'Hello Boys' Billboard Voted Most Iconic Ad

The Wonderbra's 'Hello Boys' billboard was voted most iconic ad image ever in a poll carried out by the Outdoor Media Centre, the British trade body for outdoor advertising. After Wonderbra had unveiled the campaign with Eva Herzigowa in 1994 it was acclaimed  a taraffic-stopper and I can imagine how much aditional buzz marketing it produced! It mast have been brilliant and effective campaing!
The Outdoor Media Centre has teamed up with Campaign magazine to identify the best 100 posters of all time. Over 10, 700 Brits voted for their favourite billboards and here are the selected:

The Top Ten British Ads Ever
1. Hello Boys/Eva Herzigova (Wonderbra, 1994)
2. Labour Isn't Working (Conservative Party, 1978)
3. Lord Kitchener Wants You (Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914)
4. His Master's Voice (The Gramophone Company, 1901)
5. Management trainee aged 42 (The Economist, 1991)
6. Pregnant Man (The Health Education Council, 1969)
7. Araldite (Ciba Geigy, 1983)
8. Think Different (Apple, 2003)
9. Beanz Meanz Heinz (Heinz, 1966)
10. Dumb Animals (Greenpeace)

Click here if you'd like to see the winning ads.

Source: Daily Mail

Baby Carrots - New Junk Food

Would it be possible to sell  baby carrots as a fun, extreme and even sexy snack? - Definitely. „Bunch of Carrot Farmers” - group of almost 50 American carrot producers - adopted advertising techniques usually used by junk food brands to encourage people to eat more carrots. The campaign entitled “Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food”  was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky . The tactic was based on  belief that ”instead of scrapping fast food ads, health food companies should attempt to play them at their own game, creating exciting, humorous brands with strong youth appeal”. The carrots packed in bright chip-sized bags are sold in school vending machines. Slogans, such as "The original orange doodles" and "Crunchier than chips, orange-ier than cheese puffs" has been incorporated. Advertising includes vibrant billboards and flashy TV spots. The campaign even featured a carrot-crunch-powered iPhone and iPod Touch game, “Xtreme Xrunch Kart,” available as a free download at the iTunes store.

So far, the campaign has been extremely successful.  For Halloween, carrot producers lounched “Scarrots” - single-serve bags of baby carrots, offered in a master bag containing 25 servings in 3 unique designs and 25 temporary glow-in-the-dark tattoos!

http://www.babycarrots.com/

Mobile Advertising Growing Fast

For the last couple of months my byfriend has been using new widescreen smartphone. And he loves it! Every couple of days he's downloading new applications. He's new mobile petentially makes him a very receptive target for marketers, I thought as I was wathing his enthusiastic reactions to his new mobile wonder. Increasingly important mobile advertising via mobile phones soon will become natural extension of the marketing mix. Smartphone adoption rates are growing and as well range of mobile advertising options, including SMS, WAP, mobile app display ads, search ads, rich media, video and push notifications. Here I posted Eriksson's video about how to successfully adapt mobile advertising into the brand marketing mix.

EURO 2012 Tournament Identity

Euro 2012, the European Football Championship, will be hosted by Poland and Ukraine from 8 June to 1 July 2012. Obviously, as Polish I’m enthusiastic about such a big event being co-organised in my country. However I’m also very emotional about the tournament’s logo design and its brand identification.
Official logo and brand identity were created by Portuguese agency Brandia Central.

The following is excerpted from the UEFA website.
Visual identity
The purpose of the logo is to give UEFA EURO 2012™ a personality of its own, with the visual identity to be applied across a range of promotional applications from tickets to web banners. The objective is to help promote the tournament – one of the world’s biggest sporting events – by providing an easily recognisable identity with a flavour of the host nations. The logo takes its visual lead from ‘wycinanka’, the traditional art of paper cutting practised in rural areas of Poland and Ukraine, as a tribute to the fauna and flora of the region.

EURO bloom
The ‘bloom’ logo has a flower representing each of the co-host nations and a central ball symbolising the emotion and passion of the competition, while the stem denotes the structural aspect of the competition, UEFA and European football. Nature has inspired other features of the visual identity, with woodland green, sun yellow, aqua blue, sky blue and blackberry purple being the crucial tones of the palette of colours to figure in official tournament branding.

Uniting ethos
The event slogan, meanwhile, is ‘Creating History Together’. The staging of the UEFA European Championship finals in Poland and Ukraine, a first for Central and Eastern Europe, will have a place in the history books, with everyone involved in UEFA EURO 2012™ – organisers, host countries, host cities, players and fans – contributing to another exciting chapter of European football.

On a Cannes Lions International site I found this project’s applications for this year Cannes Lion Award . We read there:

Description of how you arrived at the final design:
The starting point was blending Wycinanki, a common art form in both hosting countries, and football. The result is an identity which is original, genuine and has a powerful message: Make football grow in every way.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market:
Success in the market: - The work that was developed so far for the logo and visual identity of the UEFA EURO 2012 is very bold and represents a major breakthrough in these type of events. Many top design publications and personalities have shown an interest in what we did and gave us praise for it. Both host countries and UEFA are very excited about the brand and people around the world, football fans and others, have embraced it.

