Posted by JonLech on under wwdc, statis, iphone, ad agency, transparent background, white background, tipster, ad campaign, bart, envy, excuse | 
For our “The Cure for iPhone Envy” ad campaign we leased the window on the BART exit outside the SF Apple Store. Our contract with BART’s ad agency specified that the ad would go up on Monday morning, the day of the WWDC keynote. However, the ad agency jumped the gun and our ad went up on Friday the weekend before. Shortly after the ad was put up, it was ripped down by a BART employee. A tipster sent me pictures of this happening:
BART’s excuse for ripping down the ad was that it was “too dark” and not letting through enough light into the BART exit. However, we have pictures that show there was plenty of light coming through the ad (the ad is printed on a clear plastic material):
We then submitted the following revised ad with a white background. A white ad would have let even more light through (notice how bright the bottle is in the original ad above). However, it was rejected for having a solid white background (!).
At the ad agency’s request, we then made the background completely transparent. It’s a lot harder to read text on a transparent background… After complying with all their requests to change the ad, we still haven’t been given a firm date on when the ad will be back up.
Apple is a major BART advertiser (in the past they’ve plastered entire BART stations with iPod ads). Apple’s WWDC conference ends on Friday. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here… I’m sure our ad will conveniently be back up after WWDC ends.
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Tagi: wwdc, statis, iphone, ad agency, transparent background, white background, tipster, ad campaign, bart, envy, excuse
Posted by on under comic film, boing boing, funny commercial, radical media, extence, proprietary os, sales messages, coue, os users, enemy of the state, jokey, office users, ad agency, grat, ad campaign, frolic, seinfeld, openoffice, ubuntu, endorsements |
Microsoft's ad agency Traffik/@radical.media produced this trailer for a godawful thriller based on Office 2010, a kind of 24 meets Enemy of the State thing. As a short comic film, it's a real success -- I laughed aloud at least twice -- but I'm not sure about its value as an advertisement. The humor is in-jokey, aimed at people who already know pretty much everything they need to know about Microsoft and its products and who tend to have their minds made up already (I haven't used Office since switching to the excellent OpenOffice.org years ago, and haven't missed it once; most of the Office users I know upgrade when they get a new version gratis with a new PC). So I suppose that this thing is meant to alert avid Office users to the existence of Office 2010, an hypothesis that is further borne out by the absence of any product info in the ad. Still, if someone produced a video this funny for the next Ubuntu release, and managed to work in a couple of actual compelling sales messages aimed at proprietary OS users, I'd applaud. Office 2010: The Movie Previously:More Griping About Advertising: Bing Edition - Boing Boing Funny commercial for Microsoft's Songsmith - Boing Boing Super-sexy Windows XP ad resurrected by Nerve - Boing Boing Seinfeld and celebrity computer endorsements - Boing Boing iMac and PC frolic peacefully in new MSFT ad campaign - Boing Boing (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)...
Tagi: comic film, boing boing, funny commercial, radical media, extence, proprietary os, sales messages, coue, os users, enemy of the state, jokey, office users, ad agency, grat, ad campaign, frolic, seinfeld, openoffice, ubuntu, endorsements
