Amnesty International Bring World Violence Home

Amnesty International is running a powerful outdoor campaign in Switzerland calling attention to the horrific events that occur in our world on a daily basis. With the tagline, "It's not happening here but it's happening now," the posters show images of starvation, brutality, torture, child warfare and other less than pleasant avtivities. Adland has the entire series here.

Campaign Says You Might Be HIV Positive

While this outdoor campaign draws attention to HIV, this is one outdoor campaign you probobly don't want to be standing next to lest you enjoy tepid smirks from passers by.

MidWest Outdoor Advertising Makes Travels Enjoying

While traveling over the memorial Day weekend to escape the world of advertising, American Copywriter's John January wasn't entirely successful and shares with us the marvel that is the Midwestern billboard. From tuxedo clad car salesman to well drillers to incessant church advertising to Kum & Go, the midwest is, apparently, full of entertaining outdoor advertising.

Giant Adidas Bridge Board Illustrates European Love Of Football

Those Europeans sure do love their football and this massive and unique outdoor board from Adidas placed over a bridge construction site is a clear representation of that love. The board features German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn making a killer save. If Americans displayed their love of things this way, we'd have a gigantic image of Tom Cruise jumping over a highway shaped like a couch or a floating Army of inflatable paparazzi chasing Britney Spears and she dropped her baby from the top of the Empire State Building. Thankfully, we're just not that creative.

Book Benches Promote Reading In Istanbul

The city of Istanbul is promoting reading with book benches. Benches that look like an open book have been placed around the city and on each bench which carry poems from 18 famous Turkish poets. You can view a larger image of the bench here.

Miele Outdoor Board Looks Photoshopped

Every ad blog today is loving this Mile vacuum cleaner billboard that illustrates the powerful suckage of Miele vacuums with the image of the vacuum cleaner pulling a hot air balloon out of the sky. It's a great looking billboard and a nice concept except we're not sure it ever physically appeared on a billboard. Look closely. The whole thing looks very Photoshopped. Anyone care to comment?

Poorly Marked Netflix Insert A Promotion For VH1

When the latest Netflix envelope arrived in the mailbox, it contained an ad on the inside sleeve promoting some sort of concert broadcast honoring Kiss, Queen, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. We saw that the broadcast was set to air Wednesday, May 31 at 9PM. Maybe we're just dumb, but we had to stare at the ad for several minutes before we figured out the broadcast was occurring on VH1. The logo was tiny and buried in a way that was very hard to see.

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Nutrition Label Delivers Homeless Message

With the health conscious continually checking the Nutrion Facts label of food packaging, the label seemed to BBDO Atlanta a likely place to put a message for helpthehomeless.com. We'd agree. AdArena, whose "sex sells" tagline sums up the entire industry, found this one.

Visa Funds, Leverages Starving Artists For Campaign

Now that Visa is in on the whole graffiti thing, graffiti artists might as well throw aways their Krylon, call it a day and move on to some new, yet to be tinged by marketers form of expression. Visa, with help from artist Trish Grantham is taking its "Life Takes Visa" to Greenwich Village in the form of of a giant wall mural with the tagline, "Life Takes Expression." Below the mural, Visa will display other artwork in the form of sculpture, furniture, fashion and more graffiti from artists Christopher Natrop, Jeff Soto, Andy Diaz Hope, Anne Faith Nicholls, AXIS, Erik Pawassar, Parvez Taj, Ron Reihel, Christopher Cuseo, Eric Joyner, Elizabeth Paige Smith, Charlotte Ronson, Dario Antonioni and Hayley Starr.

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IKEA Improves New York Bus Shelters

Curbed has noticed the recent bus stop installations that IKEA has placed around the New York City area making the bus a thing someone might actually want to use to get from point A to point B. Now if they could only do the same thing for cabs.

UPDATE: Deutsch, which created the campaign, informs us, "In preparation for Design Week in NYC, IKEA teamed up with Deutsch to make 'everyday fabulous' for New Yorkers. With more than 650 different experiences during this 5-day, city-wide guerilla marketing event (including padded park benches in Union Square, oven mitts in the #6 train, bus shelters designed for comfort and flair and doggie bowls for our four-legged friends) IKEA proves that good design can make every day even better."

Check out this page for some very cool images of the effort.