on! they were not even naked in the picture!
it is not a good ad. it is a WAWAM! (what a waste of ad money)
~~mindscape landmark ~~
carlo arvisu
bench’s Naked Truth crosses the line to brand destruction from brand building
bench is a local clothes brand that sell a complete wardrobe that cater mostly to the young. they have very good clothes at affordable prices for the pinoy teen. it is also known to have one of the most engaging outdoor advertising, mostly on EDSA with giant billboards of local and sometimes international celebrities.
they have this annual fashion show. well we are calling it a fashion show for lack of another term , where underwear is modeled by local celebrities and models. the idea for the event we suppose was picked up from the popular Victoria’s Secret annual fashion show that feature super models in really sexy and skimpy underwear with all types of wings making them out as beautiful and sexy angels.
the bench fashion show started very close to the Victoria’s Secret concept – local celebrities modeling bench underwear also with wings. that has evolved over the years and this year it is called “The Naked Truth” .
we do not know how much of Bench’s sales are from their underwear lines but we are guessing they do not command the majority of their sales. in fact, we think its very little, maybe less than 10%? but that is not the point. Bench does not hold an annual underwear fashion show to promote the line to generate sales but to get buzz, to get publicity for the brand. the prospect of seeing celebrities in underwear has a certain appeal to consumers, at least that is what we think Bench thinks.
they are no longer angels and we struggle to find where is the fashion in them and even where the underwear has gone. surely the pictures are showing that the there was a clear attempt to not show underwear.
these two pictures from the “fashion chow” got the most attention at social media and for all the wrong reasons. there was outrage and sharp hatred for these pictures. the first picture of the left shows coco martin on stage with a leash and at the end of the leash is a female model on all fours just like a dog. this is exactly what we do not want our men and specially our women to be – master and salve relationship with the women being treated like a dog.
the other is another actor, jake cuenca wearing something we cant figure out what it is or what it is called. we do not think it has a name except its obscene and horrendous.
we are wondering – are these brand images that Bench wants to have? and are these brand imaged appropriate for the youth, the market segment that comprice the bulk of Bench consumers? Bench may have achieved their goal of getting attention but we are wondering they think the kind of attention they are getting from the event is worth it. these things whether they like it or not will affect its brand image.
with these pictures, Bench now took for itself a brand image of poor taste, crass and vulgarity – adjectives that a fashion brand will not want for itself, s;pecially poor taste. good taste is certainly one of the top brand attributes any fashion brand would want.
victoria’s secret’s annual fashion show of supermodel angels in underwear are hardly criticized for such things. the supermodels in their show do wear very skimpy underwear but they never cross the line to vulgarity. victoria’s secret is a brand that sells mostly underwear, hence the underwear fashion show they hold every year is a direct match to what the brand is all about. bench on the other sell the complete wardrobe and holding an underwear fashion show does not make sense as they probably sell much more jeans and t-shirts than underwear. the sales of underwear in Bench stores being so minuscule and a fashion show supposedly featuring them and taking the brand image to the gutter makes no sense to us.
marketing efforts, even fashion shows, are supposed to do something positive to the brand, to be able to contribute to brand building. this fashion show did a lot more destruction and deterioration than building anything.
“strategic thinking” according to Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes
good strategic thinking is all about using what you have – the market, the competition, consumer insights (psychographics) and your objectives and putting all those together and funnel them into a coherent action that gets you what you want. it is not at all random but it is placing all the elements, sometime a few often numerous into a certain sequence that leads to getting your goals achieved.
that is essentially what Calvin did,
Caltex Techron’s message cleans the wrong way
this is a poster appearing in Caltex gas stations. to say the least, the message it is trying to communicate is anywhere from confused to non communication of the intended message.
we are guessing that this is the message they intended to communicate with the poster – Tachron has been reformulated to include an ingredient that cleans the engine as the car runs. we do not know the exact science of it but we are guessing they included a cleaning agent additive to the formula of Techron.
that could be an interesting proposition for car owners – a clean engine means it will run better and more importantly the car will be very efficient in burning the fuel which enables the car owner to save on gas consumption plus a better maintained engine.
but the poster is not communicating that. with the suds emanating from the car and even bigger bubbles on the trees and roadside, the poster seem to be saying the car is cleaning the environment, not the engine. the car or Techron cleaning the environment? that is a crazy idea and totally unbelievable.
or… maybe that is what Techron does – it cleans the environment and not the engine of the car as we had understood it. whatever real benefit the new Techron has, cleaning the engine or the environment, the poster fails in clearly communicating what it was meant to say.
it’s a WAWAM!
