ChasNote

A round-up of building ads from Smashing Hub:

I love this one for Lego: It’s an on-building billboard that creates a sense of depth, which — to my eyes — makes the building (and my life??) feel less complete without a few more Legos.

Other on-building ads are just bigger, like this one for GTA. Meh. In those cases, I don’t know how much extra value the advertiser, not to mention the passer-by, gets from the gigantic custom work.

(Thanks, Nippy!)

The 18 best print and outdoor creatives, according to Bloggermint. It’s an eclectic collection, and the picture of the boy peeing on a Nike billboard isn’t an ad at all, but there’s some clever stuff from Samsonite, Firefox, Mini and others. My favorite among them is this bus stop ad for Windex.

ChasNote’s Asia bureau chief passed through India over the holidays and was impressed with the indomitable persistence of the advertising sales community there.

Ads were everywhere, from the front page of the Times of India — Yahoo’s ad was the front page; news started on Page Two that day — to private cement fences in rural towns, like this one for Vodafone in Alleppey in the southern state of Kerala. Made me feel that Times Square isn’t taking full advantage of all its opportunities.

From Telegraph UK:

“The advertisement, for WPMI-TV in Alabama, showed the station’s anchors, Greg Peterson and Kym Thurman, with their top weatherman Derek Beasley, alongside the latest headline and the words ‘Right now on Twitter’.

“Unfortunately for the station, at one stage the top headline on Twitter read ‘Three accused of gang rape in Monroeville,’ and the misleading juxtaposition was caught on camera by a passing motorist as he drove through Mobile, Alabama.”

Driving down the Santa Monica Freeway in LA yesterday I got my first look at Toyota’s floral billboard for Prius, which went live (literally) back in August:

“Toyota’s partnership with Greenroad Media of Santa Monica includes the upkeep of nine urban freeway sections, which basically consists of maintaining and repairing corresponding irrigation and landscape in exchange for using the ground as a floral billboard. Caltrans does not allow any product identification in the actual floral designs, but a nearby sign with the Prius name proudly displayed is installed nearby.”

Some press gave Toyota a hard time for making advertising that requires watering. I don’t get that — we all love gardens and flowers and parks, all of which require watering. So as long a flower billboard is pretty like non-advertising gardens, where’s the problem? Plus I’ve got to believe that replacing metal-plastic-and-ink billboards (with flood lights pointed at them) with plant-based billboards would be a net positive for the environment.

The latest rage in the German advertising community, apparently. From AdFreak:

“Since skywriting is no longer acceptable in advertising, German agency Jung von Matt has settled for ‘flyvertising,’ attaching tiny ad banners to flies and letting them buzz around a convention center during the Frankfurt book fair. Neat idea, but the obvious flaw is that flies are the most annoying things ever, and may not be something you’d want people associating with your product long-term.”

I want to win a street that I can rename @ChasNote!

Above is a street in Palestine named after the Twittter handle of a non-profit patron. That and other examples of offline extensions of social-media ad campaigns at urlesque. ???? ????? ??????? ???

Outside the US, that is. Here’s one of the Ten Surprisingly Graphic Street Advertisements assembled at Jalopnik: Ad pants for the Peugeot 206 HDi Coupe.

“We have to give credit to Pug’s advertisers for thinking with their bottoms, though this ad encourages staring at taillights instead of the road. Also, it doesn’t look like there’s enough room for all our junk in that trunk.”

We’ve all seen notices for missing children on the sides of milk cartons, so it’s hard to argue that we’re not paying attention. National brands have drawn the same conclusion. From NYT:

“BoxTop [a company that sells ad space on milk cartons] focuses on products with ‘an affiliation with milk,’ namely, [BoxTop president Chris] Barkley said, ‘all the big cereal players and the cookie players.’ General Mills promoted Cheerios with stickers on gallon jugs, and Kraft nudged shoppers toward the snack aisle with ads for Honey Maid graham crackers. In stores in New York and other major American markets this summer, stickers appeared promoting Duncan Hines with a photo of brownies and the text: ‘Cold Milk, Warm Brownies, mmmmmmmm.’”

“PETA is running an outdoor board in Jacksonville, Florida which it says encourages consumers to lose weight by eating vegetarian,” according to 5 Blogs Before Lunch.