Adbusting is not dead…

as seen at Place d'Italie Station on the underground line 6 last week in Paris.

Tags, writings over walls and posters, pamphlets and stencils have always been the natural way of expression of outsiders, of social misfits, all those unwilling to comply with or to fully accept the way society is.
Unsurprisingly, advertising is a prime enemy for all of those who do not recognize themselves in the self-righteous, all encompassing consumption society. I won't delve into the arguments for or against advertising (or worst, for or against the consumption society). This is not the focus of this post, and as it is a debate that has been around for a while by now, I trust you know the drill and the basics arguments. Also, writing down only a fifth of it would take way too much time.
So, long story short : anti-consumerist don't like advertising, and they let us know, often by defacing billboards or spoofing commercials.

As an advertiser I cannot be unaware of the hostile reaction created by advertising or of the growing ad creep. And as a graphic designer, I always have an eye out for the vernacular street language, the odd stencil or the clever rewriting of a tagline… which is why I was so interested when I stumbled upon those posters in an underground station last week :

They were an odd mixt of aphorisms, anarchist slogan, anti-advertising and hippie motto. When I first saw those, my first reaction was "awesome !", and the second "wait, isn't it a cleverly hidden advertising stunt, designed to look like street art / ad busting ?"
Which show that really, I'm a) far to young to be this jaded, b) healthily suspicious (it's not paranoia if they're out to get you) or c) perfectly lucid.
But the next day the "posters" were gone, the corridor were back to the same old boring posters about christmas sales (yep, already) or video games, or both, and it looked like my first reaction had been accurate after all.

A few sweep of the online publiphobes (as we call adbusters in French) haunts show that a similar bust occurred a few month ago, obviously from the same people (I would almost call them artists, really.)

I can't help but feel that this kind of busts are ultimately futile, but in the meantime they are a small... well, rectangle of purity in a sea of venality i guess.

The Game is On

Thank you Sherlock for the headline, and moving on, the answers of the Thai ads game I started in the previous post.
Khun Lawan was kind enough to provide some extra informations on the ads and brands, and Khun Pascal passed the information along.


1/ The Revent ad with two slippers is for a condo close from both the BTS (skytrain) and the Airport link. That's why the two slippers coaches are different, and going from home to the stations is as easy as putting on slippers !

 
2/ The red jar of the second ad is full... of birdnests. Yes BIRDNESTS, which are a delicacy in Asia. The text explains that you have to give the best to your loved one, namely the brand's birdnests...
 

3/ And in the third ad, the fish on the carpet embodies bad smells that won't be a trouble in the advertized condo thanks to the clear separation between the kitchen and the other living rooms... Who would have guessed?

Play the Game

When one is in a non-English speaking country, most of the ads and posters are in said country language, which only leaves the visual to get an idea of what the ad is about.
Some are pretty clear, others less so : some ads have very few in matter of visual, and their message is then impossible to understand. On the other hand, sometimes the brand name is in roman alphabet, which helps a bit. And then, some have visual clear enough to stand on their own without the text. (Well, it's kind of easy when the product in fruit juice and the only visual a giant packshot of the box surrounded by riotous grapes and mango).
A fourth category could be the visuals that gives enough elements to form an idea on what the ads is about, but without being obvious or clear cut.

So, this is the game : here are a few pictures of ads I took during my peregrinations in Bangkok. Can you guess what they are about?





And an extra one, which is so weird it hardly can be in the game as the visual elements are at odd with each other and the brand (this is for a condo building in Bangkok.) I'm told the copy is some kind of Thai pun with the word "guest" that also can mean "fish", but even then I quite sure the message conveyed doesn't make any sense. Points for originality thought, it sure breaks out from other, more classical, condo ads.



To the answers!.

Oh Africa

You must be fed up with the World Cup. I know I am, and not only because of the ridiculous and short-lived adventures of the French team in South Africa. So I swear, this post is the first and the last about soccer or the World Cup.

The Thai don't have a team in the World Cup, but it doesn't stop them from being interested, on the contrary. Betting on the World Cup is strictly forbidden (Thais do love betting money) but it doesn't stop them. It can go from a twenty bath (around 0,5€ ) bet between siblings to very big sums of money (so much that they are reports of girlfriends being driven to the sex industry to pay-off partners debts, or so says the Bangkok Post).