In the host countries though, the logo design has got lots of criticism. In Ukraine they say, it brings up an association with the “chupa-chups” lollipops. Polish fans are complaining about the colours of the “Polish flower”. They say it is necessary to swap the colours on it, because on the Polish flag white goes first and red is after it. It is also not enough Polish as this form of Wycinanki incorporated into logo has Ukrainian origins.

To me, incorporating Wycinanki (Papercuts) into logo design was a good direction and really great idea. But its interpretation is too much literal. It could look much more sophisticated. In present form the logo looks more like an illustration and it’s too detailed.

Sex Sells !!!

Diesel latest campaign for Spring 2010 is tagged "Sex Sells *Unfortunately We Sell Jeans". Maybe Diesel don’t, but someone else in the fashion industry does sell sex indeed. Designer and movie director Tom Ford is a man. He’s quite a brand building genius I must admit. He’s not just selling cloths, cosmetics and sunglasses, he’s representing and promoting a hedonistic lifestyle. His brand's modern design with sharp, sleek suits, appeals even to my boyfriend. He knows best how to shout for attention using sex and eroticism as an explosive marketing tool. Ford become one of most talked about designers of our times, his biography is impressive. He gave Gucci that famous eternal youth and the mysterious sexuality called the „Gucci sex factor”. In 2005 he created his own brand TOM FORD that became famous for stirring some controversy each time when releasing new ad campaign. His collaboration with a provocative photographer Terry Richardson resulted in “various fashion-forward, decadently deviant photographs”. And in 2008, Tom Ford outfitted gorgious Daniel Craig as James Bond in Quantum of Solace! Who can resist hot, steamy eroticism?! Sex truly Sells?

Paper dolls - Fashion educators & Advertising tool

In your childhood, have you ever played paper dolls with pictures of clothes? Well, I did. Women's nature hasn't really changes since centauries. We simply like pretty things. I was actually searching the net for a blog post idea that is coming up next this week, when I found this paper dolls hint and started digging it. First manufactured paper doll, two-dimensional Little Fanny figure printed on paper for which accompanying clothing, was produced in London, in 1810.

Through whole Victorian era children were receiving toys at birthdays and Christmas but fortunatelly paper dolls were affordable. When they became popular as toys, manufacturers of all kinds of household goods took advantage of their popularity by using them to promote their products.

This is how paper dolls appeared as an effecting mass advertising tool. A few of the products advertised with paper dolls were Pillsbury flour, Baker's chocolate, Singer sewing machines, Clark's threads, and Hood's Sarsaparilla (medicine). Imagine that little girls bagging their mothers for buying another Pillsbury flour so they could get the whole clothing collection:). How much fun they had to had putting fancy paper cloths on their dolls.

In the early 1920s the J. & P. Coats company offered unique mechanical paper dolls with moving head through their dealers when purchasing Spool and Crochet Cotton.

Later, from the 1930s to the 1950s, companies put paper dolls into their magazine advertisements to sell such goods as nail polish, underwear, Ford cars, Carter's clothing, Barbie dolls and more.
First fashion educators.

Source: The Original Paper Doll Artists Guild web site.

At the begining of Fashion Advertising - Fashon Illustration

Rose, my best British friend, sent me a postcard from the London Fashion Week with the fabulous reproduction of Rene Gruau’s fashion illustration. I keep it on a kitchen table so much I enjoy looking at it. Rene Gruau’s name has been synonymous with exquisite refinement and seductive flair. In 1940s and 50s he became a favorite illustrator of the world’s haute couture – Chrisitan Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Balmain, Balenciaga and Cardin. His works for Moulin Rouge and Lido de Paris remind Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters, other remind of pop-art.
Today, fashon advertising is entirely dominated by photography, but fashion illustration were extremaly important in the haute couture world in that time. Gruau with his new style reshaped marketing for the fashion industry forever and has set the scene for marketing for this industry for many years to come. From his works emanate everlasting elegance, simplicity and sophistication.

A Mother, A Housewife, A Lover... Stereotypes of woman in TV commercials

Increased television viewings is associated with more stereotypical views, especially of gender. For heavy viewers, television replace other sources of information and ideas. Looking at stereotype of woman in TV commercials: a happy housewife, a mother, a skinny teenage-looking girl promoting anti-aging products… all that stereotypes can have a negative influence on women themselves, and many claim that the sexist stereotypes imprison women even more.
On the other hand, TV commercials use and simplify already existing stereotypes about the relationships between woman and men and the position of both genders in the culture.



Some are more enjoyable (BTL de Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi para Andes beer)...



some less ... (TV commercial of Brahma beer)...

