I hate it when this happens! Every color of the rainbow in a totally undisciplined palette, giant logo right in the middle of the poster followed by a giant URL, stock shot of “girl having fun on waterslide,” busy layered backgrounds, cheap typography tricks no first-year design student would touch with a ten-foot pole–I can’t think of any rule of good judgment this poster doesn’t break!
Great headline, though.
found on a SF BART train
(Excuse the lousy photo–I was on a moving train.)
I was watching this the other day during my lunch, and came this close to losing it.
Please proceed with caution.
Adding to the “Disturbing” factor on this one is the veiled reference to porno movies. “BLINK BLINK but I didn’t order any pizza with sausage…” Boom chucka wow wow!
I was driving down the street when I noticed a tax shop with the H&R Block logo above it:
It is, for my money, the best logo in the world. Ever.
Here’s why:
- Green says “money”
- A simple square says “easy” (which is saying something when it comes to a complicated field like taxes!)
- The shade of green used says “a light touch, human, not intimidating or foreboding” (again, important for taxes)
- It’s mnemonic – blocks are square – H&R Block, get it?
- Even the typeface used is mnemonic–it’s “block lettering”!
I can’t think of one single way to improve this logo or make it clearer, more readable, or more reflective of both (a) what field the client is in and (b) how they position themselves within that field.
Can you?
I’ve been seeing these outdoor and online ads for Symantec which are absolutely atrocious, so of course I have to mention them here. They read like somebody got a creative brief that says “when people thing ‘X thing’ we want them to think Symantec”–and then just literally translated that into advertising with no art or craftsmanship whatsoever.
Headlines read “Symantec is Security,” “Symantec is Peace of Mind,” etc. Here’s a screenshot of a website using one of these so-called headlines:
This campaign has the emotional kick of a wet sponge, and I’m guessing it’ll last just about as long. Really, people? You call this advertising/branding–and you wonder why we’re having a recession?
Trust Me premieres on TBS Monday night. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to watch it to how see just how lame it is. Who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised.
The last advertising sitcom that was any good was Good Company, which lasted about 5 episodes–but I loved it for Wendie Malick, who ended up in Just Shoot Me, and Seymour Kassel, whose senior copywriter character always left a steaming cup of coffee on his desk before he ducked out to see a 10 am matinee “so they’ll think I’m still here.”
Let me know what you think of Trust Me. I’ll check in on Tuesday with an opinion of my own. Until then, here’s the site for the fake RGM agency.
I love these spots from The Martin Agency! They’re irreverent and silly, but they’re also brilliant. Why?
1) This company’s previous campaigns were horrible–they insulted your intelligence and made the service sound like a scam. (I can still hear the jingle: FREEEEE credit report dot COMMM!) The agency was smart enough to leapfrog over “mediocre” and go from horrible to great–and the client was smart enough to approve it.
2) There’s no voiceover, something an insecure client could easily have insisted on. Either you understand these spots or you don’t. They don’t talk down to you, you have to “get” them. And millions do.
3) These spots are great, fun storytelling because they present a loser who didn’t use the company’s product rather than a winner who did. He’s become a kind of reverse spokesman, in the same way as the Maytag Repairman and Charlie the Tuna–but for the new millenium.
Jerry Della Femina, one of the greats of advertising’s original Creative Revolution in the 60’s, explains how he got publicity by announcing he didn’t win accounts–accounts he didn’t even pitch!
Apart from making me laugh loud enough to shoot coffee out of my nose, this is a great example of how creative thinking can help on the account side, from a man who knows both accounts and creative intimately.
Sprint has figured out what a lot of companies evidently haven’t yet: businesspeople are just real people who happen to be doing a job. (And a lot of them enjoy that rock ‘n’ roll.)
Lou Dorfsman, design innovator and CBS in-house graphics guru for many decades, has died at 90. Lou was a huge part of the creative revolution of the late 50s and early 60s, and among the first to insist that designs include an idea–not just follow a cookie-cutter template.
Some samples courtesy of the great blog Things to Look At:
