Subtitles for Your iPod?

October 29th, 2009

The New Zealand National Foundation for the Deaf deployed this funny campaign in magazines and newspapers. At first, it appears to be an ad for some sort of mp3 player…then, we read the “words.” The ads are meant to raise awareness about the danger of playing music too loudly through headphones.

It’s hilarious to think of a subway full of headphone-clad commuters “reading” the music off their mp3 player screens instead of the books and periodicals they’re normally staring at, but not to think that you might become one of them. Next time I’m on the train or the bus trying to block out the sounds of my fellow riders, I suppose I’ll turn it down…or maybe just invest in a set of earplugs.

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Murder Scene Towel

October 27th, 2009

A New Zealand television station was promoting a feature-length drama called “Weekend Murders,” which was to air in a busy prime-time Saturday night spot. How to capture viewers’ attention while they spent the afternoon at the beach? Make them look murdered, of course! Prime TV handed out these bizarre blood-stain-shaped beach towels to beachgoers so that sunbathers would resemble corpses, and the rest is ratings history.

Then again, curious passersby wouldn’t be able to read the advertising on the towels, and no one at the beach would normally ask a stranger why they’re lying on a plush bloodstain, unless they planned on taking them to a hospital. Still, it’s a hilarious idea…

[via toxel]

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Save the Hair!

October 22nd, 2009

Pert Plus shampoo decided to dramatize the plight of fallen hair for their latest guerrilla campaign. Yet another bathroom-based operation, this promotion included stickers placed in sinks at schools, restaurants, malls, theaters, and other high-visibility locations with public restrooms. Stickers depicted a fallen hair in the shape of a hand reaching out forlornly from the drain, accompanied by a Pert shampoo bottle proclaiming “Stop the suffering!”–implying that if we would only all use Pert shampoo, our sinks would be immaculate and our hair happy.

Personally, the last thing I want is hair coming out of the sink to talk to me, but it’s certainly an original way of looking at the clog situation, and an amusing riff on popular eco-activist and conservationist ads.

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Athlete’s Foot Architecture

October 20th, 2009

Canesten, a topical medication for athlete’s foot, drew an unlikely comparison between anatomy and architecture with this amusing guerrilla promotion. Images of feet were drawn over walls where peeling paint and flaking plaster had created athlete’s-foot-like conditions on the surface, and stickers featuring helpful tubes of Canesten was placed next to each artistically-rendered “foot.”

The unspoken question, of course, is: what if it rains? Those Canesten tubes are going to get awfully lonely…

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Bubbles in the Bathroom

October 15th, 2009

Usually, the last place you expect (or want) to encounter a guerrilla promotion is the bathroom. Gum manufacturers Big Big, throwing caution (and, perhaps, good taste) to the wind, installed a machine in a bathroom stall that inflated and deflated huge pink rubber balloons. The balloons were supposed to be bubbles from Big Big’s new bubble gum, and they grew so large that they spilled over stall walls, delighting children and even a few parents. Imagine how much funnier it would have been if they had forgotten to mark the stall door hiding the machine with a giant sticker depicting a piece of the gum!

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Giraffe Stroller

October 13th, 2009

What would you do if you saw a huge baby stroller sitting innocently next to a park bench? I’d be at least as curious as the people in this photo and wander over to check it out. And that’s exactly what the Calgary Zoo wants me to do–the blanket on the seat of this particular stroller, casually “abandoned” in a Calgary park, is printed with the zoo’s logo and a simple, clever phrase: “The baby giraffe is here.”

The zoo also wrapped a telephone pole in carpeting to announce the arrival of the baby tiger, and set up a mangled swing-set to herald the coming of the baby elephant. There’s no oversize tote bag for a super-sized puppy, but I’m sure they have one of those mega-pets in the zoo with the other animals. I have to wonder if anyone tried to run off with the stroller–or if they expected the mother giraffe would chase them down!

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I See What You’re Doing There…

October 8th, 2009

Public urination is not an uncommon sight in most major cities, but political and community leaders like to pretend it is, especially around re-election time. These naughty mannequins appeared in the streets of New York City clothed in promotional apparel personalized with the web address of advocacy group the Privy Council. As their tongue-in-cheek name suggests, the group supports allowing the city to relieve itself of the “public restroom shortage”–this demonstration urged citizens to take the matter up with their city council members.

This humorous guerrilla campaign is much more persuasive than posters and flyers would have been, and a lot funnier. I wonder if anyone tried to write these mannequins a ticket…

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Attack of the Giant Office Supplies!

October 6th, 2009

Advertising agencies love placing large objects in city streets. It’s an easy way to get people’s attention, and there’s something irresistibly mischievous about enlarging a common household item and plopping it down in front of a bunch of bewildered commuters. This FedEx-Kinko’s campaign placed giant White-Out bottles next to crosswalks, massive highlighters next to yellow-lined curbs, and other giant office supplies around New York City to remind people how commonly these objects were used in everyday life–even if people didn’t consciously think about them.

I can’t find photos of the rest of this campaign–did they involve gargantuan sticky-note pads? Elephantine staplers? And I wonder how these giant office supplies got along with the giant cups of coffee Bounty spilled all over New York…

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Runny Nose Soap

October 1st, 2009

This Brazilian promotion for Kleenex placed stickers featuring a man’s huge, red nose on soap dispensers in malls. Soap was dispensed from the man’s nostrils. Disgusting? Sure. Did it make people think about the brand? Definitely. Shoppers shared a laugh over the display, which they interacted with in a way that posters or printed ads in magazines would have made impossible.

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