Des Temps

Tag: advertising

  • Batman Creeps Up Park Avenue

    Slow Growth in Gotham

    On the northeast corner of Park Ave and 23rd Street, a massive advertisement for the new Batman film is being painted. It’s an event that’s been unfolding over the last few weeks at the speed of slow food. And therein lies the genius – the film is advertised by the creation of its advertisement. This media buy could have been easily achieved by unfurling a banner one morning, though days later that space would be just another part of our city’s commercial tapestry. But instead of being static, the painting’s progression is a daily reminder to passerby that The Dark Knight soon comes to Gotham.

    Say My Name

    This meta-act of an advertisement’s creation being part of the ad has been done by Sony with both success (Balls) and a thud (Foam). But so far this billboard has only an air of paint-by-numbers calm. Too calm? Given this film’s brilliant ARG themed marketing campaign, will there be some disruptive activity toward the end of this painting? Have we Gothamites been lulled to sleep, prey in the hands of a Joker?

    All Your Base...?

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    More Stuff That People Want to Watch via Gareth Kay

    Overiew of the entire Batman ad campaign

  • Chivalry + Brands

    Alphonse Mucha's Heraldic Chivalry

    Last night I drank at the Four Seasons with some friends. Standing outside afterwards, the doorman and I exchanged that simple nod of “cab?/yes please”. And so then as my friend Liz turned toward the street to find a cab, one ‘magically’ arrived for her, and into the night she went.

    Standing there on 57th street, into my mind’s eye blipped Grant McCrackin’s PSFK slide about “Just In Time” design.
    One Slide from Grant's show

    The beauty of great design is that it delivers precisely at the moment you want/need it. Chivalry is also rooted in an apparently seamless execution, one that obviates stutter steps. When a chivalrous person opens a door or tosses a cloak across that mudpuddle, s/he does this not with flair, but with dharmic ease. Peacocking would make the act moot.

    Could a brand build products and identity with the basic concepts of chivalry in mind? I think I see echoes of that in the (sterling) spots and shorts from Liberty Mutual. Going beyond what’s onscreen, I wonder if this insurance company has since become generous by dint of its dharma, a knight in shining armor, arriving just in time.

  • Cadbury, Airport Trucks, WTF***?

    Art can have no clear endingFallon’s new Cadbury ad fails in every way that Gorilla succeeds. No whimsy. No personal touch. It ain’t going viral.

    The premise of the spot is that a fleet of airport vehicles has “pimped themselves to show their unique character, ready for the race of their lives.”[1] So, like Pixar’s Cars, we’re expecting cheeky and anthropomorphized characters.
    Cool, let’s roll.

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    Now it feels like the truck we’re supposed to root for is the small orange underdog we follow from last place. But just as it gets toward the front, the spot cuts to a Dukes of Hazzard shot of the large blue truck. So is that now our hero? Dunno. In closing the camera pulls up, Queen sings “no stopping” and the trucks keep trucking. So not only am I still sans hero, I don’t know who wins the great race.

    Well, maybe the spot is not about one truck in particular, but about their collective joy at an illicit runway race. Yet throughout the ad, we keep seeing bits and pieces of humans, prepping and driving the vehicles. This furthers our narrative dissonance: Are our heros the trucks or the drivers? We never meet the drivers, so can’t pick a fave, but care less about the trucks, cause they haven’t truly “pimped themselves”.

    I’m lost and lonely on the tarmac.

    Now dear reader I love abstraction. Some of my favourite movies have no clear arc or heroic payoff – Lost in Translation, I’m Not There, Hiroshima Mon Amour, etc… Great adverts and art empower themselves to tweak narrative conventions. Fallon’s Gorilla is one of those greats, a 90 second window into the world of a hirsute drummer. I love that spot like a fat kid loves cake. But Airport Trucks? Similac.

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    [1]Cadbury’s Tony Bilsborough