I have a fair bit of sympathy for the WWF at the moment. I’m not a big “save the planet” kind of guy. Where a 5 minute walk can be had I’ll generally let the lazy man inside me win and take the car. But I recognise that the WWF do not have an easy task. Aside from the fact that their name was associated with fat, sweaty, loud mouthed wrestlers for so many years, they are forced to compete against the budgets and political muscle of the major corporations.

While the Multi Nationals inebriate us with catchy slogans such as “Anything is possible”, WWF have the slightly more buzz killing tag of “Before its too late”. Almost like the older sister at a party of 18 year olds getting drunk, they feel obliged to tell us to have fun, but think twice about doing too many beer bongs because you’l regret it later. Nine times out of ten when I fell out of bed the next morning with a jackhammer going off in my head, I wished I had taken that advice. I feel like we’re in the same situation now, except the stakes are a lot higher. And, as depicted in a famous South Park episode, we’ll find ourselves running around aimlessly saying “we didn’t listen”.

This is an excellent illustration of the state of things at the moment. The man made diggers are like a cancer spreading further up the lungs, but the important thing is that it can be stopped and reversed if we act now. It may not be the most creative of taglines but I can’t imagine the WWF are too worried about what the art community feels about that. Their number one priority is to get their message accross plain and simple, and that is why this is an effective ad.

Advertising Agency: TBWA\PARIS, France
Executive Creative Director / Creative Director: Erik Vervroegen
Copywriter: Nicolas Roncerel
Account Supervisor : Laurent Lilti
Released: April 2008

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Pregnant

Car

Whale
Have you gained weight?
Life looks more beautiful when you are relaxed.

I’m not all that clued up when it comes to day spas. I have never been to one, and to be honest have never really considered it. I think there are better ways to utilise my time. I can imagine myself  just spending the whole time thinking about what I should be doing, rather than relaxing. It would be a waste of time, and money too, I imagine.

So I admit I am naive, and therefore am not ashamed to further admit that I have no idea what pregnancy, cars and whales have specifically to do with day spas.

I also wonder if something got lost somewhere in translation, because the copy doesn’t really make all that much sense to me. I can’t understand the text in the paper craft so again, I am totally lost…

I also don’t care, because these images are so impressive. I am a fan of detail, and these are definitely three detailed and intricate pieces of work. I can really appreciate creations like this; each must have taken a lot of time and even more patience.

So, again, I admit these ads really make little sense to me at all. If anyone can make any more sense of them, go for it. I clearly have no idea.

Anyway, no matter how much sense an advertisement  may make, it will be no more likely to convince me to attend a day spa than one that makes absolutely none.

Advertising Agency: Fields, Brazil
Creative Directors: André Sartorelli, Fernando Lopes
Art Director: Lucas Zaiden
Copywriter: Paulo Lima
Illustrators: Yulia Brodskaya, Herbert Carlos (Grupo Magneto), Anderson Lisboa

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Freelander 2 with panoramic sunroof.

I love snakes. When I first saw this ad, it took me a short while to actually notice the person in the image, I was thinking about the snake.

I find it hard to believe that people can be afraid of snakes. If it were the poison that people were so frightened of, then maybe it would make a little more sense. But it isn’t, it is the snakes themselves that cause such horror.

I learnt to love snakes (or not to hate them) in the third grade. I imagine that no child from my third grade class could possibly have developed a phobia of snakes, because we were surrounded by them, every day, all year long. Our teacher bred snakes, and so the walls of our classroom were lined with glass tanks containing carpet snakes, red-bellied black snakes, a blind python, a death adder (no kidding. Whoever spelled all their weekly words correctly got the honour of feeding it a rat on Friday afternoon), and an array of lizards and reptiles. It was awesome.

So I am completely oblivious to whatever it is that makes people squirm at snakes; I think they are beautiful.

This ad, on the other hand….

I can’t remember any specific instances, but I get the feeling this has been done before. It certainly hasn’t been effective in raising my curiosities about this fantastic panoramic sunroof (I even had to go back and look at the image then to remember what the ad was even about). It will probably just make people squirm because they hate snakes, squirm because they love them, or just plain squirm.

Advertising Agency: Filadelfia, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Creative Director: Dan Zecchinelli
Art Director: João Paz
Copywriter: Leandro Neves
Photographers: Pedro Gravatá / Stock archive
Other additional credits:
Digital retouching: Aderson Fagundes
Published: March 2009

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If only this was true.

“No fuel, No war”.

We could virtually eradicate all wars by switching our cars over to an alternate form of energy. I think that hybrid cars would see much higher sales if that were the case.

There would be no more questions about what we could do to bring about world peace, it would just be common knowledge. “Stop using petroleum to produce things”. We would boycott companies that continued to use oil, just as we boycotted companies who supported apartheid.

Unfortunately for us though, none of this is true.

Consider for example an age-old war, the Palestinian-Israeli feud. Both groups have numerous legitimate reasons as to why they should occupy Israel. They’ve been fighting this war, based on faith, for thousands of years. Now here’s the most important part, are you ready?

There is absolutely nothing in Israel.

No natural resources, no gold, no diamonds. No money.

Now, we have to ask ourselves, “if there’s nothing in Iraseal, then why are there so many people fighting over it?” The answer: this is a war of faith. Both Islam’s and Judaism’s most holy places are located in Israel. The only thing more powerful, the only thing that can kill more people, the only thing that people are more willing to fight for more then money, is faith.