~~~ mindscape landmark ~~~
carlo arvisu
@scrap_pork gets the scrap pork logo right, very, very close
we had written about the poster of the october 4 million people march poster previously (click here : million people march october 4 rally poster – cute shades the point) where we said the image of the scrap pork idea was too cute and missed the important point of what the rally was all about – to scrap pork.
the twitter account @scrap_pork recently released a new logo for it and we think this one just about got it right.
this logo says it right – to scrap pork with the diagonal line across the face of the pig image like what we see in traffic signs that says “no left turn” or the the simple “no smoking signs”.
we are all familiar and that means we all know what that diagonal line across the image mean. logos or symbols work best when it obviously and easily communicates what it means. when you see these images, you know immediately what they mean, even without needing to think about it.
“no pork” or “no pork barrel” is the message and this new logo of @scrap_pork says it all and very well.
well, at least very, very close to it – the diagonal line did not cover or slash the snout of the pig. you can still see the two holes of the snout. this treatment made it look like the snout and the diagonal line is a design element rather than single-mindedly talking about removing it or saying no to it.
BUT that really is a very, very minor point. it is as many in the ad industry will say, “it’s just nit-picking”.
kudos to the designer of this new logo!
sleaze in kataxpayer billboard that fails to sell or even make sense
this is a billboard that is on that road where White Plains subdivision is in Quezon City. we were of course driving when we first saw the billboard and two things caught my eyes – the mini-skirted legs of the woman and the words “tax accounting”. as we were driving, we didn’t get the message of the billboard, did not have enough time to read all of it.
but just the same, as we drove past the billboard, we thought something was not making sense in that billboard. we were unable to connect in any way the woman’s mini-skirted legs and tax accounting. they were just unrelated even if we stretched the meaning and message of the ad with those visuals and words.
we drove really slow the next time we went past it to be able to read the whole thing. our instinct was right, the billboard didn’t make sense. it used sleaze in a bad way and nothing in the ad made sense, nor does it make a sale.
this is a close up of the main visual and the headline in the billboard.
the visual is sleazy and totally appalling – it shows a before and after situation where the mini-skirted woman in the before picture had her legs crossed and then spreads her legs apart after a man supposedly offers her an engagement ring. yes, the woman spreads her legs!
why would anyone put this kind of visual in an ad? it is insensitive and very offensive. the sexual meaning is blatantly disrespectful.
and the main visual is just the beginning. there is more on how this billboard totally fails.
the legs spread apart with an engagement ring has nothing to do with “tax accounting”. the product being sold here is apparently a tax accounting seminar. legs being spread, sex and tax accounting seminar all don’t mix well and don’t make sense. there is no message there. the message is all lost and probably because of the obsession with sex and sleaze.
the sleaze in this billboard is heightened with the subhead “it works all the time”. like saying it’s a “sure thing” the legs will be spread.
there is a large chunk of unsaid message in that billboard – taking the tax accounting seminar is a “timely solution. important investment” that it will be most useful and will work all the time. but all that is actually unsaid because the ad has been so obsessed with the sleaze.
there are many more ways, more effective and more sensible to deliver that message than use the sleazy visuals. there is an attempt to be creative here but it is used badly and being used just for the sake of showing some sleaze.
aside from the advertising component failure of this billboard there is another one – the billboard is actually right beside the gate of St. Ignatius Subdivision where we can assume families live there. their young children see that billboard on a daily basis.
this is a WAWAM!
