On Cuprocking

The new graffiti?

http://kopiforphotography.deviantart.com

Nowastewednesdays.com

Cuprocking, created by Andy Uprock of Australia, is being hailed as the new street art. Basically, the artists just jam coloured plastic cups in wire fences in order to create intricate designs. I love this so much! It's beautiful and not as permanent or damaging as graffiti. And the cups can be reused :)

On Dirty Car Art- Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

And here's a little Dirty Car Art from Scott Wade. Because I love this too. Here's to finding beauty in everything from wire fences to dirty cars!!

Dirtycarart.com

On a Green Pedestrian Crossing- Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

Thisiscolossal.com

DDB China, working with the China Environmental Protection Foundation, created this beautiful campaign on 132 crosswalks across China. The point was to create a striking visual impact about the environmental benefits of walking- and the results were stunning. Afterword, the printed posters were used as billboards across the country.

On Painted Pigeons- Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

One of my favourite types of marketing and art revolves around taking ordinary things and making them extraordinary.
People tend to overlook the mundane things they see every day, things that have become familiar and don't need to be recognized as new stimuli anymore. According to Claudia Hammond, author of Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception,"we use the number of new memories we form to gauge how much time has passed". That means that the more routines and familiarity in our lives, the more likely we are to coast through and the faster time seems to go by. I know that the first time I drove a familiar route and couldn't remember the drive at all ("How the hell did I drive here?!"), it scared the crap out of me. Our minds are lazy; they don't want to register everything in our world. No matter that everything that surrounds us, from potholes to lamp posts, has a design and some type of beauty to it.
SO. I love shocking people out of their familiarity. Reminding us that we're alive and the world is dynamic.

And so, I give you:

Venice's Painted Pigeons!

loststateminor.com

Ok. Pigeons are gross. They're "rats with wings" and they poop on everything. But what if they had beautiful plumage, like the  birds we admire and photograph? We might not love them, but we'd certainly not be able to re-classify them in the "mundane" category.
I'm sure artists Julian Charrière and Julius von Bismarck (I'm seriously jealous of this name) had similar trains of thought when they, in conjunction with Venice's Architecture Biennale Exhibition, airbrushed pigeons in tropical colours and let them loose in Venice. Without delay, there were outcries about the lack of "respect for defenceless animals" and whatnot. But really, the airbrushing was harmless for the birds, and people get away with this garbage all the time.

Latitudenews.com

Ffffound.com

On Being Generous

Continued.... Geoff's rules for being a great marketer:

1. Be positive
2. Be generous
3. Be social
4. Be unique

If you can afford it, why not show some generosity towards your customers in your marketing? A few good deeds (and some free stuff) can lead to a whole lot of good word of mouth.

Case in point: The BC Moments Campaign this summer. Tourism BC Created the 100 BC Moments website, where you can find travel moments for any interest. To match it, the Tourism BC folks went and created a fantabulous publicity stunt in San Francisco. They set up a gigantic vending machine where people could fill out some information about themselves and their hobbies, and out would pop something related to the trip they could take.

Like mountain biking? Here's a free bike!

Feel like going golfing? Here's a free set of clubs!!! Yayyy!!

Another case: 7-Eleven's Dip-a-Drip Campaign in 2011
Last year 7-Eleven gave consumers the chance to vote on and dip a "drip" (an annoying, stereotypical person that you wouldn't want to meet before your morning coffee). From September 19-23 Americans were able to vote which obnoxious person of their cast they would like to see dunked in some water. Then, on September 28th, they could log on to 7-Eleven's Facebook page and virtually control the ball launcher (set up live in Washington, D.C.) to dunk the top candidates. 

If you succeeded and dunked them you won a $25 gift card. If you didn't, you could still get the free cup of coffee that 7-Eleven gave out to everyone on September 29th, National Coffee Day (or, as 7-Eleven called it, cofFREE day).

7-Eleven gave something in order to get their word out. They didn't just interrupt with the usual commercials, they gave their customers a chance to play a game and get some frustration out :)

On Being Positive

First of all, thank you so much to Geoff Grimble from DDB for taking the time to present your take on marketing for my Marketing Communications class on Wednesday. The presentation was fun, engaging, and informative! Also, thanks for reminding my friend and I to attend the Advertising Club of Edmonton's student event yesterday- it was a good time and I met a lot of professionals with plenty of great industry advice.

Geoff's rules for being a great marketer:

1. Be positive
2. Be generous
3. Be social
4. Be unique

All of these seem fairly straightforward right? Not so fast! Being positive in public interest marketing is actually really hard. If you're focusing on getting people to wear seat belts, for instance, you'll likely come out with the same sorts of things that people always come up with, like this graphic ad:

OR you could think outside the box and go for something positive, like the Embrace Life Campaign

Both are good ads, but which one of them are you more likely to shut off halfway through, or avoid watching?

