"Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?" That's what Auckland's St Matthew-in-the-City Church Vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy told the New Zealand Press Association in response to complaints about a billboard the church erected.
The board, which shows Joseph laying in bed with Mary along with the caption, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow," has been labeled "inappropriate" and "disrespectful" by the Catholic Church and others.
Supporting the rationale behind the board, Cardy said, "What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about." While he claims there were supporters of the creative direction, the board was defaced by detractors shortly after it went up.
Speaking for the opposition, Auckland Catholic Diocese Spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer said, "Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph. Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful."
Blasphemy or call to challenge stereotype?
So you're laying on the beach enjoying yourself and suddenly you hear this. Do you really want to be reminded that all you're doing is increasing your chances of getting skin cancer? Well that's the goal of this creation from Sydney-based Three Drunk Monkeys which worked with singer/songwriter Ben Lee to create a five second message to be played at area beaches. Twenty different messages were created. Here's one.
"The campaign features three 30-second television spots that use the element of surprise to build excitement for the new Minnesota Millionaire Raffle game Each spot features a game-show-like host who wheels a large raffle drum into busy locales where unsuspecting patrons are encouraged to play an instant raffle. The spots are built on genuine reactions as people go from shocked and reluctant to actively participating and cheering"
Now that's some well-written PR copy. And we didn't have to go digging through a collection of attachments or ridiculously worded releases to find the nugget of information. Thank you, Colle+McVoy.
Now on to the campaign. Generally, we're not a fan of marketing stunts that involve random appearances in unlikely places. After all, if we're shopping, we're shopping. If we're eating, we're eating. Then again, you can't do stunt marketing (or most any kind for that matter...yes, we love you inbound marketing) without a little bit of interruption. So we can't complain much about this campaign.
The campaign also includes print, radio, outdoor, transit and mall. You can view the three spots here, here and here.
Maybe the guy who went to all that trouble (worth watching every year) to decorate his house with Christmas trees and then computer-programmed them to synchronize with Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards in Winter" might just be interested in the new 3D laser projection technology currently in use by Publicum Media for Sony Ericsson. It'd sure be easier than stringing 25,000 lights all over the exterior of his house.
Publicum created a seven minute 3D projection called When Fairy Tales Come True which was shown to an audience of 10,000 at the Vilnius City Town Hall in Lithuania. It's purpose, other than to entertain, was to promote the Sony Ericsson smartphone Satio and Aino.
The Denver Egoist shares the story of an underwater billboard hoax/viral/stunt/lie in which Ivar's Seafood Restaurant placed billboards underneath the Puget Sound. They told the media the boards had been placed there in the 50's by Ivar's founder who, as the story goes, thought people would one day travel beneath the Sound in submarines. The founder wanted to make sure his advertising message was there for all to see.
Of course, the story is fake and the boards were placed there just weeks before the story was planted and the boards hauled up. While this hoax/viral/lie was making the rounds, an ad campaign touted the fact Ivar's would roll back its chowder pricing to 1950's levels in celebration of the discovery.
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Place-based marketing? Yikes. Something that would be at home in the Dept. of Ad Creep, Mediacy, Inc. has found a way to cover up the graf found on the gajillion corrugated gates around cities using some type of specialty vinyl. Yeah full-color graphics with adhesive back! (Available only for NYC and LA markets as of right now.)
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- Coca Cola Velcrola.
- Speaking of Starbucks.
- A little Captain out of 'em.
- Putting the AE in date.
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OK. Time to play catch up.
- For some inexplicable reason, images of people who've pissed their pants are supposed to sell Volkswagen GTIs.
- Those grunting and groaning sounds you hear from your son's room? It's not what you think.
- Verizon continues to slam AT&T.
- Those Japanese. They think of everything. For the ladies whose nipples get much too large for concealment in cold weather, try the USB Bust Beauty Pad.
- The long, frustrating road to "Strawberry Flavored Juice Drink Blend" and the idiocy of selling juice that really isn't juice.
- "Social ads don't drive clickthroughs. Unlike billboards."
- And then there's the whole exposed nipple thing American Apparel loves so much. NSFW>.
- Julia Allison. You've never hear of her (unless you're a social media troll and love Twitter) but she is now featured in a new Sony ad alongside Justin Timberlake.
- Be sure to check out episode 5 of AdVerve with Bill Green and Angela Natividad.
- Conde Nast ad pages dropped 43 percent (8,359 pages) in 2009.
- The Art Director's Club has a new look.
Duval Guillaume, which always does interesting work, is out with a new campaign for transportation company De Lijn which recently increased its nighttime schedule and wanted to make the public aware.
Rather than create an entirely separate campiagn that simply announced the change, the agency latched onto the notion people use the buses to get to and from evening events. Cutouts with the tagline, "whatever you are planning tonight, also plan your transport," were placed over already existing posters promoting events.
The idea, of course, was to simply grab the attention of people reading about certain events and frame the bus message around the original event listing.
A secondary element of the campaign made it possible for the promoters of any posted event to have their event promoted on the actual buses by uploading their poster to a website.
Apart from the photo usage rights issue which Adland covers here, is it really any wonder a witty wannabe designer at an outdoor company selected a picture of Paris Hilton and slapped the word "vacant" underneath her to promote the fact the billboard is available? Of course not.
Whether or not Paris Hilton is actually vacuously vacant in the head is beside the point. She (with a lot of help from the media) portrays herself that way so it is without surprise she's become the poster girl for celebu-stupidity.
Hilton has voiced her displeasure with Wellington-based Media5 for using her image without permission. Hilton's manager, Jamie Freed, told Stuff the billboard company could expect to her from Hilton's legal team.
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