Sex sells products and it’s a common knowledge possessed by advertising specialists, by artists and by everyone responding to this sort of commercials. No ones is a saint. But it can be done tastefully and creativelly.



some are not enjoyable at all... (Fernet Cinzano)

It’s worth to think about the issue. Argentine high context, masculine culture is given as an example – take a look at the enjoyable TV commercials and watch a documentary by San Telmo Production telling the story of a group of young girls from the Buenos Aires’ slum Villa 31 who use soccer to learn how to go from victims to champions. That’s real life.

http://www.santelmoproductions.com/en/#/portfolio/goals_for_girls

Here are some more TV ads:

The Earth Hour - Turn on Green Marketing Communication

Earth Hour - the annual turn-off-the-light event from the World Wildlife Fund was celebrated last Saturday 27th March. Today consumers not only become more conscious of environmental issues but also are willing to pay more for green products. In respond to that, more and more marketing messages contain green references and themes. The Earth Hour it's another opportunity for companies to demonstrate their eco-friendliness, sustainability and dedication to the environment. Below, some of the Earth Hour actions:

• In 2009 Leo Burnett Malaysia picked up a Gold Effie at the Malaysia Effie Awards for its Earth Hour effort on behalf of the WWF. The campaign launched during political and social turmoil in Malaysia, brought awareness to global warming carried an appropriate theme: “Who Says Malaysians Are Not United?” By urging all citizens to put aside differences and stand up together as “One Malaysia,” the effort inspired more than six million people to pledge support and switch off their lights this past March. The campaign included such media as TV, radio, print, OOH and digital, as well as a Facebook group that became the largest country-specific Earth Hour group in the world.  

 

• The Scandinavian dairy brand Arla Foods supports WWF by selling specially designed milk black packaging with on-pack information about Earth Hour. Design by the Swedish agency Milk.

• Kiehl’s, a premium American cosmetics brand retailer, has collaborated with Jeff Koons, Pharrell Williams, Julianne Moore and professional surfer Malia Jones to present a new design dedicated to Earth Day 2010. They worked on limited edition bottles for the Acai Damage-Protecting Mist. Each of the well-known personalities developed his or her own design for the product’s label. $200,000 from selling the bottles will be donated to the Rainforest Alliance.
  
  

• In Starbucks you could get a complimentary tall size (12oz) beverage of your choice when you purchased any Starbucks tumbler during Earth Hour (27th March 2010 from 8.30pm till 9.30pm).

• Houndreds of Starwood hotels including Westin, Le Méridien and Sheraton turned off their lights and took other energy-saving measures for one full hour. In more than 90,000 hotel rooms, hotel guests were encouraged to turn off the lights. The other actions included switching off exterior signage lighting, dimming or turning off non-essential interior lighting, using candlelight in appropriate public areas such as restaurants and bars; and informing guests about the hotel’s observation of Earth Hour through in-room voicemail messages and guest room television messages. Additionally, hotel lobbies were serving signature green cocktails, hotel restaurants were serving candlelight dinner.

• The Millennium Hilton Bangkok held “Rooftop Earth Hour Picnic”
• At Fairmont Hotel in Hamburg offered a candlelight dinner experience for diners. Guests of The Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii celebrated Earth Hour with complimentary hot chocolate and s'mores roasted over an oceanside fire pit under the stars.
• Corporations all over the world the day before the Earth Hour on 26th March sent out emails to their clients and suppliers to inform them about this global event, encourage them to participate, join the action and switch off light. Some examples include Polish Airlines LOT and Coca Cola.

• Others were simply inspired...

Pretty in Pink

Pink has sometimes been associated with negative gender stereotypes and as appropiate for girls only. Pink is “girly”… but you think yellow is a neutral colour? There is no logic.
To help to lift up pink and place it as a universal colour I post some lovely examples of print and TV ads containing pink motives.
Pink is chic and sexy. Pink means loads of fun, joy, happiness, sense of humor, innocence, confidence, self-worthiness, acceptance, passion, relax, glamour.
Pink was used in advertising from the early beginning. Because of it’s strong message. Pink becomes extremely powerful in Duracell ads. Converse makes it cheeky while HP makes it intimate. Pink goes well with Hermes's orange. It's charming and sweet in the Miss Dior Cherie campaign.

Gorgeous Ali Stephens is shot by Terry Richardson for the spring/summer 09 iCB advertising campaign, Including the funny Pink Panther. “ iCB girls loves the Pink Panther”

In French ad campaign for Duracell’s most powerful battery yet, Duracell’s iconic pink bunnies, together form a pink sumo wrestler, a pink rhino and a pink tornado.

All credits are from: Agency : Ogilvy France Directed by : PLEIX Country of production : France Production company : Warm and fuzzy Post house : Digital District

 

Orange Hermes. Indian Pink.

Vintage advertising for DuBarry Pink Fire lipstick

Miss Dior Cherie advertisement featuring Marina Linchuk, was directed by Sofia Coppola on the streets of Paris. It’s so very “Lost in Translation“. Charming, unpretentious, bit nostalgic, chic and fun. The song is called Moi, Je Joue, by Brigitte Bardot. A lot of powder pink as well as strong pink accents. Very elegant.

Victoria's Secret Pullover hoodie & Very Sexy® Bow-back cheeky panty.