Category: Cool Ad Watch

Through vice and mayhem, Seth Rogen and Walter White publicize a great charity (after the jump to prevent auto-play):

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by Chris Bodenner

EDW Lynch has details:

Photographer Seth Taras created then and now composites out of famous photos of momentous historical events for the 2004 “Know Where You Stand” ad campaign for the History Channel. The campaign was orchestrated by the Ground Zero ad agency and included four tv spots.

As much an ad for Brooklyn as it is for the beer:

Brooklyn Brewery Mash – A trip through BK in 3000 photos from Paul Trillo on Vimeo.

Well yes, print is still good for something:

For the 10th anniversary edition of The Postal Service’s seminal album Give Up, Sub Pop imagines various artists auditioning for the group in its beginnings, including Aimee Mann, Weird Al and Moby:

Ariel Schwartz applauds a novel recruitment technique:

Universities usually try to attract students with successful alumni, traditional advertisements, and in the case of elite schools, a positive track record. UTEC, the University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru, decided to pull off a clever engineering stunt to attract a new class of techie do-gooder students: create a billboard on the Pan-American Highway that generates potable water out of thin air. Lima is the ideal place for a water-creating billboard–it almost never rains in the desert environment, so there is a lack of fresh water. And yet atmospheric humidity can climb up to 98%, so the air is thick with potential droplets.

Alejandro Aponte, the creative director at ad agency Mayo DraftFCB Peru, explains the advertising element:

What we came up with, was the idea of showing these young students, with a real-life example, how engineer methods can give solutions to real-life problems. The example in this case is very clear: We solved the lack of potable water in a needed community, transforming the air humidity into free-drinking water.

A reader passes along a “remarkably unremarkable” Kindle commercial:

Andrew Beaujon describes an ambitious new campaign:

Chicago’s WBEZ wants its listeners to make more listeners. The agency Xi Chicago designed the $400,000 “2032 Membership Drive,” which “inspires interesting people to hook up with interesting people and make more interesting people, thereby creating the next generation of listeners.” … [T]he ads will appear in print, online, at train platforms and bus stops, on taxis and T-shirts, with these taglines:

– Do it. For Chicago.
– We want listeners tomorrow. Go make babies today.
– Hey Interesting People, get a room already. And then put a crib in it.
– To anyone NOT currently running a virtual farm: GoMakeBabies.com
– You’re an interesting person. Pass it on. Like, literally. Through your DNA.

Michael Zhang double-takes:

To make the point that Garnier Fructis’ hair products are great for both women and men, advertising agency Publicis teamed up with photographers Billy & Hells for a series of creative advertising photographs. Upon first glance, each of the photographs appear to show a tough guy with a massively long beard. However, look a little closer and you’ll realize that things are not what they appeared to be.

Copyranter applauds a clever campaign from Expedia:

There are over 9,000 airports around the world, each with its own 3-letter code — used to ID bag destination. The creative team describes how they came up with the idea:

"It all started when we saw a woman walking through Heathrow with the word FUK hanging from her suitcase," they say. "Turned out she'd just flown in from Fukuoka in Japan. That got us thinking, 'maybe there are more'."

I guess they couldn't use FUK. Too bad.

Update from a reader:

I used to work for the (now defunct and bought-out) America West Airlines. We had a route from Sioux City, IA to Fresno, CA. The airport code for the route was SUX-FAT.