DDB Auckland Makes An Impression Selling Shorts For Superette

To promote the shorts sale at fashion retail store Superette, the New Zealand ad agency, DDB Auckland, turned unwitting thighs into billboards by creating benches with reverse embossed lettering that when sat upon created an impression reading "Short shorts on sale Superette"



The plates were placed upon inner city and fashion district bus stop benches, mall seats and park benches. The branded seats were an ingenious way to take advantage of free media space with the impressions lasting about an hour.




Credits:
Ad agency: DDB Auckland
Executive Creative Director: Toby Talbot
Creative Director: Regan Grafton
Creative: Damian Galvin and Rory Mckechnie
Account Director: Jenny Travers
Project Manager: Andy Robilliard
Models: Jen and Jen

Prime Cable Network Promotes Popular TV Series With Mini Dioramas

To promote the PRIME series available on Belgium's PRIME Telenet network, Prime TV, director/deisgner/animator Steven Huybrechts filmed and composited miniature sets with tiny figurines to represent their line up of television series.

A smart and entertaining solution, this meant they didn't have to get clearance for clips from the actual shows, or book the actual actors, saving lots of red tape, moola and time.

The :60 television ad - shown after the screen grabs - features the following shows [shown in alphabetical order]:

Boardwalk Empire:

Breaking Bad:

Californication:

Deadwood:

Dirty Sexy Money:

Hung:

Lost:

Mad Men:

Matroesjka's:

Modern Family:

Pillars Of The Earth:

Six Feet Under:

Sons of Anarchy:

Spartacus:

The Pacific:

Weeds:

4400:




Credits:
director: Steven Huybrechts
producer: Sofie Gebruers
cam: Geert Verstraete
edit: Tom Willems [represented by Caviar Content, Brussels]
soundfx: Yve@Sonicville
compositing/fx: Steven Huybrechts
client: Ludo Luykx PRIME

A special thanks to Fubiz for bringing this to my attention!

Fun With Skype Screen Grabs By James Callahan.

I figured it wouldn't be long until we began seeing more and more 'art' made from the latest tech apps and devices. We've already seen a wonderful series of illustrated versions of You Tube's most popular videos and seen how the New Yorker Magazine has featured covers created with an iPhone painting app.



Now, UK advertising art director, illustrator and photographer James Callahan has had some fun with screengrabs of his Skype video chats. His ongoing project which he calls Screengrabography is simply his superimposing of screen grabs from Skype chats over stock photos or art.

They are not super impressively composed or even that inventive (men's heads on women's bodies), but they are fun nevertheless and certainly simple enough for almost anyone to do. The results are good for a chuckle. And may just inspire you to start making a few of your own.





Extra points to James' friends Daisy and Joseph for being such good sports.


See James Callahan's portfolio here which includes some very impressive advertising and design work.

Amazing Tansu Shoe For Onitsuka Tiger Wins Gold At Cannes

International creative agency, Amsterdam Worldwide has won a Gold Design Lion at the 2010 Cannes Lions Festival for their hand-crafted tansu shoe created for yet another one of their fabulous campaigns and collateral work for Onitsuka Tiger.



Honoured for its innovation and creativity, the Tansu shoe is the centerpiece of the 2010 brand campaign for Onitsuka Tiger.

The one and a half meter long Tansu-inspired wooden sneaker is a totem to classic Japanese design, and was hand-carved in a traditional 9th generation Tansu workshop.





Taking cues from ‘puzzle box’ cabinets created for the Samurai, it took a team of expert Japanese craftsmen over four months to craft the model using traditional methods.



The Tansu shoe comprises many authentic features, including a number of secret compartments which intrigued and engaged consumers in retail environments worldwide.

Below are screen grabs of the shoe's interactivity as it appears on the Onitsuka Tiger website:




Richard Gorodecky, Amsterdam Worldwide’s executive creative director said: “In a world increasingly dominated by the virtual, it’s great to see that something hand crafted and ‘real’ has won such a prestigious award.

