The Hidden Persuader (English, Portuguese) has an example of very interactive street advertising from Ogilvy One, Bangkok.
There's a motion sensor in a garbage bin, as soon as someone walks by the sound of the ad is turned on, which happens to be the wailings of a baby. So naturally any human still equipped with empathy will open the lid of the garbage bin - and what do they see there? "Find out more about the BIRTH CONTROL PILL" and the website url to turn to.
That's one messed up ad. Instead of advertising the pill - how cynical somehow - shouldn't it be advertising counselling for teens to talk with adults? Or something that would prevent a bin-baby situation?
Caffienegoddess: "It would be even better for an adoption center or something." Yes. It's not talking to the target at all - I assume that they want unwed women/young girls to take up the pill as contraception. Is freaking them out the way to do it? And that is assuming that young women would be the ones to open the bin. The people who would look it in the bin fall for some very strange bait-and-switch. "Oh you care for wee humans? Here's the pill!" What?
I dislike ad creep and I really despise when ads make use of peoples empathy or altruistic tendencies to shill, such as the playstation "lost" flyers and "looking for an apartment" flyers. That's a like a slap in the face to anyone who spent some time reading what turned out to be just another advert. Yep. I hate that ad. Am I wrong? What do you think?
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I though that I might have been ranting to myself here, until Briefblog emailed me another baby-in-a-bin ad from Ogilvy. see the update article here.
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PermalinkLook, call me cynical, but whenever I hear of one of these - I have to call them stunts - all I can think of is 'AWARDS!' (Sorry about the screamer but it seems necessary.) The target market isn't unwed/young women, it's Creative Directors and award juries. The product isn't the Birth Control Pill (big clue: Birth Control Pill? Why isn't it the Family Planning Association or a brand of pill?), it's the creative team that did this. For that selfishness alone and for their willingness to involve the public in the deception, I loathe the ad. I don't think it or they are clever. End of rant.
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PermalinkExactly!
Some collegues are hinting that my nursing hormone levels are making me judge these ideas extra hashly. I'm not so sure. I really think the bin trick would be quite clever if it advertised adoption or that they were looking for volenteers at a city community thingie, where the human concern shown by the punter who opens the lid is rewarded with a "you're just the kind of big hearted person we are looking for" rather than this crass commercial message about some product we have no idea if this punter wants needs or even is in the target group for. (The Pill is taken by women, right?)
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