“Let our powers combine. Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart! Go, Planet!

By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet.” – Captain Planet and the Planeteers

This advertising campaign was designed to promote an apartment complex that Rohan Builders created called “Mithila”. What makes Mithila so unusual is that instead of the established way that construction companies have of dealing with plant life (if you ask it nicely to leave and it doesn’t, kill it) Rohan didn’t raze the land. In fact, they’ve gone so far as to plant quite a few trees around the area they’re constructing in.

‘Green Building’, as environmentally conscious construction is commonly becoming known as, is actually quite popular in our inconveniently true world. Evidence of this can be found in many of the world’s leading powers, including Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Green building focuses not only on reducing the impact on wildlife in the immediate area of construction but also, through better citing and design, aims to cut wastage of resources, making the building process and the resulting product more energy efficient.

For instance, the city of Freiburg, Germany is known as the “Eco City”. Its notoriously-green reputation is due to a resolution that was adopted by the Freiburg city council in 1992. The resolution states that new buildings can only be built if they comply with low energy specifications. These low energy houses use solar power, garnered from panels on the roofs of the houses for electricity, hot water, and heating.

I think my favourite ad of the three is the third one down. The picture is of some sort of murky, post apocalyptic wasteland, where concrete support poles have replaced trees. It shows the Rohan Builders, not leveling trees as per usual, but cutting down these concrete poles that have taken over the land. It underlines the fact that Rohan isn’t using conventional building supplies. They’re recycling all materiel that has already been used and is just lying around.

Now if we could just find a way to re-use old plastic drinking bottles..

Client: Rohan Builders
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy, Bangalore, India
Creative Directors: Malvika Mehra, Amit Akali
Art Directors: Shekhar, Kanickaraj
Copywriter: Vijay Joy
Photographer: Radhakrishnan

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“Like having sex with a TRACTOR TRAILER in a PARKING LOT”

There’s a bit of a story behind this one for me.

In my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, there’s a sketch comedy troupe called Picnicface (definitely recommend checking them out), with whom I did a one-year internship. A couple of years ago they hit gold with a viral video. The video was a parody of an energy drink ad, poking fun at the over-the-top announcers, slogans and claims (“It’s like a fighter plane made out of BICEPS”) made by the products.

The video had mild youtube success until it received attention from Will Ferrell on his website FunnyorDie.com. It instantly blew up and it now has over 13 million views on Picnicface’s youtube channel, with numerous copy-cat videos and parodies of it’s own.

Brawndo, who is marketing their product in the same style that Picnicface used, asked Mark Little (the voice of Powerthirst) to voice this video for them.

As for the ads themselves, they’re attractive and eye catching. You see them and you want to know more. The slogan (“Fully loaded with Energy”) and pictures of tanks and planes make the message of the ad very clear. ‘Brawndo packs a lot of energy’.

Alternative interpretations of this ad include ‘Tanks are made out of enormous straws’, ‘Watch out for straw’d beverages’ and ‘Brawndo is like drinking a loaded gun’.

Tagline: Fully loaded with caffeine.
Advertising Agency: Serviceplan München Hamburg, Germany
Creative director: Ekki Frenkler
Art Directors: Miro Moric, Patrizia Marroni
Copywriter: Eva Foraita
Illustration: Miro Moric, Daniel Tomcic

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This is so cool.

This is how grown-ups should settle their differences, then it wouldn’t matter who was stronger, who had the more technologically advanced weapons, or who was hiding the WMD‘s in some secret underground desert cave. All that would matter would be how powerful your super-soaker was, how good you could aim it, and how fast you could run.

While I look at this now and just want to get out there and have a super-soaker war (no holds barred) with my friends, when I was a kid I know I would probably have wimped out and hidden behind a tree for most of the time, emerging when peace was declared, slightly less wet than the rest of the kids and very much less invigorated. This is because I always had bad aim, I could never run very fast, and I could never really stick up for myself.

That’s right, I was a big sook.

This picture is like all the fun experiences I missed out on as a kid, rolled into one and multiplied by a hundred thousand million.

