We Heart; Lifestyle & Design Magazine » Advertising

Thom Thom’s Billboard Street Art

James Davidson — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:03:17 +0000

Mutilating consumerist imagery has never looked so elegant. French street artist, Thom Thom, reworks billboards, hacking and dicing his way through them, before realising his mosaic like reinterpretations. What were once repetitive corporate advertisements are now vibrant, hugely original artworks; the messages discarded for art that can be both disturbing and graceful yet always significantly more powerful than their original form…

Non-Sign II, Lead Pencil Studio

James Davidson — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:34:50 +0000

Approaching the US/Canadian border from either country, you’re faced with countless billboards advertising products, Duty Free and promoting the nation with images of flags and national pride. As they give way to directional signage and customs related notices, you’ll now find a surreal examination of advertising, architecture and the environment, a negative billboard that frames nothing other than nature. Sitting between Blaine, Washington and the highway to Vancouver, Non-Sign II – created by Seattle based Lead Pencil Studio and commissioned by the US Government’s ‘Excellence in Design’ program – is a beautiful, thought-provoking installation that took 9 months to construct in their Seattle studio, with small sections being trucked to the site and stitched together over a 2 week period. Challenging, innovative and more engaging than any traditional advertising could be, Lead Pencil’s invisible billboard makes for possibly the most inspiring border crossing you’ll experience…

Photography: Ian Gill

Beck’s Live Art Billboards

James Davidson — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:21:09 +0000

You may well have seen Beck‘s latest ‘art label’ campaign in which French indie-popsters Phoenix, alongside emerging artists Inventory Studio and Valero Doval, have created limited edition labels for the German beer brand, with every bottle or can bearing a code that can be exchanged for free music at Play.com. If you were near the Foundry in East London or Birmingham’s Bullring this week then you may also have seen emerging artist Jamie Brown abseiling with a spray can or Inventory‘s Robert Boon and David Lane using thousands of CDs – each charged with the task of creating a huge ‘live art’ billboard to promote the campaign. Embracing art and marketing innovation is an integral part of what Beck’s do and rather lovely it is to see an international brand pushing the envelope, and indeed, pushing emerging artists onto a higher platform. Quite literally…

Dulux ‘Let’s Colour’ Project Video

James Davidson — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:08:33 +0000

You may well remember that a little while ago we brought you Dulux’s brilliant ‘Let’s Colour’ project – we called it a “community focused project has seen car parks, schools, streets and squares transformed from dull, oppressive, grey spaces into areas of eye-poppingly vivid colour… enlightening the locals with the team’s passion as they go.” Well, the culmination of this beautifully different approach to big-business marketing is a really quite brilliant 2 minute film, shot throughout the project’s four week run in Brazil, France, London and India, by award winning director Adam Berg. Soundtracked by Sigur Rós’ frontman Jónsi Birgisson, the touching film really communicates the genuine warmth and emotion of this lovely little campaign…..

Nike World Cup Advert

James Davidson — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:39:59 +0000

We, like so many others around the world, are struggling to contain ourselves with excitement about next month’s carnival of football – or ‘soccer’ for our US readers – and you can always heavily rely on the heavyweight champions of marketing to come up trumps with a piece of advertising/entertainment that perfectly sums up the feelings of the footballing world. Nike’s 2010 World Cup advert focuses upon the expectations of a nation and the potential for greatness that each of the competing athletes feels…. moments of glory snatched, shared and stolen. Sensationally shot, beautifully edited and perfectly written, the Oregon based sportswear giants have once more provided a golden moment of marketing that will be on everyone’s lips for the coming months……

Nike World Cup Advert

Also rather humorous is this, a teaser for the main World Cup advert – that will debut during tomorrow’s Champions League final. Perhaps we’ll see some further spin-offs from the advert in coming weeks, we certainly hope so….

The Hotelicopter

James Davidson — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:36:39 +0000

Just in time for April 1st, this excellent piece of guerrilla/viral/call-it-what-you-will marketing has already pulled the proverbial leg of several blogs out there already thanks to it’s pretty believable back story and some beautifully crafted computer graphics. The premise of a flying ‘Hotelicopter’ is perfectly feasible as is the entertaining Soviet military story outlined on the ‘Hotelicopter‘ website, dig a little deeper however and you’ll get a sniff of who is behind this entertaining marketing stunt. The onboard cabins are apparently designed in cooperation with ‘Yotel‘, the budget airport hotel brainchild of Yo! Sushi entrepreneur, and former BBC Dragon, Simon Woodroffe.

Whilst this is bound to generate a huge amount of publicity for the Yo! Company, and upset those countless naiive bloggers, we can’t help but feel a sense of sadness when browsing the ‘Hotelicopter‘ website that this is infact an elaborate marketing hoax and possibly the best April fools day joke we can think of in a long time, as the ‘Hotelicopter’ sure seems like it would be fun……. Then maybe we’re the ones who have been had and this really will come true, in which case, book us on the inaugural Summer tour!

True Blood’s Innovative Marketing

James Davidson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:33:06 +0000

Having premiered in the Autumn in the US, ‘Buffy for adults’ True Blood, has been scheduled for a UK debut this Summer and even if the show itself turns out to be another wannabe Hollywood bore-fest it certainly looks like we can expect some innovative marketing to be heading our way if past efforts are anything to go by. This brilliantly innovative billboard has been launched recently in New Zealand and takes ambient media to potentially dangerous new extremes, for vampires at least.

Previously, HBO themselves have used a cheeky campaign featuring a fake ‘blood’ beverage, Tru Blood, and their social network heavy official series website is laden with much marketing goodness such as the BloodCopy news blog and the fan’s Wiki. Here’s hoping that FX UK get themselves a top advertising agency and throw out some equally innovative marketing for the Summer launch of True Blood.