But my point is that the World cup is the summer's big event, and Pepsi went all the way with a rather vigorous (if classical) media plan and a commercial specially made for Thailand (for those who don't remember the international one is here, you will recognize the music).



So, to sum up: on the morning, when I am waiting for the BTS (the skytrain), the whole station is lined with the brand's World Cup identity and even if I don't watch it, I can hear the commercial playing on the background (there are screens in the station.)

Once I am in the BTS, even if I don't watch it, I can hear it playing from time to time (there are screens in the trains too.)
When I finally arrive in my building, I take the 19 story high ride in the elevator and there… Yes! You guessed right : still the Pepsi ad playing (there are screens in the elevators too, how crazy is that? )

And the worst thing is, I have never drank so much Pepsi in my life (I don't take side in the Coca/Pepsi war, I'm just an innocent bysander…)
But to be honest, it's not only because the advertising. The weather plays a big role, forcing you to drink often if you don't want to end like a withered plum , and from what I have seen so far, Coke's distribution is far from being to par with Pepsi's…

In Thailand, the score is 1 to 0 for Pepsi.

When in Rome…

do as Romans do. And when you're in Thailand, greet as Thaï people greet.



Ronald doing the wai is an easy starting point for a pretense of multiculturalism… At least kids seem to like it.

Of the superiority of the Can over the Bottle

In Thailand, glass bottles are still returnable, against a fee.
This leads to a serious packaging problem for drinks coming in bottles : if you buy a bottle of, say, Pepsi on the street, the merchant will pour the drink into a bag, give you a drinking straw, and keep the bottle!
It can be... surprising the first time one come across this habit. ^^

Concrete proof :


Needless to say this is not good news for all the brands out there who spent a lot of money marketing and branding their pretty glass bottles… In Thailand at least, they should have gone for plastics ones, or cans!

The times they are a-changin'

As you may have noticed the Advertising Eye underwent a few changes in subtitle and icon.
The reason is simple : I have moved from the UK (I won't lie, I already miss London) to Thailand. Bangkok to be more precise.
So the overdressed icon is gone in exchange for a less color-sensitive (red is not exactly the rage these days in Thailand) and more climate appropriate one.

I am in Bangkok for a bit less than two months now, doing an internship as an AD in the branding agency Creative In-House.

And being in Bangkok, it is difficult too ignore the more or less visible damages of the recent crisis.
The city went back to normal looking really fast. The street have literally been scrubbed by an army of volunteers the week-end after the end of the Red's Shirts occupation, Lumpini park is back to normal, all damaged plants have been replaced, but some traces remain, the more obvious being the burned dent in Central World, one of Bangkok biggest and most famous shopping center (well, it was still visible when I arrived last week, now it's hidden behind a big fence).
But the effects are not only material. Without even talking about longer term effects on political considerations, the fallout of the crisis in this normally peaceful country are still felt. It was a hard blow on the Thai economy, (in fact the first agency I was meant to do my internship with moved to Cambogia for the rest of the year, "just in case") and most of the big hotels in Bangkok are still almost empty. Even in the more Thai oriented-districts and on streets usually packed on friday night, half the club remain closed…

The thing is, Thailand usually very positive image as taken a serious blow (well, it still can't be worst than the one BP is going through).
In the "Nation" newspaper of last week, Branding professional Brenda Bence wonders if the country can recover from it.
Now I'm not an expert, but I do think it can, at the condition that nothing similar happens again. Tourism-wise, all positive associations with Thailand are still there, as well as the physical proofs, from the smiles to the heavenly beaches through all the cultural history, temples and various national parks. People forget easily (or don't pay attention to the news), and if everything stay calm the farangs should be back soon.
Regarding the foreign investors my guess is that it will probably be more difficult, but far from impossible: the country still have all the facilities and the trained manforce that were part of it's success. Thailand still has good long days ahead of being a shinny destination.

Google pac-man

You may have seen the awesome pac-man game on Google homepage on May 21st, a nice way to pay homage to the game’s anniversary.