This looks like SO much fun! I am seriously considering organising a water-gun war with all my pals.

Yep, I could have a bash at this water gun war business now that I am all grown up (?) I could handle a few bruises now better than when I was a kid. My aim is only a little more accurate but there are ways to make up for that. I still can’t run but I can hide pretty well, and I don’t have any problems sticking up for myself now.

This ad just makes you want to be a kid again. It makes you want to be one of those kids (except maybe for the girl getting hammered in the centre of the picture).

In any case, this advertisement is really effective, and I don’t think there is really anything not to like about it. Besides, of-course, that most of us have never, and will never, experience the sheer exhiliration of a fully-fledged water-gun war of this calibre.

Brand: Super soaker toys (recreational water gun)
Advertising Agency: JWT Frankfurt, Germany
Creative Director / Copywriter: Oliver Kessler
Art Director: Ralf Richter
Illustrator: Benjamin von Eckartsberg

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270,000 trees are flushed down the toilet or end up as garbage every day around the world.
Use tissues sparingly.

How much toilet paper we each find it necessary to use when “doing our business” isn’t really water-cooler conversation. In fact, I don’t even think it is the type of subject you want to breach with your most trusted companion.

I once lived with somebody who used an enormous amount of toilet paper. It was truly ridiculous. I have no idea why this was so, and while I didn’t really want to know, I would often find myself thinking; “What the HELL is she doing in there?”

Maybe she was a hygeine freak (although by the sight of her bedroom, I highly doubt it). Maybe she felt the need to cover the seat with toilet paper like you would in a public toilet. Maybe she wrapped her whole hand in toilet paper, glove style, whenever she wiped, for fear of contamination.  Maybe she utilised her creative skills to make toilet paper origami while patiently waiting for her business to be over.

Who knows? All I know is, she went through about a tree a day, and it bothered me enough to make me think about it everytime I went near the loo, but not enough to ask her what the hell was going on.

This is the awareness campaign for my former roommate, if ever there was one. If only I could turn back time and install a tree trunk paper dispenser in the loo at that house, then I would know: did she genuinely need all that paper, or was she just a waster, pure and simple?

Seeing as you can’t just confront a person about their paper wastage in such a private arena (nor keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t use too much), this is a fantastic and effective advertising campaign designed to generate awareness about something that people generally do not care to even think about, let alone discuss.

And so, now that I have been reminded of 270,000 dead plants whose  journey from a tiny seedling to a grown tree has culminated in wiping someones backside and being flushed down the toilet with the waste it had been so unluckily designated to clean away, I will definitely reconsider my usage.

Advertising Agency: DDB, Muscat, Oman
Creative Director: Mahesh Anvekar
Art Director: Pravin Amudan
Copywriter: Santu Sakar
Graphic Designer: Nilesh Ayare
Released: October 2008

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When I see an ad like this I often think about the campaign brief. Did it really call for such an insight? Or did some guy with a cigarette and snooty accent nonchalantly utter “vhatever you do, make sure its sexy.”

On set, a man and woman are positioned preparing a meal. The photographer is capturing their kitchen woes as they struggle to handle the recipe/ingredients/opinions. Then the snooty cigarette interrupts; “no no no this is all vrong…it’s missing zomething. We need.. more passion!” At once he takes the male and catapults him onto the woman. Then from afar he directs every passionate movement as the photographer captures every moment.

Then the cigratte says “no no zomething is still vrong.. vait. Both of you- leave! Get out of the shot right now.” And alas! We have the yemeksepeti.com Valentines Day campaign.

The campaign ingeniously assures us that if we happen to get down and dirty on the dinner table, no need to worry. Yemeksepeti.com will deliver your meal fast. In fact, you can use the food wasted as cushioning. If you’re really keen yemeksepeti.com even encourages you to use it in fore play (note the whipped cream).

The insight is so naughty it is nice. It’s a welcomed change from cheesy Valentines campaigns, or the usual “the guy forgot about the girl. Isn’t that funny?”

