We Heart; Lifestyle & Design Magazine » Marketing

Renault’s Twingo Art Cars

James Davidson — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:20:32 +0000

Scabin Pasta Twingo by Davide Scabin
© Renault UK Limited

Evoking memories of Roy Castle and the McWhirter twins seeing how many badly clothed, spotty teens could be squeezed into a Mini Cooper; Renault have decided to see how much originality 4 artists can cram inside their new Twingo. Now this isn’t ‘art car’ as in Jeff Koons’ BMW – one of the “artists” is the delightful pop-starlet Nicola Roberts – but it’s a fun little marketing ruse nonetheless; as French fashionista Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, creative Italian chef Davide Scabin, and German designer Nils Holger Moormann join the aforementioned Girls Aloud popster in stamping their mark on the French company’s latest model. There’s a library, an Italian kitchen, recording studio complete with golden hairdryer and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s austere-era interpretation of a presidential state car, all demonstrating just what you can do with a compact city car if you put a little thought into it. Just don’t expect to see these as optional extras down your local dealership…

Twingo 55 FBG by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac
© Renault UK Limited

Twingo Wagon-Lire (Reading Room) by Nils Holger Moormann
© Renault UK Limited

Scabin Pasta Twingo by Davide Scabin
© Renault UK Limited

Twingo 55 FBG by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac
© Renault UK Limited

Twingo Goes Pop by Nicola Roberts
© Renault UK Limited

Twingo Wagon-Lire (Reading Room) by Nils Holger Moormann
© Renault UK Limited

Twingo Goes Pop by Nicola Roberts
© Renault UK Limited

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…

MINI: Wash Me

James Davidson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:18:22 +0000

Versace, Paul Smith, Missoni, Puma and Kate Moss are just some of the names to have decorated Mini’s in the past… and as the iconic car turns 50, without showing any signs of diminishing cultural impact, it’s now the turn of a collection of contemporary artists to offer their visual interpretations of how the car should look as part of a new art book published by Mini in Switzerland. The 10 artists, that include the likes of Seak, SMASH17, Fabian Bertschinger and Gigi Burn, have painted, sprayed, scratched and beautifully transformed a number of cars into sensational modern artworks that, along with individual, fully documented ‘making of’ photographs, are displayed in this brave marketing campaign…. If all multi-national corporations could pull off exciting and innovative projects on this level then the world would surely be a better place!

Rolf.fr, Furniture Transformer

James Davidson — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:37:18 +0000

If there could be one thing that we ‘heart’ more than brilliant product design and innovative guerrilla marketing concepts it would have to be a crazed lunatic, with more than a passing resemblance for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, hacking up antique furniture in the streets of Milan with a chainsaw, and that’s just what the rather eccentric Rolf.fr was doing during this years Milan design week. The Dutch architect turned product designer chose to ignore the traditional fixed, and prohibitively expensive, gallery spaces of the design week and instead headed straight for the streets of Milan with his contemporary meets vintage collection that toys with the endless possibilities of creating new, functional pieces from generations old furniture that is often thrown away.

As part of his extravagant street exhibition, Rolf.fr took his rather stylishly branded chainsaw to an antique piece, removing a segment to reveal a cool box stuffed with chilled prosecco, much to the cooing delight of the hastily assembled audience. Whilst the resulting traffic chaos may have been tiresome for the famously impatient Italian drivers, those in the crowd with their free sparkling wine were positively bowled over. Rolf.fr, rather confidently, claims that others may take his lead at next years event and sees himself as somewhat of a trendsetter, we’d love to prove a cocky arty type wrong but think he’s probably got it spot on….. just like his tastefully chic and thought provoking collection.

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.