What you may not know it that it was a real game, one that users could play (and that, according to the Rescue Time Blog, it “cost” around 4.82 million hours of time spend playing rather doing others more boring things). :D
If like me you tend to use the google search bar imbedded in your navigator and didn’t caught the game on Friday, fear not, it is now online at http://www.google.com/pacman/, you just have to click “insert coin” to fall prey of the joys of procrastination.

Brainfood: “No logo!” is dead, Logorama killed it

If you have lived under a rock the past few months, you may not be aware of Logorama, the short film who won the 2010 Oscar of the best animated short film.
Logorama was created by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy & Ludovic Houplain, and its main characteristic is that all characters & objects used in the film are made of logos and brands names. The bad guy is a gangster Ronald MacDonald, and a giant, well, Green Giant looks over a zoo inhabited by Linux penguins, Lacoste crocodiles and WWF pandas among many others…
The scenario is a bizarre mix of classic cops movies and disasters films, full of stereotypes and references, with a nihilist 2012 flavour.
The film has been online on and off since the Oscar, and I only saw today the full French version, dubbed by a well known duo of French comics, Omar & Fred. The translation is far from literal (especially the discussion between the two Michelin Bibendums cops: instead of talking about the zoo they discuss yoga, chakras and the sex life of one of them), but at the end as nonsensical as the English version.

Logorama.

The incredible accomplishment of this irreverent movie is without a doubt the use of so many brands as characters, making them public domain, giving them new personalities and finally destructing them all.

As I doubt McDonald authorized the use of Ronnie as a crazy gun-dealer shooting Bic kids in the street, it is fair to guess that none of the brands were asked their advice before the making of the movie.
The goal of many brands today is to become part of the conversation, part of the daily life of consumers. And so, can they really complain when their personality of their symbols is so well established that they can be hijacked to create this sort of work?
Well, sure they can (and they probably will), but such is the price of fame, and in this case, the creative transformation is so evident that I can’t think any brand would won against Logorama, (nor walk away from trying way more damaged than it ever was by the movie.)


Thoughts ?

Mug up! Or else...

The goal of our second long-term design project, overseen by Ruth Sykes, also from Reg Design, was to create a call to action, through the design of a poster and a supporting item.
I chose to communicate on the matter of disposable paper cups. The goal was to make people change their behavior and use a travel mug rather than the averages paper cup that always ends-up in the trash.


The name of the campaign, Mug-up!, is voluntarily bossy, and works with a more playful line that justify the call to action.


In order to sensibilise people on the matter, I showed an overdramatic result of the use of cups. Playing on the huge quantity of paper cups that end up thrown away everyday, I chose to humanize them, making the threat more tangible.
The poster plays on this spooky aspect with dramatized light, sharp contrasts and green overtone evocative of danger and horror movies.

The item is complementary to the poster and used to reach the people whose behavior needs to change (i.e. people using take-away cups), catch their attention. To achieve that it uses the usual dressing of the paper cups: a cardboard sleeve to protect from the heat, and a small cardboard disc fixed on the lid of the cup.

As the campaign is non-profit, it could be global and the customized sleeves and lids would be available with all take-away beverages, no matter the brand: Starbuck, Costa… All would participate, helping to increase the awareness on the subject and acting as a trigger to make people change their habits.

Designing the people in my life...

This year design classes were eventful, and apart from many small assignments we worked on two long-term projects. One of them, overseen by Emily Wood from Reg Design, was entitled "Everyone I've ever known".
The brief was to find a way to classify the people in our lives and to convey those information through a poster.



In “Where are you? (in my life)” I chose to illustrate how the divers social circles overlap with one another, mapping the mains groups of people through the way we met and their place in my personal landscape. The customisable tags “… is here” ad an element of playfulness and interactivity to the poster by allowing people to place themselves in the precise overlapping area they are in.



On the subject of designing a visualisation of complex informations or numbers, the website Designing the News is an interesting and plentiful resource.

Work in Progress...

Coming soon...

The Cupocalypse.

I is for Icon.

Britishness has many icons, from the emblematic double Decker to the daily cup of tea (even thought the English are now a nation of coffee drinkers.)
Some icons are obvious, others less so (the website Icons, a portrait of England, is a great resource on the subject). But when in doubt of an icon status, there is usually an incontestable argument: whether or not the object of the debate has been plagiarized, used as a reference or made fun of.