This is the fourth in the award winning series of larger than life sculptures created from the agencies 'Made of Japan' strategy. Their campaign for Onitsuka Tiger won a Cannes Cyber Lion in 2007 and in 2008 the Electric Tiger Land campaign was a Cannes Titanium finalist.

New Michelin Ads: Proof That The Right Execution Changes Everything.

above: a still from the second animated Michelin spot in the new global campaign, Saddest Road.


Michelin's latest advertising campaign, "The Right Tire Changes Everything" has refreshed an ad icon that was fast fading into "Speedy -Alka Seltzer-land." But thanks to a new advertising campaign by TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York, the lovable white tower of tires, known in the US as The Michelin Tire Man, is back with a vengeance.

The recent animated Michelin television commercial "Evil Gas Pump" directed and edited by Pysop, has been making the rounds on blogs and magazines and winning honors and accolades in several trade publications. With its digital rejuvenation of the beloved Michelin Man, the spot deserves the kudos.


above: a still from the animated Michelin spot, Evil Gas Pump

But the next one, is just as fabulous, if not more so. Saddest Road is the second in the animated series, soon to be followed by a third. Once again, the animation and music are wonderful and Bibendum, (our tire man's actual name) is once again a hero worth worship.

Take a look at "Saddest Road":


I am not sure the same creative team at TBWA/Chiat/Day New york did all the spots, but at the end of this post are the credits for Evil Gas Pump, which, if you have not yet seen is right here:



The print work, while attractive, is no breakthrough creative, given it is just a lift from the television and the headline is a disappointing rehash of the tagline. But I suppose you could argue the cop out that it's a cohesive campaign because both the tv and print showcase the wonderful animation.

Examples of the print work for Michelin:


According to Michelin Corporate's press release "The new campaign’s slogan – “The right tire changes everything” – is intended to illustrate the competitive advantages of Michelin tires in media outlets around the world."

The worldwide campaign initially launched in the United States in early October and then will gradually be deployed in 55 countries – in Europe and Asia in early 2010, followed by Africa, the Middle East, India and South America.

They also designed a new US site for the brand:

above: the home page of the new site.

According to Adweek, the fourth quarter advertising effort cost $20 million.


Credits:
Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day New York
Chairman & CCO: Mark Figliulo
ACD/Art Director: Anthony DeCarolis
ACD/Copywriter: Erik Fahrenkopf
Executive Producer Media Arts: Matt Bijarchi
Director of Broadcast Production: Ozzie Spenningsby
Senior Producer: Jason Souter
Production: Psyop, New York
Director: Psyop
Creative Director: Marie Hyon/Marco Spier
Executive Producer: Lucia Grillo
Senior Producer: Lydia Holness
Producer: Lisa Munoz
Lead Designers: Anh Vu, Helen Choi
Designers: Kitty Lin, Jaye Kim, Ben Chan, Pete Sickbert-Bennett
Lead Technical Director: Tony Barbieri
Lead CG Animator: Pat Porter
CG Animators: Gooshun Wang, Royce Wesley, Kevin Phelps, Michael Shin, Angelo Collazo, Russ Wooton
Lead Ligthing TD: Anthony Patti
CG Lighters: Cody Chen, Szymon Weglarski, Helen Choi, Jeff Chavez
CG Modelers: Soo Hee Han, Tom Cushwa, Rie Ito, Tony Jung, Dan Fine
CG Rigging: Goo-shun Wang, Stanley Llin, Jordan Blit
FX: Miguel Salek, Jonah Friedman
Lead Compositor: Jason Conradt
Compositors: Manu Gaulot, Gabriel Regentin

Editorial: Psyop
Editor: Cass Vanini

Mix: Sound Lounge
Sound Engineer – Philip Loeb

Sound Design: Sound Lounge
Sound Designer- Marshall Grupp
Producer: Martia Guinn

Music: Human
Composer: Human
Executive Producer: Lauren Bleiweiss

10 (Now 11) Good Reasons To Stop Making Ads That Look Like These

It's not uncommon to see trends in the creative executions of advertising, but here's one that reached critical mass. The compositing of items to create human faces has been used in several different ad campaigns from reputable agencies all over the world.