How about an ad making people think about how they should use public transit in order to help the environment? Sure, you could tell them about all the damage and pollution that is going on in the world, but big overarching problems tend to make people feel overwhelmed and think "how can I make a difference anyway?".

So then we have the Bussen er Cool ad:

If that didn't make you smile, you don't have a single funny bone in your body.

Isn't it nice to watch a public interest ad that actually makes you smile???

Then there's anti-smoking campaigns. Actually, believe it or not you could make them positive! They don't all have to look like this:

Or, take a look at this campaign by the Hearth and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon:

At Quittersunite.com, people are encouraged to post videos about their "Smoke Free Lifestyle", outlining how they live their lives with $300 extra per month. It's positive, and focuses on the saved money and enhance lifestyle that quitting can offer people.

Try being positive!

On Tilt shift Edmonton

Pixelens Photography. For full size go here.

On Gangnam Style

Heyyyy sexy lady! Op-op-op-op Oppa Gangnam Style!

If you haven't seen this hilarious, mega popular South Korean pop video, featuring invisible horses and dancing in buses yet, here's my gift for you:

Although, if you haven't seen it, where have you been?? It has over 220 million hits as we speak.

It's even on the radio here now, which has to be a first (non English music on the mainstream radio in NORTH AMERICA?!).

I'm really happy that it made it mainstream, because Nicki Minaj is starting to make my ears bleed. 

And why are we so insular with our media anyway? Why are foreign movies only shown in tiny hipster theaters? Or maybe it's just our universal hate for subtitles when dubbed versions aren't available. My parents recently tried to watch Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with their friends, only to find they'd accidentally rented the Swedish version. It wasn't worth it to read the subtitles- "so much work!!", so they played cards instead. (But Mom, this one's worth the reading...)

Not only is this a great leap for foreign media, but it's an indicator of how far we've come bringing viral into the "traditional" world. Psy (the artist from above), was even on Saturday Night Live this week :)

He danced out from behind a wall in a Lids store (for some reason). I'd show the video here too, but all the ones I seem to find "can't be shown in my region". Bah

On Andrej Pejic Modelling Bras

I love Andrej Pejic, fashion's top crossdressing supermodel. Say what you will about him being the runway's perpetual media stunt- I love him. Not only is he incredibly brave for doing what he's doing, but he's gorgeous. And his build is absolutely perfect for high fashion (considering that all the clothes are made to fit 5"11 models with no hips or chest whatsoever). Whether it's a good thing that a slender man fits the womanswear model body type better than the women is up for debate of course.

zfashionblog.com

Now... (Drumroll please)... Andrej is modelling super push up bras! Dutch retailer HEMA may have struck gold with this campaign idea. Not only is he a beautiful model, but featuring a man in a bra has really started a buzz about the ad in the advertising and fashion communties. Also isn't it clever saying that these push up bras are so effective that they even give a man a bust?? I wonder how these ads would have fared here in North America though... I'm not sure consumers would have been quite as accepting.

On The Beauty of City Design

I love love love picturesque old cities. I love small winding roads and cobblestone. I love uncertain, unplanned meandering rows of houses. I love asymmetry. I love curved and crooked alleys.

The robotic straight grid design of new North American cities is grating on me. Urban planning can be beautiful.

Fortress Bourtange, the Netherlands
Built to be ultimately defensible by cannonballs. The corners and perpendicular walls meant that each wall was covered by fire from the walls next to it.
Also, the star design is amazingly gorgeous.

Bern, Switzerland
Can't you imagine yourself there, walking down the street in the dying sunlight? The way that the rows of houses flow organically, mimicking the shape of the river.... I want to go there so badly!

Mont Saint Michel, France

More of a commune than a city I suppose, with a whopping 42 inhabitants. But I couldn't help but include it here. The way that the 11th century monastery rises above everything... it proves that beautiful design isn't just about the lines of the streets, but about having a wonderful skyline and view as well

I'll continue to add to this beautiful city design list :)

On the Dolphin Jetpack

Before I get back to serious blogging, I'd really like to show you all the Dolphin Jetpack, the coolest thing that I have seen in a long time. I mean, look at it! All I can think about when I watched this video was Iron Man.

And it's only $6600! I mean that's a sizable chunk for a student, but for something like this that's amazing!

On Pancake Pillows!!!

Check out these pancake pillows!! They look so fluffy and fun. I want a stack of them in every corner of the house. You can find them at Unica Home. Mind you, at $600 each, maybe I'd be better off trying to make them myself...