Now, this isn’t to say that if we weren’t so dependant on oil there wouldn’t be LESS war. However, there are some things that will never go away and wars are one of them.

We’ll never stop killing each other. The only thing that I can think about when I see these ads is how terribly wrong the slogan is. For that reason, I deem it un-affective, and just generally off-putting.

Advertising Agency: Mudra Advertising, Bangalore, India
Creative Directors: Joono Simon, Sumitra Sengupta
Art Directors: Saurabh Doke, Kanickraj.S, Moksha Carambiah
Copywriters: Sudhir Sukumar, Vijay Joy
Photographer: Tarun
Published: December 2008

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I love these ads.

They remind me of the time I spent living in Montreal. Pea coats, bicycles, the chilly fall air, and coming home at night to a delicious home cooked stew. This brings back to me a lot of good friends and a lot of good memories; I can’t wait to go back. When ads can do this to me they’re instantly winners in my books, so be prepared for an article full of glowing praise.

I’ve never been but I’ve been told, that England (London in particular) doesn’t have the most tropical climate. The sun often blocked out by layer of clouds so thick that you could grate them. These ads do an amazing job of highlighting this, and in-turn use it to their advantage. The scenery, the cloudy skies (note the prominence of the clouds in the ads), the lack of colour, all these elements lend themselves to this kind of film-noir style being produced by the Stephens Brothers. The clothes match the city, and you can sell the city.

Even the slogans reflect England. The hand written scrawl calls to mind Dickens and Shakespeare. Writers and poets of long past, working away in a candle-lit study into the wee hours, a romantic image for most. One of the slogans states, “Any more colours and it would be a faux pas in England. Or then a French suit”. So here they are, pointing out what I’ve been saying. They’re selling you English fashion, and England is known for it’s drab rainbow (7 shades of grey).

Advertising Agency: ideas@work, Mumbai, India
Creative Directors: Zarvan Patel, Prashant Godbole
Art Director: Manoj Gorde
Copywriters: Roy Abraham, Kartik Smetacek
Photographer: Tejal Patni
Published: October 2008

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Now, I’m not the kind of person who uses this word often, or without truly meaning it – infact, I’m having second thoughts about using it now – but I suppose it really is the only word that I can use to describe these pictures: cute.

These pictures are the <a title=”Sneezing Panda” href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNYfZd8iV2k” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow”> Sneezing Panda of the ad world.</a>

The pictures themselves are beautifully shot. The colours have been de-saturated slightly so as to give the pictures this magical-fairytale-forest-at-dusk kind of feeling (something you don’t happen across every day). They’ve all been framed in the same way, with the subject of the ad (the flowers, the jar) on the left side of the ad, and beautiful scenery on the right. This gives them a sense of organization, you can tell they’re all from the same set.

The strategy is simple, and quite a popular one nowadays. When you can make a claim that a product is energy efficient, good for the environment, or otherwise “green”, then you can quite easily play on peoples guilt. Just as with organic foods people are willing to pay for peace of mind, even if it costs a little bit extra. The images of beautiful forests and scenery all elicit this sense of “God that’s beautiful, I should really do something to preserve that”.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this a bad thing – anything that gets people to start thinking about something other then themselves is a good thing, – I’m just saying that it’s also a powerful marketing technique. If you’re really interested in helping to create a sustainable planet, you should really do some research on the product or company that produces it. I myself was just enlightened to the fact that Chapters (a large Canadian book-store chain) contributes money to a fund that sends Israelis overseas to enlist in the army. Now, I’m not pro-Israeli or Palestinian, so I definitely don’t want to be supporting one or the other when I buy a book.

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It was an accident.

This will be our little secret.

Cool off a bit. See you in the morning.

Do you suspect child abuse? Check whatcanido.nl

It is fair to say we have all seen a lot of ads for prevention of child abuse and child protection lately. Usually (and unfortunately) they portray crying or screaming childen with frightened little faces, tears rolling down their darling cheeks, maybe a bruise here or there, and  some copy that suggests we should all pay more attention to any warning signs (because we always ignore it when we see a child this distressed).

These ads use text rather than imagery and, I believe, far more effectively get the message across without upsetting us too much, or at least too blatantly (there is nothing subtle about a screaming child). The problems with the usual ads is that they make us think about something that is so upsetting we would rather imagine that things like that just don’t happen. And I don’t want to be left wondering who made the child in the ad cry and how (like in this ad, for example).

These ads make sense, and that’s all they need to do. They can take us a little bit away from the immediate awfulness of child abuse. They are suggestive enough to be obvious, but they aren’t an attempt to gain sympathy or evoke too many emotions.

Anyway, now that I have commented on the ad, I would just like to mention how strange I find it that the Dutch Government have combined Health, Welfare and Sport into one grand Ministry. This is either really stupid, or really clever. I am not sure… maybe it is just because of the context of these ads that I find it strange…

Advertising Agency: ComBat, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Creative Directors: Anilda da Cruz, Ruud van Esch
Art Director: Anilda da Cruz
Copywriter: Ruud van Esch
Photographer: Josie Sykes, Suburbia
Digital Artist: Nick Strong, Cheap-n-Nasty

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