Typography

Typography by the Homeless

Sadly, the sight of a homeless person holding a hand-scrawled sign asking for spare change has become all too familiar in cities around the world. Barcelona-based Arrels Foundation and The Cyranos McCann ad agency found a novel way to respond to such handwritten appeals. They created Homelessfonts.org to market typefaces drawn by the homeless in Barcelona to businesses for use in advertising and packaging. In different workshops, volunteer design professionals led homeless participants through various typographic exercises, which were then scanned and converted into usable fonts. The fonts are being sold on the Homelessfonts.org website, and collected funds are being used by Arrels to offer shelter, food, and social and health care services to the indigent in Barcelona. Arrels reports that about 3,000 homeless are currently in Barcelona, 900 of whom actually live in the street. Type design is an unusual charitable fund-raising initiative, to say the least, but it has given Arrels the resources to care for nearly half of the homeless in Barcelona.

Viral Marketing

Moon Over Corona Beer

Winner of a 2014 Cannes Outdoor Advertising Award, this Corona Extra billboard campaign feels like a high school science project on steroids – e.g., drop a raw egg from 30 feet without breaking it, make a rocket that can shoot across a football field, build your own fog tornado. In this case, Corona and its ad agency Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago came up with a way to put a real crescent moon on top of a Corona bottle billboard.

It was all very clever and fun in a geeky way. The idea involved showing an open bottle of Corona Extra surrounded by the moon in its different phases. The beer bottle itself butted up to the top edge of the billboard. By calculating the angle of the moon at a specific geographic location, the time that it would be in its crescent phase, and other measurements, the creative team could precisely predict when the moon would rest on the bottle top like a wedge of lime. Such calculations, however, are typically beyond the ken of “right brain” advertising people, so they turned to experts at top universities and planetariums for help. The consensus was that on June 14 and June 15, 2013, the crescent moon would be positioned over the bottle top shown on the billboard at 15th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. The historic lunar lime event was publicized online and via social media and created such a buzz that spectators came out specifically to witness the moon hovering over the Corona bottle. Such an occurrence is even rarer than a lunar eclipse.

Advertising

Aurora Matchmaking with Wine

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Aurora Vinicola, the biggest winemaking cooperative in Brazil, took a direct approach to recommending wine pairings in these print advertisements created by the agency Dez Comunicação in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Photographer Pedro Minanez and illustrator Miagui Imagevertising did some “photoshop” collaboration to suggest that when poultry, fish and beef are served with the right wine, the occasion becomes even more delightfully festive.
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Viral Marketing

Joe Boxer’s “Jiggle Bells, Jiggle Bells”

Fresh on the heels of last year’s titillating Kmart Joe Boxer pelvic jingle choir comes this holiday’s belly-beat encore. Avoiding some of the flack they took for featuring handsome young men who looked like they were hired from the Chippendale chorus line, this year ad agency FCB/Chicago chose a not-so-buff, beer-belly cast dressed in Joe Boxer pajama bottoms. Instead of naming the spot “Show Your Joe” like last year, the sequel is called “Jingo Bellies.” Either way, the commercials are funny, and a refreshing change from the usual cloyingly wholesome holiday ads showing loving couples in ski sweaters drinking hot chocolate by a roaring fireplace.

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Advertising

Pet Focus Group Yields Laughs for Big Lots

Consumer focus groups have long been a mainstay of marketing research. It’s a great way to gather user perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitude about a product. Chicago ad agency O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul pulled together a panel of mostly four-legged consumers to roll out Big Lots’ line of pet supplies and toys. Two improvisational actors served as panel “facilitators,” conducting a tongue-in-cheek user opinion survey. The panel of dogs and cats weren’t exactly forthcoming in their preferences, but they did give the discount retailer an opportunity to show the vast and varied range of pet products it sells.
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