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.”

Advertising

Armchair Space Travel

By Delphine Hirasuna | November 19, 2009September 4, 2014

To manifest Toshiba’s tagline “leading innovation” and promote the company’s new LCD TV Series, ad agency Grey London gave viewers the ultimate armchair-viewing experience by launching a living room chair to the edge of outer space. Filmed in Nevada’s Black Rock desert, the team, led by Grey creative director Andy Amadeo, tethered a lightweight balsa wood chair to a helium balloon and watched it rise to an altitude of 98,268 feet. The rig, which according to Federal Aviation Administration rules could not weigh more than a total of four pounds, carried a Toshiba’s IK-HRIS 1080i camera to digitally record a bird’s eye view of the chair and four independent GPS systems to track the chair’s position during its 83 minute ascent into space. The ad was shot by Haris Zambarloukos, the acclaimed cinematographer who made the feature films “Enduring Love” and “Mamma Mia.” The Space Chair commercial began airing in the UK this week.

Information Graphics

Sprint Kinetic Infographics

By Delphine Hirasuna | May 14, 2009September 4, 2014

A new series of engaging commercials for Sprint, done by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, turns factoids and data that would typically go into flat charts and graphs into motion pictures. Real people populate demographic maps. Flow charts flow. Kinetic infographics breathe life into what is actually a bunch of dry statistics.