The photography and artwork is equally excellent. The detail and set positioning makes me question if it really was re-enacted. If by chance the snooty cigarette guy doesn’t exist, (and was only a product of my daydream), who is to say this isn’t TBWAs office kitchen? Or perhaps it was where this “insight” was “cooked up.” A productive meeting no?

Advertising Agency: TBWA Istanbul, Turkey
Creative Director: İlkay Gürpinar
Creative Group Head: Volkan Karakasoglu
Art Director: Can Pehlivanli
Copywriter: Esin Erol
Photographer: Nejat Talas

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“Protect Yourself From Global Warming”

I recall when my regular coffee shop substituted their real coffee cups to a not-so-subtle advert. While stunned, I had never before seen such a concept and was incredible intrigued. Each day I would get my ‘on the way to work’ coffee and spend 15minutes reading about how I can get save on pharmaceuticals. After two weeks I was an expert on the properties of such medicines. If anybody noted the symptoms I offered valuable advice.

The coffee cup ad is brilliant marketing. I am sure you have all heard the rant “we are exposed to more than 3000 ads a day.” Yet how many of these do you stare at for 15 minutes? I don’t want to go too much into the bean of coffee cup advertising. Rather i wish to compliment its use in this campaign.

Unlike my pharmaceutical coffee, they have looked to collectively utilising the cup, the sleeve and ad copy. Although this is one of 3000 ads, you will spend15 minutes admiring the ingenuity.

However I cannot help but giggle at the hint of irony in using coffee. Craig Mackintosh from Celsias has been quoted to link coffee and global warming:

“If caffeine was an essential ingredient to bring about the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution brought about global warming, then… that’s it… caffeine is bringing us to the brink of disaster!

Electricity, combined with caffeine, keeps us up late at night – when in pre-industrial times it would have been lights out hours ago. We’re no longer ‘burning the candle at both ends’, but rather the coal-fired power station that lights our homes and powers our televisions through the sunless hours.

And the next day – how does the day begin for most of us? Out of our beds we emerge like the walking dead from a B-grade zombie movie, until we reach for our kick-start-in-a-cup, and begin the cycle again.”

In no way do I believe this to be a fault of the campaign. In fact I doubt many would think of this in the 15 minutes. Rather regardless of whether you see it as ridiculous or not, it makes you think a little (and/or giggle).

Yet I cant help but wonder about another irony. What if the coffee tastes terrible and they throw it away? All that energy used to produce it was wasted, not to mention the failure to create 15 minutes of staring. Or even better, what if the coffee drinker fails to recycle the cup? I believe it will just go straight to land fill… (giggle).

Advertising Agency: KNARF New York, USA
Creative Director: Frank Anselmo
Copywriters: Kevin Honegger, Stephen Minasvand
Art Directors: Stephen Minasvand, Kevin Honegger, Frank Anselmo
Photographer: Billy Siegrist

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“50% OFF! That’s right, you heard it 50% off. For 30 days only. Get in quick or it will GO GO GO. All stock must GO! Get 50% off. It’s UNBELIEVABLE!!”

Undoubtedly a great example of outstanding advertising. Not at all do you feel irritated, head sore, or pessimistic. Rather you will race down the road to get the sale stock before it GO GO GOs.

If you haven’t yet recognised my sarcasm, be rest assured that I do hate those ads. Some may argue that they make the sale. I don’t care, they are poor form and I don’t want them taking up media space or my brain space.

This bar code campaign from Strategies is a nice change from the above heckler. It is a creative way to say “up to 50% off” and I like it. The digital barcode on brown paper bag is beautiful simplicity. I also love the adjective change in each copy. It’s a little cheesy, but far from the heckler.

I feel like i’m not being forced to BUY BUY BUY. Only to smile at the creative before feeling I should at least think about buying. By not shoving it down my throat I have a greater willingness to participate. The only problem is I don’t know what Carrefour is. Perhaps i should suggest incorporating a telephone number? Then I could be one of the first 20 callers and get something I don’t need “ABSOLUTELY FREE.”

Advertising Agency: Strategies, Cairo, Egypt
Associate Creative Director / Illustrator: Bassem Sabry
Art Directors / Copywriter: Bassem Sabry, Mohamed Khater

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