Category — Print Advertising

The Economist is one of my top five favorite magazines, I read it regularly. I also live in the Philadelphia area and eat pizza quite often. So I’m excited about The Economist’s new advertising plan: they connected with over 20 pizzerias in the Greater Philadelphia area, most of them near college campuses or dorms, and supplied them with Economist-branded pizza boxes. Each box has a pie chart that connects pizza consumption with global economics and politics. They encourage people to “Get A World View”.

This kind of ambient advertising is always interesting. Publipizz, a maker of advertising pizza boxes, estimates that a box of pizza is looked at by 3 people for at least 8 minutes and results in an 80% memory retention rate. Plus, boxes with advertising on them are less expensive for pizzerias, which makes them more likely to join in.
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American Apparel doesn’t do high gloss sexy like Abercrombie or Calvin Klein. There’s no silicone or collagen or Botox. There’s no major Photoshopping or retouching the models. It’s a reflection of our idea of what sexy is as a society.

The perfect blonde on the beach is leaving our collective fantasy; our idea of sexy isn’t defined by film or by print anymore, it’s defined by the internet. Our generation has unprecedented access to smut, and it’s infiltrated our definitions of beauty and our everyday fantasies. Gonzo porn is our sensual fantasy now. Set in some freaks house as a 19 year old meth-addicted girl with low self-esteem knocks on the door. “I’m here for the party.”
Hott.
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Yes yes, the chill is in the air now, fall is here and retailers are humming holiday tunes and setting up lights, reminding us all exactly how many days we have left until the ultimate deadline. They need to put on the pressure to make it feel like an obligation and not just an optional gift-giving occasion. And I don’t feel the pressue until I see Nieman Marcus peddling overpriced fantasy gifts via catalog.

And look at that, Nieman Marcus put out their annual holiday gift guide, called the Christmas Book, just the other day. It’s jam packed with things even the top 1% of the American financial elite would think twice about buying. These are difficult days economically, not the best time to be putting out catalogs filled with $110k dollar motorbikes and $45k dollar gold rings owed by 12th century Vikings. Some people may take offense. Not me, I think it’s fine reading and enjoy it thoroughly. Some people, though.

Here’s a sampling of some of the contents:
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PopCrunch has this odd advertisement for the Love Rug, which was a perfect example of 1970s freakiness. Made of polyester, of course, the advertisement offers it as an inanimate object to complete the threesome you’ve always dreamed of.

Heres the complete text of the ad:
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For years, heroin dealers have used “brand stamps” as a way to inform customers of their quality. Even before Frank Lucas’s “Blue Magic” in the 1960s, “good” dealers have found ways to make their product stand out among the poorer quality majority. Once the high quality dealers started doing this, everyone else started as well since it was a low cost way of increasing the apparent quality of the bags. For only the cost of a stamp and ink, a dealer could copy the stamp from the highest quality heroin on the street.

This lack of copyright laws made the high quality dealers constantly have to shift their brand names and stay topical, since the best brands were copied within days. Illustrating this: just recently, 52 glassine bags of heroin stamped both with “OBAMA” and an image of Sen. Barack Obama were confiscated following a routine car stop on Interstate 95 in Upper Chichester, according to Pennsylvania State Police. That’s an interesting way to support your candidate.

Examples of heroin brand stamps:
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One more reason that the EU freaks hate freedom: Some of them want to take a “zero tolerance” approach to sexist advertisements. Any time I hear the words zero tolerance, it gives me the willies, in any situation.

Anyway, various women’s rights groups and Members of European Parliament (MEPs) are suggesting guidelines and regulations which would end any type of advertising that portrayed women as sex objects or reinforced gender stereotypes.

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A sarcastic spoof on the Intel ad below

If you think the era of political correctness has taught advertisers to create campaigns that are more sensitive and intelligent, think again. They are still quite happy to play into fears and stereotypes associated with race. While political ads are notoriously racist – even in the current presidential election – ads promoting everything from cars to office equipment to breakfast cereal have been laced with negative overtones. And while some ads are sneakily suggestive, others are almost unbelievably shameless. Here’s a look at some of the most racist commercials and advertisements in recent years, along with some vintage clips that still shock people with their racist messages.

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Advertising has to work extra hard in this media saturated world. Some advertising creatives though rise to the challenge, creating advertising that not only gets noticed, but gets talked about. This is one such ad!

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Radio Shack pulled in the big guns when they recruited ubergeek Bill Gates for this advertisement for their Tandy computer.

I imagine for Bill and Microsoft this was just an excuse to talk about Microsoft Windows, but still quite a coup for Tandy.

See the full page advert after the jump.
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Could this be the best print advert for a recruitment company or site EVER? I think it’s very much up there.

We rarely see innovation in advertising, especially in the print and display world so this is cool to see. Please let us know if you know of any recruitment ads that can possibly beat it

I won’t spoil the surprise – See more after the jump!

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