I saw a post on Brainpickings.org via PicoCool about three campaigns that are visual tributes to music using this technique. It was then that I realized, I knew of several others, so I decided to do a round up of ten campaigns for you, not exclusively related to music.

Here are ten (now, just updated..so make that 11!) different ad campaigns (and one art project) all created within the past 3 years. Each of them is well-executed and very nicely art directed... but I think it's time to put a moratorium on assembled faces.

In the meantime, enjoy these (click on each image to enlarge):

1. The first is an art project by multimedia artist Iri5 who considers this her "Ghost In The Machine" series in which Robert Smith from The Cure, Jimmie Hendrix and Bob Dylan are all composed of cassette tape. Most impressive is that these are NOT photoshopped or painted but use a real cassette and tape.



2. The stunningly composed Grammy Ads (and accompanying tv spot) incorporate a concept by using the musicians favorite songs typographically to compose the image. Shown below are Coldplay, Thom Yorke and Lil' Wayne.


credits:
Agency: TBWA Chiat Day
Copywriter: Eric Arnold
Art direction and illustration: Steve Yee

3. These four Bose ads feature Elvis, Kishore Kumar (an Indian singer who resembles Wayne Newton), Madonna and Jim Morrison made up of black and grey silhouetted audio components.


credits:
Ad agency: Unknown
Art director: Nirmalya Chakraborty
Copywriter: Sanjeev Anand

4. The ads for RAM FM, a Jerusalem and Ramallah radio station known as Peace Radio, communicate the fact that the station brings people of different beliefs together via the use of passport stamps to comprise the visuals.


credits:
Advertising Agency: Gitam BBDO, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Art Director: Noam Laist
Copywriter: Orel Bitan
Studio: Ariel Vitkon, Elina Uretsky

5. One of my personal favorite executions are these stunning out of home posters and bus shelters, which make the faces of actual postage stamps, celebrating Finnish Stamps for the 150 year Jubilee Exhibition.


credits:
Advertising Agency: TBWA\PHS, Helsinki, Finland
Art Directors: Pia Pitkanen, Jukka Rosti
Illustrator: Pia Pitkanen
Copywriter: Erkko Mannila

6. An Argentina agency created these Nike Football ads out of little stamped footballs (or soccerballs for those of us in the States) as tributes to individual players.


credits:
Nike football: Aguero
Advertising Agency: BBDO, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Copywriter:Pablo Alvarez Travieso
Art Director:Gonzalo Vecino

6. These bus shelters for the Swedish furniture chain, IKEA, celebrate diversity by showing people of different ages and races all made up of the various product items available at IKEA.



9. A nice attribute of this campaign for A Bela Sintra, a restaurant in Sao Paulo, is the varied state of the beans for the art, from full beans to finely ground, all make up the faces.


credits:
Advertising Agency: Giovanni + DraftFcb, Brazil
Art Director: Sidney Araújo
Copywriters: Alexandre Peralta, Astério Segundo
Illustrator: Marco D'Giorgio

10. Playing off the adage that "Music soothes the savage beast", this campaign for the Samsung i450 uses terrorists and dictators like Idi Amin and Osama Bin Laden to show how music in their heads can bring an end to fighting.



10. And finally, an anti-smoking campaign from Unimed uses actual cigarettes to comprise the faces of such hateful characters as Hitler and Osama Bin Laden with the phrase "cigarettes kill more" is accompanied by an animated tv spot of 'war' signed off with "smoking kills more".


credits:
Advertising Agency: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Brazil
Copywriters: Ricardo Jones, Eduardo Lima
Art Director: Airton Carmignani

LAST MINUTE UPDATE (forgot to add these!)
11. Another nicely constructed campaign, this one for Harley Davidson that uses tools and motorcycle parts to make up the visages.


credits:
Agency: Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis, USA
Copywriter: Eric Sorensen
Art Director: Brock Davis

A big shout out to Ivan and his Ads Of The World where I was able to find many of the visuals and credits.