The “Keep Calm And Carry On” poster was created during the Second World War by an unknown British designer and never actually published. However, it was rediscovered, and during the second half of the 20th century was plastered all over merchandizing, mugs and sheets, and became one of those icons I was talking about.

One could wonder about the reason of this craze around what is in all objectivity a fairly basic poster (even if undeniably visually very strong). For myself, I think this poster has two major strengths as well as a third lesser one:
- The color. Whether it be roses, double Deckers, phones booths or the pillar boxes of the Royal Mail, red is the emblematic colour of England, no arguing about that.
- The text. “Keep Calm And Carry On” is not only a very powerful line, it’s also the embodiment of the British spirit. It’s all about the infamous composure of the British gentleman, but also a tribute to the determination and calm resiliency of a whole people.
- The Crown. No United Kingdom without the Royal Family. The poster wouldn’t work half as well without this discrete warrant of royalty.

And as I said before, all those elements that make this poster great have been used, referenced and played with in every way possible.

Once at a poetry reading I saw a book cover referencing it. I myself has used it for the introduction part of a presentation during a debate on which outdoor advertising was the best: the French’s or the British’s?

I was obviously on the British side.

I also came across those mugs at Selfridges. They played with the three elements I was talking about, and yet the reference is still very obvious. :)


Those are just a few example of the ways an icon can be used to convey a new message, using what the viewer know about it and taping in all the subconscious associations in order to deliver a strong idea.

Brainfood: Seth Godin on "the tribes we lead"

For those who don't know him, Seth Godin is one of the guru of modern marketing.

Here is one of his speechs on Ted (Ted is an endless brainfood kind of website, go and watch people, you won't regret it) on one of his pet-subjects: Tribes.



The "Tribe" concept is always worth remembering when working on a brief, any brief.

Eat a potato, save the world

Today a flash-back for a pitch I did with a team of schoolmates a while back.
The advertiser was the CNIPT (the French National Trade Association For Potatoes).

To bring fun into the product consumption and create a strong call to action, we chose to center the campaign around the idea of war against Potatoes. The Potatoes are attacking the human race, only one retaliation is possible: eating them. The tagline was “Eat a potato, save the world”.

The campaign starts with the airing of a commercial on every channel before the traditionnal 8 pm TV news.

Pub CNIPT Freemind version sous-titrée
envoyé par C-Brousse.

The day after the first airing of TV commercial, false covers are run on newspapers front pages, announcing the potatoes attack.

Headline: Potatoes Declare War to Mankind !
The news in brief announce some points of the campaign to come and establish some more background elements :
- The website savetheworld.com to know more about the war
- The creation of the NPFP Squad (No Pity For Potatoes), which invite people to join and act
- The distribution of potatoes peelers in the streets
- Interview with a specialist talking about the nutritional quality of potatoes

Later, other videos following the evolution of the war against potatoes will be put online on savetheworld.com and on community websites. People will be invited to post their own method to destroy potatoes and the best ways to cook them.

CNIPT Freemind, buzz web
envoyé par C-Brousse.

Pimpin’ Ducks

I used the (almost) infamous free range vector duck and customized it for the Pimp My Brand team I worked with all week on the Starbucks VIA pitch.
(And before you ask, no there is absolutely no link between ducks & coffee, but ducks and I go a long way back, so it was a bit of an inside joke. Remind me to tell you one day how I once suggested to train ninja ducks to get ride of the pigeons in Paris as an answer to a Creative Thinking assignment aiming to improve life in the city... ^ ^ )







And now you can download the package and spread the love with your own customizations. :)
(Or ask me to do it for you if you are lazy... ^^)

Don't mention the war...

Those of you who are English are probably familiar with the Spitfire beer advertising campaigns. (See this link for previous ads.)
War puns against the German and exaggerated nationalism are the only rules. Creating other versions of the same kind of ads is a fascinating challenge for a foreign creative: it’s all about slang, over the top puns and references that are almost impossible to understand for non-English people… And that’s why it’s exactly our copywriting teacher made us do it.

