my own ad school

I recently stumbled on these ads for the Volkswagen Fox while browsing the DDB website. I found them pretty entertaining:

If you’d like to see the rest, I found a few more: Alien, Rocky, Pulp Fiction, The Exorcist, The Shining, and Star Wars. Enjoy!

Find more videos like this on AdGabber
(via adgoodness)

It’s great to see green marketing efforts such as this ad from Honda (as well as these).

So I’m finally back! I’d like to thank everyone for still writing comments despite my lack of posts. Final exams for summer school, Don Training (to be a Residential Advisor this year), Frosh Week, and the first month of the academic year has definitely made me run out of breath!

But now that some things have begun to settle down, I can’t wait to start posting again! Even though I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve still written down a few things I wanted to write about, so stay tuned for that.

Also, being back on campus has completely raised my awareness on certain issues (I’m finding myself getting into social activism!), so I’m also thinking of tying those things in with advertising in future posts.

Once again, thanks for all the comments! New posts are on the way!

So in the meantime, here’s a new video from Dove. It’s not quite like the Evolution campaign, but it’s still worth checking out:

I am absolutely amazed with this ad! (Thanks to American Copywriter) Every second of it has been a pleasure to watch and it’s truly one of those things that keep me inspired to get into advertising. NORDPOL+ HAMBURG rightly deserved a Gold Lion for this.

As an animal lover myself, I enjoyed the fun and upbeat campaign for the Toronto Humane Society, done by the people at Leo Burnett Toronto, showing the positive benefits of adopting a pet. The art direction in these pieces are great and I absolutely love the copywriting. Visit their blog to see the rest of the campaign.

(for the complete campaigns: Heinz Ketchup, Slim Fast, Wheaties)

Take a look at these ads. What do you notice? They all have something in common. Each ad is using a strong visual to sell the product instead of using words. There’s barely any copy on them, and if there was, it would either be the brand/product name and/or a simple sentence or phrase.

As I was brainstorming for ideas on my first spec ad, some of the ideas followed the same approach as the above ads while some had an emphasis on the copy with a simple image. From what I’ve gathered, if one element is the main emphasis of the ad, the other element should be as simple as it can be so that it won’t take anything away from the other. Otherwise, it would all just be too much for a consumer to take in. So, if the ad is relying on the captivating copy, the image should be plain and simple (if there was one). And if the ad had a strong visual which tells the story, then the copy should be simple and short (or none at all).

Here are some ads where the copy is the storyteller:

 

(for the complete campaigns: Adidas, Dove Pro Age, Pause & Play Festival)

Thought it was pretty cool when I saw this on the Google homepage.

Since it’s Earth Day, I thought I’d post a few of the ads that have caught my eye about raising awareness on the environment.

Singapore Environment Council (source: Coolz0r)

An interesting non-traditional advertising idea from WWF (source: 2wenty 4our)

Greenpeace (see the rest of the ads in Adrants)

Another one from Greenpeace (source: adgoodness)

I’ve seen this ad numerous times, but I still remember the first time I saw it: my parents and I were dying of laughter! And then my parents began to tease me on how I’d actually die if I were to attempt eating that Flamethrower burger. I have somewhat of a long distance relationship going on with food whose names include the words hot, fire, flame, jalapeno, and spicy (just to name a few).

And since I’ve found the recent Dairy Queen ads pretty amusing, here’s another one: