Like hidden dirty images in family-friendly Disney posters, easter eggs have always been a favorite of designers the world over to express, perhaps a twisted sense of humor or, simply, to just have fun. Now, apparently, Hide This Thing wants to create a community around the practice and even create a common visual easter egg language of sorts. Like a digital flash mob, Hide This Thing hopes to create mass appearances of various objects inside TV commercials, print ads, websites and anything else a creative lays his hands on.
We do wonder though if "making official" easter eggs doesn't detract from exactly what they are supposed to be: crazy one-offs that express something the individual was feeling at the moment of creation. You decide.
While women might hate getting cat calls from construction workers, men, on the other hand, love any attention they can get and stench-maker Axe is taking advantage of this in a new Bom Chika Wah Wah promotion that has females dressed as construction workers cat calling men as they walk by. Ask A Copywriter was one of the unfortunate (fortunate?) to experience this ritualistic name calling and snapped a shot of the lovely cat callers who were dressed in denim shorts and stylized construction vest tops.
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Perhaps to avoid confusion with much larger shop, Portland-based Via, or simply to reflect the agency's model of bringing in outside talent, smaller, lesser-known VIA (Visual Intelligence Agency) from Connecticut is re-branding itself Plaid. In doing so, the agency is launching Brand Aid 2007, a three week summer road tour during which agency personal will hop in a van, travel across the country to visit clients, prospective clients and share the social media love with all while web 2.0ing the whole thing with videos posted on YouTube and other content published on social media style sites such as Twitter. Twitter Tripping. That's a new one.
Rather than going it alone and funding it on it's own - though the agency promise it will take the trip regardless of funding, Plaid is looking for sponsors who, they promise, will reap the benefits of publicity that is sure, they claim, to shower this tour. While we're not so sure about that, we can't fault an agency for going about promotion a bit differently with at least the intent towards using emerging media to do so.
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Defamer notes Dreamworks has had to scale back its marketing budget following the millions it's spent on building wraps and customized Lamborghini-bots to the point where the only thing it can afford are a few stickers placed on a random vehicle seen in a Burbank Staples parking lot.
Just how do you promote an environmentally-focused music festival in Budapest on a shoestring budget? You create gardens overnight and plant 800 flowers in unused and run down public areas, of course. That's exactly what Budapest agency RayGun did for the Hegyalja music festival and Hungary's participation in the celebration of World Day of Environment Protection. The agency trecked to four Hungarian cities; Budapest, Miskolc, Debrecen and Nyireghaza to create the gardens and plant the flowers mostly near bridges and overpasses.
The effort, at not much more than the cost of the flowers, garnered major news coverage on television news programming and within major national newspapers. While it's difficult to argue against the planting of flowers, the Budapest Council did threaten legal action against the agency but Creative Director Alex Poulson tells us the agency is now working with the governing body to discuss further means of beautifying the city.
View additional images of the plantings here.
As part of a promotional campaign to introduce the new TBS show Tyler Perry's House of Payne, ice cream trucks branded with the show's characters made stops in various neighborhoods, malls and events in Atlanta, Birmingham, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Memphis in an effort to draw African-Americans to the show which debuts June 6. Free "POPScicles" in honor of LaVan Davis' character, Curtis "Pops" Payne were freely distributed to all. Yes all. Pay no attention to our nasty headline writer.
In Munich this weekend, Audi will perform a stunt during which two Audi A5's will be tethered to and control a large stunt kite. Apparently, it's to break some kind of world record. The event is being promoted with a large billboard, placed in Berlin, with a kite extension attached. Get that A5 over here guys. The A4 is too small and the A6 is too expensive. In fact, just let the wind take control and fly those two babies to New York. We'll take it from there.
Not to be left out of the whole Angus Burger thing, Hardee's has crafted FlatBuns, a cheesy, Geocities-style site that worships Flat-Bun Bettys or, girls with no ass. Celebrating pancake butts, miss six o'clocks, and boney bottoms, FlatBuns makes it known every female isn't born with a Jennifer Lopez or Hayden Panettiere-like butt. It's all part of their promotion the the chain's Patty Melt Thick Burger...with grilled, flat rye bread.
Is it just us or does the visual in this Chinese open manhole awareness campaign connote something relating to an entirely different sort of man hole? Apparently, the Chinese like to steal manhole covers. Why we know not but it seems the plight is so severe, an ad campaign is needed to urge caution to those who find themselves near manholes of a certain size. Not that caution should be thrown to the wind when entering much smaller versions of the man hole.
No better way to start a revolution than with stickers. Just ask Shepard Fairey. Or in this case, Axe. Observe slap-on improvements on mundane street signage here and here.
The effort was launched by Lowe, Belgium via Ads of the World, so we're more or less sure somebody's going to snarl, "Hey, that's fake."
In a less subtle effort to demonstrate how completely irresistible the common man could be with a more persuasive spritz, Axe recently also had really hot cops spray and siege at random on the streets of Poland.
Oh, Axe-scented man, let us at him, we can't resist. Except, oh, that we can.
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