I had a go at it and the three following ads are what I came up with. Feel free to comment: do you get the references? Does it work? :)

Brainfood: Decode at the V&A

This is a late post, as I went to see the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum more than a month ago. Besides the exhibition itself, I also went to the Friday Late edition of February, Decode Lab, dedicated to ‘dynamic live performance and installations that were scattered across the much more traditional pieces of the V&A permanent collection.

The Decode exhibition shows some of the latest developments in digital and interactive design, using for example flux of information’s, binary codes or digital data from the networks in conjunction to cutting edge technology to create interactive artworks or evolving visual representations of immaterial data.



Decode is fascinating on many levels.
Watching the exhibition through the eyes of a communication professional opens many doors. Some of the pieces may seem pointless, but they are as many experiments on what the future of digital design will be, on the technologies available and, as importantly, of the ways we can use them.
Also, many of the more interactive pieces of the exhibition are a joy to play with, and observing people reactions to them is almost as interesting as the artworks themselves. Just watching younger (as well as not so young) children go at them gives a fair overview of the most effective interactive pieces: the ones that make them move, jump, play with the feedback the artwork gives them in ways the artist may not have expected.
I noticed that the most popular artworks seemed to be mainly those with the most interactive feedback, but also those that were the most physically engaging. Here are three of my favourites:


Fabrica’s Venetian Mirror, a mirror sending back staggered, slowly imprinting black and white reflections, much like an old silver film camera. Unlike most of the other artworks of the show it has a slow process, questioning both time and the image of self. It forces to hold a pose, but even then various subjects may gradually overlay, creating strange compositions and a slowly evolving stream of time.


Ross Phillips’s Videogrid is exactly what the name says: a twenty screen grid showing 3 second-long loops of footage of the visitors of the exhibitions who can film themselves with a webcam. Each new loop replaces another, and the Videogrid is a jerky, self-rewriting testimonial of the people that were there. If the proclivity of people in filming themselves didn’t surprise me, I was amazed at how playful people were in front of the camera, not hesitating to do stupid stuff when the Videogrid could be seen by everyone in the exhibition.


Mehmet Akten’s Body Paint allows visitor to throw colourful bursts of paint to a wall via a motion sensor, the colour and the quantity of paint depending of the amplitude of body movements. I found it fun, good for the soul and strangely addicting.

The Power of Understatement

Yes, another car post. But don't get any ideas; I really could care less about cars… Except I'm a visual person, and being so I fall easily prey of the unusual looking, the pretty and the eye-stopper.

My school being where it is, I walk past beautiful cars everyday. But one especially caught my attention.

She's a pretty lady, all black, but the really interesting thing is the matte paintjob.
It was the first time I ever saw one and I have to confess I love it. It's incredibly eye-catching, the power of understatement among all those shiny cars…

Since the first starry-eyed day I did my homework. It appears this kind of paintjob is not as uncommon as I thought among very luxurious cars and is quite tricky to keep clean. I also saw much bigger cars with a similar matte paint, a Land Rover and a Mercedes: both did pull it off beautifully.
Visually the matte is interesting in the way it catches light. It could be said dull, but the contrast with other cars really works in its favor. As I said it’s a nice demonstration of the power of understatement and sobriety as ways to stand out and differentiate.
It’s also a brave choice in the sense that when downplaying, the risk is actually not being seen. But of course, the fact that this kind of paintjob is actually an expensive one only adds to the attraction.

The Wallace Collection

Last Tuesday we did a half-a-day long workshop in our Design class.
The assignment was to go to the the Wallace Collection (which is two streets away from our building), visit and take pictures, and then put together a foldaway booklet with four pictures linked to four words summarizing the museum as we saw it.


For those who don’t know the Wallace Collection, the place is crazy. Absolutely stuffed with baroque and rococo furniture, gold everywhere, sculptures, paintings, huge military rooms full of swords and armours…
I took a lot of picture of the patterns I could find, including the incredible wallpapers (it was different for each room). Another series I took was of juxtapositions between different objects, sculptures and paintings…


















I finally decided to use this last selection of pictures to convey some of the feelings induced by the place, focalizing on single pieces and outlining how they reflect the whole collection :