Advertising

LaLan Intimate Apparel Dance

By Delphine Hirasuna | December 30, 2010September 4, 2014

This Japanese television commercial for Wacoal LaLan bras is a fascinating departure from the usual approach to selling intimate apparel in Western cultures. No sultry bedroom eyes, no come-hither looks, no languorous poses. Victoria’s Secret models they are not. The contrast is stark between the lingerie ads in the U.S. that imply that the right underwear will make you sexy and desirable, and this Japanese ad featuring young women doing a surreal and zany dance. What’s even more interesting is that Wacoal, a company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, employs the sexy underwear strategy in ads that it runs in many other countries.

Moleskine’s Viral Strategy

By Delphine Hirasuna | October 22, 2010September 4, 2014

Moleskine is a product that you are unlikely to see advertised on television or in print, but If you do a search for Moleskine on YouTube and Vimeo, lots of videos will pop up. That’s the way Moleskine customers like it. Moleskine has a cultlike following among designers, artists and writers enchanted with the idea of preserving their sketches, profound thoughts and poetic musing in the same kind of little black notebook used by Van Gogh, Matisse, Hemingway and Chatwin. No spiral-bound steno pads for them. No perfed sheets only good for writing down meeting minutes and grocery lists. These oil-cloth-covered black journals are meant to capture inspiration at its birth. If you believe the fans, Moleskine isn’t just a notebook or a bound sheaf of papers, it is a blank canvas for the creative mind. So, naturally this mystique lends itself to a viral marketing strategy, with new products launched on YouTube and spread through fan blogs and tweets. A Moleskine site called Detour gives viewers a voyeur’s peek into the personal Moleskine journals of well-known designers and artists, an inspiration in itself. Recently Moleskine celebrated the 30th anniversary of Pac Man with a limited edition notebook and a clever YouTube video. All of this gets linked and forwarded (as it is here), giving customers a sense of discovery and being part of a select artsy circle. Mass advertising on TV or marketing Moleskine as you would reams of copy paper and pencils would diminish its cachet. Viral marketing isn’t a strategy that works for all products, but it is right for Moleskine.

Advertising

Clever Marketing or Simulated Sex?

By Delphine Hirasuna | June 1, 2010September 4, 2014

We know that sex sells, but at what point do you cross over the line from suggestive to simulated? For the past week, the @Issue editorial team and interested others at Studio Hinrichs have been engaged in an ongoing dispute. My opinion and that of several others (who just happened to all be women) was that this commercial bordered on soft porn (the next ad in this series even more so). The male designers in the office watched the commercial attentively before describing it as “stylish,” “well-designed,” and “clever marketing.”

Brand Logos

Ferrari’s Barcode: Brand Advertising or Coincidence?

By Delphine Hirasuna | May 20, 2010September 4, 2014

After months of controversy, Ferrari finally capitulated and removed the suspiciously placed barcode from its Scuderia Marlboro Formula 1 cars in Europe.

As most F1 fans know, Marlboro has been the Ferrari F1 racing team’s major sponsor for more than a decade, but due to the F1 ban on tobacco sponsorships, the global cigarette marketer hasn’t been able to emblazon its brand logo on the cars, driver and pit crew uniforms, programs and promotions, despite paying millions of dollars to underwrite the team. Seemingly abiding by the law, the Marlboro name and logo did not appear anywhere. However, lately in the prominent places where the lead sponsor’s name would normally go, there appeared a curious red, black and white barcode design – which “coincidentally” are Marlboro’s brand colors. Even more remarkable was the fact that when the Ferrari F1 car flew around the course at 200 mph, viewers saw a blur that created the sensation of actually seeing the Marlboro logo.

Viral Marketing

Post – Christmas Guerrilla Ad Campaign

By Delphine Hirasuna | January 7, 2010September 4, 2014

Passersby in Amsterdam did a double-take as they walked by post-holiday curbside trash heaped high with the usual plastic garbage bags, assorted discards and… a Mini Cooper cardboard packing box with a red ribbon still dangling off the side. The brainchild of Ubachswisbrun/JWT agency, the Mini Cooper guerrilla “advertisements” were strategically placed throughout the city. It left people to wonder if the popular tiny hatchback was really small enough to be shipped in a box and possibly even fit under a Christmas tree. The white stick-on label on the side of the box provided the sales message – a 99 euro a month finance deal. Except for the black outline drawing of the Mini on all sides of the box, the actual product was nowhere to be seen.

Mini
Mini

by Corporate Design Foundation

Category: Viral Marketing