advertising news

Home.dk, one of Denmark's largest realtor firms has a new tactic to attract customers in the disastrously slow Danish housing market. You may try living in the house or apartment of your choice for a full week for free before you decide to buy it - or not as the case may be. We've seen the try before you buy tactic applied to everything from makeup to electric razors - but to homes? There's a new twist on an old trick.

Home's communications director Niels H. Carstensen said to JydskeVestkysten: "It is to be creative and looks at selling homes in a different way" but he also doesn't hide the fact that the current market forces realtors to find new selling tricks. "They are empty anyway" Jan Nordman, communications Director of EDC Mæglerne states dryly.

Solgt Eiendomsmegling in Norway also use the "try the house before you buy" offer. "Perhaps this will become a new trend, because really it should be this way, so that people can try a home and see what it is like" said realtor Tore Espeland to Finansavisen.

When will this trend reach the United states, where the housing market seems to be in total freefall? My guess is roughly in....five....four...three....

The Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders has together with DDB Canada's Vancouver office launched a hard hitting campaign about eating disorders, highlighting the sad fact that 'not every suicide note looks like one'. Small signs add up to reveal that girls are suffering from eating disorders.

The TV commercials are here - click on the images to see them. (Super adgrunts only.)

“We believed the Quiksilver brand and its values would resonate with a group of women, so the line was created in that spirit,” said Greg Macias, VP of Marketing, Quiksilver. “72andSunny’s research supported that assumption, and also found that young women were looking for something more than was already in the market.” “Our job was to help frame the opportunity. In our research it became apparent that there was an opportunity to create a line for women just out of college who are figuring out what they want to do and who they want to be,” said John Boiler, Co-Founder, 72andSunny. “Our purpose was to inspire not only the apparel Quiksilver was going to design for this journey, but create a brand idea that celebrates the experience of defining yourself in the world as an intelligent, creative, independent woman.”

With us so far? Lets translate, Quicksilver makes clothes for the out-of-college but not yet a soccer-mom girl and to launch it they created a site - http://womens.quiksilver.com/ where six women - a fashion blogger, an artist, a bicycling activist, an architect, an automotive designer and a musician - showcase the clothes as well as their journey to becoming, youknow, women. (check under "SiteLA" to see them and their stories.)

“The idea to feature the women of SiteLA is great because they are radiant, talented, creative and fun,” said Natas Kaupas, Global Creative Director, Quiksilver. “They’re perfect ambassadors for the brand. Instead of just talking about what it’s like to make your way in the world as a young woman, we can experience it right along with them. They do a great job of showcasing the apparel collection, too.”

With this is also a short film showing off the six women who are “Visionaries in Residence” and '"bringing the brand to life".

A few years back, during some sort of big "blog"-meet thing, a bunch of people stated that Adland is "not a blog" because, god forbid, it sticks to only one topic (advertising), has any member writing (just like Metafilter or the protoblog Slashdot), and my personal favorite "it has no pictures of you, your cats or your kids." Ha!

Jump for joy then, now that Mother New York created the "Star Wars on Spike" campaign so I can torture y'all with a shot off my offspring in her fashionable R2D2 and C-3PO t-shirt. Are we a real blog now? Huh?

Anyway, I digress, back to advertising. Spike wanted to announce their exclusive six-year contract to show all star wars films, so the question is - how do you get a universe of people who have already seen the movies to watch them again, only on TV?

Show men that Star Wars isn’t just the ultimate sci-fi saga featuring some of the most memorable characters of all time, but it’s also an invaluable resource for man knowledge. With every viewing, a guy can learn something new he can apply to his own life.

So here are the films, created by Mother, directed by Ryan Ebner at HSI Productions and filled to the brim with wisdom you can apply to your every day lives people. Who said you can't learn anything on TV? (Even wee girls get their wisdom from Star wars, like some robots are friendly.)

The Denver Egotist tips us to this neato Denver "river" conveyer belt created by Sukle (you know, the guys who did that awesome redesign of Total Beverages.) Quicktime movie under the image to watch it in action.

Now it looks like ones food is river rafting. Cool.

Miljöpartiet de gröna in Sweden ran a full page ad in Dagens Nyheter (morning newspaper) today highlighting the fact that money with females on it, is worth less than money with males on it - and with this they want to draw attention to the fact that women still make less money than men.

- "The salary level is a symptom on how women are valued and what position they are in at work and in soceity at large. The systematic salary discrimination of women is an explanation to that the structural inequality exists." says Esabelle Dingizian (Miljöpartiet).
"It is unacceptable with gender-based irrelevant salary differences. With our ad the topic can get more exposure."

Large ad inside folks, click on.

The Wall street journal reports that TBWA Worldwide has gotten into trouble for the bronze Lion winning Amnesty International campaign "after the olympics". (if anyone here reckons that campaign is similar to the Swedish Red Cross campaign which compares human rights violations to olympic sports it's 'cuz, well they are kind of similar) - or rather attracted the ire of Chinese netheads. Why? Well, while TBWA in China do chest-thumping olympic sports ads for Adidas with a Chinese twist, TBWA Paris do ads for Amnesty International highlighting the countries poor human rights record. Conflicting accounts are pretty much unavoidable when you're in a global network of "258 offices in 75 countries world-wide".

Chinese bloggers, spurred by a report in state-run media of the Amnesty campaign last week, are now calling for a boycott of all TBWA ads, among other measures.

"I suggest that all Chinese employees in TBWA resign from this company," wrote one blogger on Netease.com

Uh, yeah, that'll happen.

TBWA's headquarters in New York said it wasn't aware of the campaign. "Had TBWA management known about this ad, not only would the ad not have been entered into an award show, but it would not have been produced," said Tom Carroll, chief executive of TBWA Worldwide. "This is the action of one individual at our agency working on a pro bono account." He said the agency is investigating the matter and will take appropriate action to "ensure this never happens again."

Say, what? The Amnesty campaign wasn't a one-man job, there were five people credited both here and at the Cannes Lions.

Are there so many ads in planes that Ad Traffic Controllers need to be used? The New York Times seem to think so.

ON a recent US Airways flight from New York to Jamaica, coach passengers nursing their drinks were greeted with ads on their tray tables promoting General Motors’ OnStar navigation system.

Later, a flight attendant strolled up and down the aisles offering applications for US Airways-branded Bank of America credit cards. An announcement was made over the public address system notifying passengers of the 500 extra bonus miles they’d get by signing up onboard.

'Photo by Sebastian Meyer/Getty Images
An outdoor office has sprung up in St James' Park, complete with watercoolers, Wi-Fi, a reception area, boardroom, creative room, work desk area and the occasional ducks wobbling across peoples desks. Anyone can come down for a meeting, or to brainstorm or simply just to sit at a nice hot desk in the sun. ;)

See more images of the outdoor office here on flickr. This little outdoor stunt is brought to you by Cake.

Ever since those tomb-stones dropped down in a scary UK anti-aids campaign back in the late eighties, public health campaigns have been freaking us out, educating us and trying to calm us back down again. Still the virus has spread further than the information about it. For example in India, which has the highest concentration of HIV-infected people than anywhere else on the planet, 43% of women have never heard of HIV and don't know what it is. Every culture has a different problem to solve and thus need a different way of approaching their AIDS communication. In some parts of Africa, 'sugar daddies' are more than just a way to get neat gear, transactional sex is a way to survive. That's when campaigns like this appear:
"Would you let this man be with your teenage daughter? So why are you with his?"

Pardon the blurry high-speed back of car window style of this photograph, and thanks to Tomas for shooting it