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"This has to be the coolest movie promo we've ever seen: to plug their movie The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,
Sony has rigged up a water-spray-and-lasers projection in Tokyo Bay
that provides an eerily-realistic Loch-Ness-type monster. Check the
video."
via Core 77
"After spending some time with Cheetos' new Orange Underground, a full blown movement "committed to transforming sterile order into messy mayhem," its primary purpose of urging people to do wacky Random Acts of Cheetos that don't involve eating makes perfect sense. After all, Cheetos aren't even food. They're just a bunch of man-made chemicals mixed together and placed in a bag. This campaign is much like the Mentos/Diet Coke thing whereby people were urged to perform all manner of chemical wizardry as opposed to actually consuming the products, both questionable, at best, as to whether or not they, too, are actual foods.
These kinds of strategies serve everyone's needs. The marketer makes money because people buy their product. The consumer has more fun and stays healthier by engaging in these games and contests than if they actually consumed the stuff. And, the marketers come out looking like heroes in front of junk food cause groups because they can respond to concerns, saying, "Hey we just want people to buy our products. We don't actually want them to consume the crap."
There's a few components to The Orange Underground campaign. First, there's a "commercial" that is one of the weirdest things we've ever seen. There's a laundromat, two women, one old dude and a Patrick Stewart-voiced, mischievous Chester Charlie who's there but not really. Weird.
Then there's the Orange Underground website which delivers its primary content in the form of a "we've hijacked the airways" style video (which changes a bit each time you view it) that explains the group's movement and leads to other items such as a poster which can be downloaded to spread the group's gospel. There's a fake news report covering the groups' Random Acts of Cheetos. There's a blog and a mysterious event that will occur on April Fool's Day. It all makes for an engaging experience. Even if we'd never actually eat the stuff."
via Adrants
"Wow, check out this super fabulous animated commercial for Pizza-La, the largest pizza delivery chain in Japan. Those are the happiest pizza toppings I’ve ever seen.
So just try not singing that song the rest of the day. Pi pi pi pi Pizza-la!"
via Laughing Squid
"
Billboards promoting season four of ABC's hit series Lost have been systematically "vandalized," with graffiti directing people to the Find 815 website.
The Find 815 site contains yet another Lost alternate reality game, or ARG, building on the show's mythology. In the game, somebody named Sam Thomas is searching for Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, the doomed aircraft from Lost that left the cast stranded on a mysterious island.
Lost fans, who clearly have a taste for the cryptic, are hitting the Find 815 site, then working themselves into an internet research frenzy. Find 815 video clips are popping up on YouTube; at sites like DarkUFO and Unfiction, Lost obsessives share clues (like Sam's MySpace and Facebook profiles) found as they dig into the puzzle."
via Underwire
"Mark Malkoff, the same dude who visited 171 Starbucks in a day has a new stunt.
He's living in Ikea.
It's not clear if this is an Ikea promo or not. It claims not to be.
The Ikea brand identity is incorrect, and the link to their site is
broken - so maybe that is indeed the case. (Although supposedly, he's
being played on video in Ikea Sweden, so who really knows.) Cute idea,
regardless. We should go over there later, and play Xbox."
"A survey conducted by Deloitte & Touche shows that of 2,081 consumers questioned, 38% watch television shows online, while 36% use their cell phones as entertainment devices, and 45% are creating online content such as websites, videos and blogs. The study, which was conducted between October 25-31 for American consumers, aims to look at the advertising potential of the web, television, and mobile devices."
via Mashable
"Good news for TV networks: online ads work. As TV shows continue their lengthy migration onto the Web, new research finds that the people watching those shows actually pay more attention to both advertising and content when they watch online.
"What's going on in the above images? I've discovered a phenomenon called 'shopdropping'. Excerpted below is an explanation from shopdropping.net.
SHOPDROP: To covertly place merchandise on display in a store. A form of "culture jamming" s. reverse shoplift, droplift. *As defined by Ryan Watkins-Hughes
SHOPDROPPING is an ongoing project in which I alter the packaging of canned goods and then shopdrop the items back onto grocery store shelves. I replace the packaging with labels created using my photographs. The shopdropped works act as a series of art objects that people can purchase from the grocery store. Because the barcodes and price tags are left intact purchasing the cans before they are discovered and removed is possible. In one instance the shopdropped cans were even restocked to a new aisle based on the barcode information.
Well, what if branding and packaging designers used the shopdropping method to more practical ends? We always want to know in advance: how do consumers react to more artistic, risk-taking packaging? Brands are scared to break away from the sameness, but taking some risks with design can be a very powerful way to impact sales. I think shopdropping as a research method (for those without focus-groups and big market research budgets) can make a lot of sense. Armed with video footage of consumer reactions to shopdropped product, a designer can make the case for that riskier, but stronger design.
I realize the concept might be flawed, because how can you really measure the reaction. Either way, it's better than working in a vacuum and I think it could be a fun learning experience.
Can grocery staples be beautiful, so much that people will want to buy them and leave them on the kitchen counter? It's possible, and it's a new year. No time like now to take a chance and help brands make the changes they've always (secretly) wanted to make."
via The Dieline
" Renegade artist and head-hunter the Decapitator
has been bombarding the streets of London with a signature style of
graffiti tag - eerily removing the heads from major adverts around
town, replacing them with ghastly, gory stumps. (Before and after
images of a gruesomely guillotined model in a print ad, right).
Based on the images uploaded to his/her Flickr stream, "The East London Decapitator" as he/she has been dubbed, is largely striking mainstream advertisements..."
via Underwire
