Continuing from where I left off on billboards, here’s a cool idea for McDOnald’s. Their agency, Leo Burnett has created a billboard campaign, aimed at encouraging visitors at Piccadilly Circus to take pictures against the background of the site. People normally visiting Piccadilly Circus take snaps anyway. They now appear to ‘interact’ with images displayed on a giant LED screen. The images include a birthday cake with candles, a hammer, bowler hat and ‘think’ bubbles…

Here’s the project: urge airport commuters to take a bus service, instead of driving down in their cars. Just the kind of category and task which usually gets the run of the mill advertising. Not so with Acne, an advertising agency which put together a show-stopping advertising campaign for Flygbussarna (roughly translated as The Flight Buses), an airport coach bus service in Sweden. To highlight the fact that it’s much more environmentally friendly to travel…

There is pressure on agencies to convert every possible medium into an advertising opportunity. Bus stops have been given the ‘experiential marketing’ treatment over the years. Recently, Kraft Foods created a heated air bus stop for their Stove Top brand. Here are 15 more examples of creative bus shelters. Given the dependence on public transport in India, specially buses, this is waiting to happen here too. My all-time favourite is the one for Sony’s Playstation.…

On the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard in California, Audi put up a billboard showing the all new Audi A4 with the headline: ‘Your move, BMW’. Santa Monica BMW, a local dealership, took on the challenge and put up their billboard next to it. Clever stuff. Wonder if the consumers noticed it, but guaranteed that the folks in both the companies must have patted themselves on the back. Reminded me of the Jet Airways-Kingfisher duel.

Found this on Adrants. To call attention to the deplorable situation in Zimbabwe, TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS collected trillions of dollars worth of worthless Zimbabwe currency to create billboards, flyers and wallpaper. The purpose of the campaign is to support The Zimbabwean Newspaper which has been slapped by the Mugabe regime with a 55% luxury duty tax making the paper unaffordable to most citizens. The campaign is running in England and South Africa where it is hoped people…

Think of this as a TV ad delivered in an ambient medium. Confused? The stretchy caramel of the Milky Way bar lends itself very well to these ambient ideas – almost like product demo TV ads in real life. The more impactful placement is perhaps at the check out counter at shopping malls. There is also a seatbelt demo. When you have a product attribute that is relevant ad and differentiated, it helps anchor the…

In the recent past, several copywriters have either approached me with ambient ideas or shown ambient stuff in their portfolio. It is usually accompanied with much wide-eyed enthusiasm and an obvious itch to have it executed. Most of the stuff is in the area of shock or surprise and expectedly, for ‘social causes’ (anti-smoking being the favourite one). But very few stand out – that’s true even with ambient ideas on the ad blogs. So…

Air New Zealand has roped in some volunteers who will shave their heads, so that a temporary tattoo can be displayed over there. The airline calls it ‘cranial billboards’ and for displaying the ads, the volunteers got either a round-trip ticket to New Zealand (worth about $1,200) or $777 in cash (an allusion to the Boeing 777, a model in the airline’s fleet). When co-workers or strangers behind them in the grocery store line asked…

Keeping it simple always scores over trying too hard, when it comes to ambient ideas. ‘Category relevance’ meets simplicity in this case with branding on an ice cream stick for Colgate Palmolive. Even if it’s a handful of kids seeing this message, the environment and the surprise-value creates an impact that a 30-sec TVC, conveying the same message, cannot. Agency: Y&R, Bangkok.