An ad campaign seeks to titillate the consumer to make them desire and need their product. Playing upon whatever weaknesses or desires we repress, the ad is designed to make the customer feel that their life will somehow be more complete with their product. Sometimes though, the ad fails to convey the intended message. Sometimes, miserably so.

Flatten Everything into Nano

Was this a real ad, or somebody’s playing around with image-editing software? It looks vaguely familiar. I may have seen this very poster here in Toronto a few years ago, or something very similar to it.

 

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This will never be funny, cute or politically acceptable for any public ad campaign, ever. I can’t tell from the image if this is an ad poster or somebody’s private Photoshop design. If this were poster art for the product maybe it was genuine coincidence but seriously, somebody and I do mean ‘in a boardroom’ must have seen and approved this. Things like this just don’t ‘happen’ in advertising. Somebody somewhere would have had to say ‘what if we… (sketching a quick doodle) did this and then, -oh yeah!’ and the sketch board doodle turned a light bulb on over someone’s head resulting in a mock-up that went to whatever next step is involved in publication. Really bad concepts in ad posters are probably born this way. I am sure that the concept was that ‘all these albums and images can be squeezed down into this little rectangular box’ but still too fresh in the memory is smoke and fire rising up out of that rectangular box (building.) If this is real, iPOD should have stuck with the white headphone leads. That was a marketing success beyond comparison.

No Drinking and Commuting?

 

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Nobody wants to share a Taxi with a drunk or sit near one on the Bus, Underground or Subway as we call it. This is slightly funny in some kitschy way. The Government is against Drinking & Driving as it rightly should be (or ‘Boozing & Cruising’ as we sometimes call it) but this is rather amusing in a dumb way. Apparently drunken people all have a secret wish to be a circus performer on a tight rope act or something. That, and the usual perception of themselves being more intelligent than they really are and exceedingly attractive to the opposite gender.