Oops

From Renee Alvarado

This is an interesting article about what we discussed in class today about having a cultural lens. I can’t imagine a company doing advertising in a foreign country and not doing a little more research or having someone from that country working on the campaign. My favorite in this list is one for Parker Pen when advertising in Mexico. Their advertisement in English said “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” Parker Pen didn’t know the correct word for embarrass and instead said “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.” It seems like a common sense thing to make sure what you are saying in another language translates, but apparently not.

Click here

Above the Influence

From Nathan Ichtertz

(titled: “fitting in”)

I saw this ad while at the movies and it captured my attention immediately. The ad uses uplifting music and shows a teenage boy in front of a 3D cut-out board, jumping into the cut-out space. He fits into a baseball scene, then into a life-size “picture” frame, and then into a cut-out scene where he jumps his skateboard. But the final board depicts someone offering the teen a joint, and he walks away. I thought this was really interesting because until the very end, I had no idea that this was an ad against drug use. It’s a very engaging ad. However, I doubt it will have any effect on curbing drug use.

Shiseido

From Lei Zhong

The famous Japanese cosmetic brand Shiseido aims to bring beauty to every woman. The most important thought in this Chinese Shiseido adv is about the beauty of the moment and the beauty of the whole life. The creative strategy approach is resonance, and the hint is the color “red” which is the brightest color amony all colors. It’s also the big idea to string the story. At the beginning I didn’t notice that the ad just simply used red color and other color like white or grey to contract each other. The story starts with a young lady saw a little girl in red with a red umbrella running in the rain, and then she begins to recall her childhood that her mom always bought her red clothes, after that, the ad starts to shot her use a make-up remover in a red bottle. At the end, the young lady wears a red dress as well. I’ve watched this ad many times and everytime I come up different thoughts and feelings. I think the stmart thing of this ad is that although it choose color like black, white, and grey as its background color, I didn’t feel depressed; instead, I also start to recall my childhood and then I feel happy and sweet, so the contract color red and whole story plot make this ad optimistic. Also the music is another mian element in this ad. I guess all different age women can be this ad’s target. It truly brings all women the information that being beauty of whole life. At the end, the audience only can say this is a beautiful ad.

Would you do a tattoo?

From Alison Kjar

In February 2009, nytimes.com featured the article “The Body as a Billboard: Your Ad Here” which focuses on non-traditional advertising. Air New Zealand recently released a campaign where 30 participants shaved their heads to display temporary tattoos promoting the airline. For their troubles, the newly bald participants were compensated with $777 in cash or one free round-trip ticket to New Zealand. The tattoos stayed on the ‘carnial billboards’ for about two weeks.
I think this campaign is a remarkable one. Its a great twist on the traditional human sandwich board and is very successful in capturing the attention of possible consumers. In a world where the value of traditional advertising is steadily decreasing, its imperative for advertisers to come up with non-traditional means of advertising. In the future, advertising has to become more interactive and consumer friendly for companies to stay ahead of the curve. Traditional advertising is no longer enough, new and innovative ideas are essential to capture a consumer’s attention.

Read about it here

Best Buy and Mother’s Day

From Kathleen Latiolait

Best Buy and Mother’s Day

This advertisement is especially interesting to me being a Best Buy employee. I love the strategy Best Buy has taken with having actual employees star in the advertisements. I first thought they were hired actors posing as real employees until I was proved wrong at one of our morning meetings when another employee announced they used to work with this girl back in Georgia. The short and sweet message of real stories does a good job of making the viewers of the ad put themselves in the position of trying to pick the right gift for their loved ones. Even though the focus of this advertisement was to emphasize the service costumers get when they come to Best Buy, we completely sold out of the mini picture frames by the Saturday morning before Mother’s Day.

Questionable

From Kevin Beaudry

This commercial has been around for a while but I recently saw it on
TV again. I remember when I first saw this commercial I thought it
was hilarious, and it still is, but now I feel like the target audience is
questionable. They seem to be marketing to drunk, high kids late at night
and condone driving to their store late at night when you are drunk. I know it is
just a joke but I wonder if parents would be mad about this advertisement. On the other
hand, this ad works very well in not only grabbing the viewers attention but getting them
to laugh and tell their friends about it.

Amnesty International: ‘Frau im Coffer’

From Scott Fogel

As advertising dollars spent on traditional media continue to be less and less valuable, many companies are exploring the idea of advertising that’s integrated into our daily lives. We continue to see an emergence of buzz marketing, public demonstrations, and interactive displays that encourage consumers to become a part of the ad’s environment.

As Amnesty International’s Germany division turns 60 years old next month, they are choosing to shift their focus to the issue of human trafficking for their anniversary campaign. ‘Frau im Coffer’, which translates to ‘women in suitcase’, has been showing up at European airports for the past few weeks, and gaining valuable media attention in the process.

The idea is simple: they take a clear suitcase, put a live woman inside, and send her through the baggage claim, shocking airport employees and passengers alike. It’s refreshing to see companies use an outside-the-box method of thinking in bringing these issues to the forefront. If you saw a magazine ad reminding people trafficking is still alive, you might glance, and then forget. But seeing an actual person trapped in a suitcase, a metaphor in itself, is something you’d never forget. A creative, well executed idea.

Miller Lite

From Nicholas Johnson

The Miller Lite Man Law commercials featuring “real men” creating the rules, or creating the code by which “real men” live. The ads address different debates men have about the DOs and DON’Ts of certain situations. The ads feature celebrities that embody the character traits of stereotypical males. There is the cowboy, the football star, the bad boy, the comedian, the tough guy, the ruggedly handsome guy, and the average joe. The ads debuted in the spring of 2006 and the effect was noticeable as men began calling other guys out on the man laws. However, the ads were not successful in increasing sales and the ads were pulled. Miller posted the ads on ManLaw.com for a short period of time for people who thought the ads were funny.

I think most people found the ads amusing and could tell you that they were ads for Miller Lite, so why weren’t the ads effective at increasing sales?