On No Regrets Marketing

Source: Reddit.com

So I came across this ad for electronic cigarettes, originally from a Rolling Stones magazine. Obviously it's saying that sleeping with an overweight girl is something you should be ashamed of (but you're a man so you aren't, HAHA!). If you think about it, the issue of obesity in all its forms is almost uniformly cut out of advertising, unless it has to do with making you feel like you should improve (oh those never-ending Jenny Craig commercials). But it's certainly not something that is ever joked about, like the "useless husband" stereotype. Actually, overweight guys are kind of acceptable on TV (I'm thinking King of Queens, According to Jim) but you will NEVER see a fat woman with a handsome guy. I hate that fat, immature husband and smoking wife trope.

Is it clever to associate your product with something that men find stereotypically shameful (as seen in all the TV shows EVER)? Maybe they figure that some guys find electric cigs embarassing anyway, since they're a little less manly than the real thing (you would never see Clint Eastwood with an electronic cigarette clamped between his teeth), so may as well try to make it work for the product. I think the message of the ad is something like "Well sure, you'd normally regret sleeping with a "fat chick" but when all is said and done, you still got laid". The marketers are implying that you should do what  feels good or is good for you (like smoking an electronic cigarette) regardless of what your friends say.

Still. Does this image really make guys interested in the product at all? I don't really think it would. It's going for humour but I don't think it's the right kind.

On Breaking the Barrier Between the Outside and Home

Do you think using scare tactics is a great way to get customers? It's definitely a way to get their attention anyway.

Last year ADT, a company selling home security systems, launched a "brilliant" marketing campaign in Santiago, Chile. Spring loaded boxes were folded and slipped under doors then, inside the home, these boxes would spring into shape, appearing as though they had been left behind by someone inside the house. On the front of the box was the statement "Breaking into your apartment is easier than you think" next to the ADT logo.

This was obviously pretty risky, but was it effective? Most home security companies tend to take the same road- advertising like life insurance companies and just trying to be somber enough to get attention. But consumers who don't think they are at risk are pretty likely to just tune out the message. This way at least, there was no getting around the ad, since it was sitting pretty glaringly behind the consumers' front door.

But is it a breach of privacy? Could it have made consumers feel threatened for more than the obvious reason- that they were at risk of burglary? While I do think that this campaign was ingeniously creative, I'd like to make a note that this probably scared a lot of people. If it were me, I'd be frightened at the thought of a company entering my private sphere, although I know they do it in much less obtrusive ways. There's a lack of thought about subtlety here.

On Edmonton's Own Ad Scandal

So, the big news here in Edmonton is the below advertisement, from Fluid Hair Salon. It was actually created and launched a year ago, but was only caught by bloggers and made big in the last couple days. Since then, women's rights groups in the city have been up in arms, and it's not hard to see why.

A well-coiffed woman sits on a chair in front of a frightening Dexter-type man, sporting a nasty looking black eye. The caption "Look good in all you do" implies, sort of, that as long as she looks good eventually, with a shiny new necklace, abuse is just fine. It's a risky and dark ad, and I personally don't think that a salon should be touching this subject with a 10 foot pole, but that's just me.

However, up until now I'll admit that I wasn't that interested or insulted by this little controversy. It was a very misled "artsy" ad that never really got big before now, and in a way it actually does some good by bringing needed attention to the issue of domestic violence. 

What actually got me intrigued is that somewhere out there, someone was mad enough to vandalize the salon. Here are a couple pics from CBC:

"This is art that is wrongly named violence; that was violence wrongly named art!"

It's sort of poetic.

On American ROM- Advertising with Nationalism

So, what do you do when you've tied your brand to your country's brand, and your country isn't looking so good at the moment? You trick people into showing their nationalistic side, just like this Romanian chocolate bar:


I agree that this campaign was a great way for Rom to increase awareness of their product, but do you think that sparking outrage this way will give them lasting attention? They gambled with the goodwill of the public, and it seems to have paid off for now...

On Genius Design... Why Can't I Think Of These Things???

Yes, there are a TON of these types of invention collection pages swirling around the internet. I just have here a collection of my favourites. :) I'm always amazed when I see ideas for inventions like this - I realize they are such easy answers to things that have bothered me and yet they have somehow never even occurred to me. Like having a velcro place on the wall for your keys, a pair of scissors for your pizza (OF COURSE!) or a cup holder on your bike. I can't count the number of times I've been frustrated by having nowhere to put my drink on my bike. 

AAANNNDD my top 2 favourites....

And you can find tons more at sites like dumpaday.com and wahfunny.com