These two advertising campaigns really caught my eye recently.

A beautiful execution and a very simple message. I think these are really powerful.

NH Hotels advertisement was placed on Iberia airline’s headrests. On the back of the headrests you could see illustrations enjoying the different activites offered by NH Hotels: golf, beach, sauna, and spa.

[via Ads of the world & Ad Goodness]

Recently advertising is taking a turn towards the absurd… well I shouldn’t say recently, advertisers have always pushed the envelope as far as unconventional humor goes, but you typically only saw this approach with smaller brands that were more flexible and willing to take risks.

I’ve posted one print campaign and three separate tv commercials from major brands to exemplify my point.

Orbit Gum:

There are two benefits immediately apparent in this style of marketing:

1. It is, or can be, dirt cheap.
2. It is very effective with mellinials (god how I loath that word, but it’s very apropos in this instance)

One warning though, it is much easier to execute this style in video rather than in print.

I would be curious to know what all of you think of this?

My name is Julie O’Keeffe, and I want to share a mini-campaign that we at Marqutte University executed this semester - the goal of this campaign was to increase awareness about our databases.
Below you will find some pictures and a breakdown of the campaign.

If you have any questions about this campaign, feel free to email me: julie.okeeffe@marquette.edu

The goals of the two-semester campaign are to:

1. raise awareness among the student population of the variety of article databases available to them
2. educate students on the costs and benefits of using article databases and search engines such as Google
3. collect data regarding student views of the databases for future promotion efforts
4. determine the maximum size campaign that is possible for the R&O Department to produce with the resources available to the Promotion Team (primarily our time and skill-sets)

Secondary goals are to:

1. follow best practices as identified by ACRL
2. incorporate the “@yourlibrary” logo from ACRL

The entire package of components consists of:

1. a poster by turnstiles
2. movie star cardboard cut-outs
3. a dozen “highway signs”
4. a banner that reinforces the idea
5. web pages
6. a “featured item” on
7. a chance to win $20
8. a running list of the students’ submissions
9. a pre- and post-tests that measures students’ knowledge, use, and view of article databases
10. incorporation of the “@your library” logo

This is very exciting, so start collecting all of your marketing material and documenting it along the way! REMEMBER to take pictures of events, keep pdf, jiff, and jpegs of everything you make!

The deadline for submissions Monday December 4th, 2006!

This was just announced and I am sure Jonathan and I will be writing more about it in the next few months so stay tuned…if you would like to see all the criteria for award please see the ACRL site… and if you want to see how happy you will be when you win the award see our picture from 2005 at ACRL Award site…

PS: Most importantly, on the ACRL site for the 2005 Best Practices in Marketing Academic and Research Libraries @your library Award, you will find American University’s communication plan and our video that rocked Minneapolis and our entire package that we submitted. All of this content is licensed under Creative Commons, this means that anyone can use our materials as long as they give attribution to our team. This enables us to build on each others work, instead of constantly reinventing the wheel and it contributes to scholarly communication.

An article, in the May 7th issue of The New York Times Magazine, called Shelf Improvement discusses the emerging “private label” or “store brand” and its growth in popularity. These store brands used to mimic the look of famous name products, but now a grocery store chain called Publix is taking an opposite strategy.

I think the ideas celebrated in this article and in the many accolades that Publix designs have garnered are applicable to libraries. These include pieces in Package Design Magazine and Private Label Buyer and an award from the graphic design magazine HOW. Each time I walk into a library I find tons of design clutter. Every brochure looks different from one another. Sometimes there is a mixture of home grown objects and free things that libraries have received from vendors (which are slick, but hardly well designed). My point is there is no clarity, no continuity in any of the designs. It is hard to tell what the library is trying to say, where you are supposed to go etc.

Some of the design principals that helped Publix win such awards could help us:

• “Instead of echoing brand-name designs, Publix’s products have their own look: clean, clever and — with lots of white space and simple but crisp typography…”
• “Cox’s (Tim Cox, director of the company’s in-house creative-service department) department set out to create a style that would “separate itself from what else is happening on the shelf.” If most packaging screams “look at me” with bright, colorful, busy graphics, one response is to go the opposite way, with a spare look.“
• “The aluminum foil boxes… feature little animals (a turtle, a swan, a moose) made of foil. The image changes depending on the message for the category but gives the designers some flexibility, Cox says. “The tinfoil has been very popular,” he adds. “And the intent was for the customer to say, ‘Oh, I get it,‘ and they can stand there and smile. If you can engage with them on that level, it’s a different means of interaction.“

I found this post on We-Make-Money-Not-Art about La Linea by Osvaldo Cavandoli (see video below) a French TV show from the early 70s. I love this concept of using a simple line to convey complex emotion/action.

Immediately upon seeing La Linea, I thought of a modern example of of this same technique… The new Hilton Hotel’s advertising campaign “Travel should take you places” (see video below).

I really love the simplicity of these.

You can find other clips of La Linea here, here, and here.
And the other three Hilton ads here, here, and here.