Homo Viator

These HP ads are already a little older, but I still find some versions that I have never seen before. Wonderful visuals! I had already blogged about the Jay-Z one, here are some more:

Serena Williams (The best ad if you ask me)



Paulo Coelho

I am leaving for Berlin and will not be back until Monday. Since my laptop broke and my customized MAC needs two weeks for delivery, I will not write until Monday. I leave you with great advertising.

I know that this is an old campaign, but I just stumbled over it again. Why cant advertising use more such digital effects? Loved it! By the way: During my internet research (at the moment, my visits to the virtual habitat are work-related ;-) I read the latest on three dimensional motion sensors that will soon replace the way we communicate with computers. What you see in the ad will one day be reality, sooner than you think. Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is frequently quoted as a realistic showcase of where technology is currently heading to. I say: Niiiiiiiiiice!

HP Ad



Current two-dimensional prototypes

A little lengthy, so only tech aficionados should see the whole video.



This one always does the same, so just seeing 10 seconds would do!



Let this technology merge with 3d projection technology and you have what HP shows in the ad. Lovely!

I have always liked watching ads; I find them to be more informative and entertaining than those dull Tv formats that dominate airwaves these days. As a teenager I always wanted to work in an advertising agency and I would deliberately zap through the channels, looking for ads. When in a country whose language I do not speak, ads are sometimes the only media formats I can understand. One should not underestimate what one can learn about a country and its culture by just looking at the billboards in the streets. Humor, for example, differs from country to country and that is always reflected in it's advertising. Indian ads make use of almost pantomimic style comedy, for example.

Even though some of my readers may not like the fact that advertising's main objective is to sell you something (which I do not mind at all), let's not forget that the tactics it uses are often very artistic, creative, innovative and social-critical. Of course many ads portray a surreal, perfect-world kind of image, but good advertising reflects societal behavior and often implicitly criticizes it.

If advertising was always as entertaining as the two ads below, would people really want to miss it? Maybe companies should tackle TiVo by simply hiring more creative agencies that produce entertaining ads? Unfortunately, a lack of creative agencies is not the problem. During my work I realized that what is lacking is creativity at the other end, the client side. Company executives and product managers often think too much with their left side of the brain. (also check out "Some people just do not like him")

Fantastic! Creativity at its best.

This week started out hectic, so I had no time to write about anything significant, like the political battle raging in the USA on troop funding, for example. Let´s see if Bush will really show his mussel. To keep you lot entertained, here just a little ad. Talk to you tomorrow.

How do you raise brand awareness among over 500.000 potential customers (and counting), in the most cost-efficient way? Have a nutter run down Europe´s longest escalator on skis, place your brand name at the end of the video clip and post it on YouTube. Gosh, marketing can be so simple at times.

Alright, this entry is a bit of a lame placeholder. I was just too busy today to write about what I wanted to write about. So here is just a nice little ad that reminds us that no every visually appealing ad must have have a large CGI component. This ad is just beautifully and lavishly executed.

Sorry for the lack of entries over the last days, but internet accessibility is somewhat comparable to overall efficiency levels here in Barbados. My decision to finally switch to Mac has been made and although I would say that this decision was not consciously influenced by the Apple ads that I have been watching on the internet lately, I would still rate them as very effective in building up the Apple brand. On YouTube you will find lots of creative spoofs on these ads.



Of course Microsoft was too static, careful and risk adverse to confront these ads with an adequate reply.

Girls and Europeans only tend to watch the Super Bowl for its creative ads. Considering that 30 seconds airtime already cost $2.5 Million ($83.000 per second), companies do not save on production costs either. Frito Lay (Doritos) however, jumped on the bandwagon of consumer generated content and smartly unloaded the pressures of creating a memorable Super Bowl ad to the user.
And of course there were lots of focus groups, pre-testings and impact measurements. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles scanned the brains of five men and five women between the ages of 18 and 34 as they watched Super Bowl ads to measure the emotional impact. “Each area of the brain has specific functions. Some areas generate emotions, like hope, trust or fear, while others process information. When an area of the brain becomes active, the vascular systems shunts additional blood to that area and the fMRI measures the increase.” Among the top anxiety-producing ads, was one for General Motors aimed at drawing attention to the automaker's 100,000 mile warranty? (See below) According to the university "that one got people's attention. But they did not feel good about the message. It produced big spikes of anxiety and perhaps ... feelings of economic insecurity.” The commercials that produced the most positive feelings were those by Coke and Doritos.
But I think everyone would agree that compared to other years this year’s Super Bowl ads were rather lame.

My favorite Super Bowl XLI ad



The GM anxiety producing ad



Dorito´s user-produced ads



Kevin Federline´s piss take of himself...

....and Britney. "Life comes at you fast" and "guaranteed income for life." That is just great.



Snickers ad: Nothing for Homophobics