Author: Delphine Hirasuna

Advertising

Right Pitch, Wrong Product

By Delphine Hirasuna |

These cigarettes ads would be funny if they weren’t so unsettling. It goes to show the power of persuasive advertising. What’s interesting is that the advertising geniuses of yesteryear knew every emotional “button” to push to get consumers to buy their product – advice of medical experts, cute babies, celebrity endorsements, stress relief promises, sex appeal, rugged men, debonair men, sophisticated ladies, fun-loving physically fit youth, even Santa Claus. All the themes of universal desire were wrapped into the brand pitch. Arguably, no other product has been advertised as effectively as cigarettes. That’s all very admirable until you remember that the product itself is one of the leading causes of cancer even today.

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Posters

Where’s the Panda?

By Delphine Hirasuna |

WWF Panda Forest Ad

The World Wildlife Fund, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2011, has produced some terrific ads over the years. This is a series that we hadn’t seen, although it was produced by BBH Shanghai in 2008. The ads address the misconception in China that the World Wildlife Fund only protects Giant Pandas that are native to the mountain forests of central China. To raise awareness of WWF’s other conservation activities in the country, this black-and-white print and outdoor ad campaign integrated WWF’s panda logo (and China’s national symbol) into images of antelopes, forests and water.

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Advertising

Education First’s Live the Language

By Delphine Hirasuna |

EF International Language Centers, a Swedish-based company that offers study abroad programs and language courses in some 50 countries, has just launched a new series of short video ads that have no voiceover sales pitch, no mention of what the school does or how to enroll, and no mention of Education First at all except for flashing EF briefly on the screen with a website address at the end. Elegant typography displays choice words in the language of the featured country with the phonetic pronunciation spelled out underneath, but there is no translation of what the words mean nor what they sound like when spoken aloud. And yet, it all works. The commercials aren’t about the process of learning a language, but the life-enhancing benefits of studying abroad. The message conveys the atmosphere of the culture, the experience of being there, the promise of friendships, and the carefree joy of discovery. Directed by Gustav Johansson and produced by Camp David Film, the EF “Live the Language” videos say a lot without uttering a word.

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Typography

See It, Read It, Eat It

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Japanese graphic designer Masaaki Hiromura has made pictograms an integral part of the kanji characters he created for Tokyo’s Kitasenjyu Marui department store to come up with food words that can be understood in any language. The silhouette of the food appropriately replaces a stroke in the word so it can be read as text. Although Hiromura was probably focused on devising a witty and graphically interesting way to communicate to multinational customers who frequent the store, this display seems like the reverse of how written languages began in many ancient cultures. Japanese and Chinese characters started as pictographs, ideographic symbols describing objects and actions. Over time, these characters became less pictographic and ideographic and more visually abstract. What’s amusing about these pictogram characters is that we’ve come full circle.

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