—
call these numbers to ask them to bring down this billboard : (998) 979-3922; 921-6107
million people march october 4 rally poster – cute shades the point
there is a second Million People March rally since the first august 26 one and this time at ayala avenue at makati city. the organizers released the above poster. our take on it:
it’s a great poster, the visuals grab you. the over-powering graphics of the pig does this very well. a cute and very red pig that you can’t miss and in fact is the central element in the poster.
and that is where the problem lie – it’s too cute. the cuteness of the pig graphics robs the seriousness of the purpose of the rally it is supposed to promote. it feels like its a celebration of something nice and cute while the PDAF scam is nowhere close to those adjectives and in fact many people are angered by the PDAF. not that we want the pig graphics to be designed ugly or disgusting but it needs to be within the context of the event it is promoting. there should be other ways to draw the pig graphics other than sugary and everything nice.
that leads to the next point which is to us the bigger point – the pig graphics does not communicate that “pork is unwanted” or as the what the rally is all about, to “abolish pork”. we think, much more than the cuteness of the design, this really is the bigger weakness of the poster. the posted fails to communicate that we do not want pork and as what the rally will be saying, we want it abolished.
the graphics does not say we want pork, but neither does it say we do not want it. the graphics technically is neutral on the issue of wanting or not wanting pork but the cuteness of the pig design can be argued as it is something desirable.
this poster withstanding and the analysis of the poster, we will be going to the october 4 rally at ayala avenue.
iReader ads meant to sell ebooks but also sells books
i saw these ads at Flipboard and at first glance and without reading the copy (text) yet, just seeing the visuals, i thought wow this is a great ad for books.
i thought, yes that is what happens when you read a good book – the story that it tells in words come alive to you in 3D, like a diorama or (my favorite) pop up books. when stories are written very well, they take flesh and you see the action in described in the book, not just imagine it.
i clicked the picture of the ad to read the text and i was surprised – the ad was actually selling ebooks and not books. and the visuals that were coming out in diorama farm depicts the killing of trees to produce the book you are reading.
it had the line – “iReader. every book is a tragedy for trees. read ebooks“.
now talk about miscommunication!
the whole experience talks about what they say about ads – the visuals communicate the message. this one had a very powerful visual and it very immediately communicated the message to me. the only problem was i picked up the wrong message. not only was it the wrong message, it was the exact opposite of the intended message. the ad wanted readers to stop using books because books kill trees and use ebooks instead.
but to me, i saw the adventure and beauty of reading books. it’s a real dilemma – use a highly creative execution to communicate something that could be misunderstood and have the exact opposite of the intended objective of the ad.
miscommunication aside, we still think this is a great ad! at least on the execution side. but it fails on the strategy side. and on that basis this makes it a WAWAM!
~~ mindscape landmark ~~
valentine ads that will turn you red in the face, for better or worst
here are three ads that has the power to turn you red in the face, for better or worst.
beer on valentine’s? that is not the usual alcohol usually considered during velantines. something italian or some bubbly perhaps but not beer. this heineken ad gives beer a new respectability and yes a romantic twist to what happens when you see the bubbles coming out of the chilled heineken. romance with a beer, that works very well.
this ad got replies from a lot of people in my timeline in twitter, all of them ladies.
a girlfriend who wanted to be an ex bought ad space in a place where her boyfriend goes to buy his lunch at work. in that ad space, she told her boyfriend she was breaking up with him, complete with the boyfriend’s name and some important information like where his stuff are. for sure the boyfriend would read the message, plus a few more hundreds who go to the same place, the ad space was rented for a month.
and the replies from the ladies in my twitter timeline was unkind and in disagreement with laura. your take?
this ikea promo ad is for what i think is just a brilliant promo for ikea.
it’s an ads that reads the habits of its target market very well. call it consumer insight that hits home and sits very well on reality among the target market. aside from roses, chocolates and dinner, what else do you do on valentine’s day to celebrate the day of love?
this promises to give a free crib for babies born exactly nine (9) months from valentine day 2013.
for sure this ad will give smiles to couples who read the ad and will generate such an abundance of brand loyalty and goodwill among those who goes to ikea to claim their crib.
my only want on this ad is this – it should have been a full page ad in the leading newspaper with better graphic design and copy. that is really a minor point. on its bare bones design and copy writing, it is still a brilliant ad and promotion. 10 stars plus one!
where in the world…
1mprayers
2thousand10
alexangelph
antenna1
dandansoy
doorkn0b
gloriavioleta
wawam
xyz123
WAWAM! after hours 
Most Recent Readers Comments