Tag: banner

Exito: Flossbook

Over the last year or so I have seen numerous brands use the basic website functionalities of Twitter and Pinterest to reach out and engage with their audiences.

In this example, Sancho BBDO from Colombia creates a “banner” that promotes Exito dental floss by taking advantage of the Facebook Timeline. In the case video below you can see how the banner behaves like dental floss, sliding between pictures of food posted on restaurant fan pages.

The campaign reports that the Exito website received 30% more traffic and that the banner collected more than 200,000 likes across restaurant fan pages.

A banner that borrows the feed’s own grammar

The idea works because it treats the feed as the medium, not as a placement surface. Instead of shouting for attention, the unit inserts itself where the problem actually happens. Between the food and the teeth.

How the mechanism works

The execution uses a Timeline-format ad unit designed to appear between consecutive image posts, creating the visual metaphor of floss moving through a meal-heavy feed. It is still advertising, but it behaves like an interaction with the stream rather than a block sitting next to it. That matters because when the ad uses the stream’s own sequencing, the metaphor reads instantly and needs less explanatory copy.

In social platform marketing, the most durable executions are the ones that act like native feed behavior instead of interrupting it.

Why it lands

It lands because the metaphor is immediate and the placement is earned. If you are scrolling through indulgent food photography, you are already in the mental space where “maybe I should floss” makes sense. The banner does not have to convince you with copy. It just has to show up in the right gap, in the right moment, with a visual that explains itself.

Extractable takeaway: When a platform has a strong, repetitive content pattern, design your unit to exploit the “gap” between posts. The gap is where attention resets, and where metaphors can do more work than claims.

The business intent behind the trick

The real question is not whether a banner can get seen, but whether it can make its relevance obvious in the exact moment people are already primed for it.

This is efficient attention engineering. It makes a low-involvement product feel relevant by tying it to a high-frequency behavior. Scrolling food photos. That linkage is what turns a standard banner into a feed-native reminder you actually notice. Here, feed-native means the ad works inside the platform’s normal flow and spacing instead of fighting it.

What oral-care brands can lift from this

  • Start with the platform pattern. Identify what people repeatedly do and what they repeatedly see.
  • Build a metaphor that uses placement as part of the idea. Here, “between photos” is the point.
  • Keep the unit visually self-explanatory. If it needs instructions, it loses the feed moment.
  • Target the most relevant content contexts. Food imagery is the natural trigger for oral care.
  • Measure beyond clicks. Engagement and downstream site lift can be the real win for a feed-native format.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “Flossbook” in one sentence?

A Facebook Timeline-format banner that visually acts like dental floss by appearing between food photos in the feed.

Why is the Timeline placement essential to the idea?

Because the meaning is created by the gap. The banner becomes “floss” only when it sits between two posts like something threading through them.

What makes this feel native instead of intrusive?

It uses the feed’s own rhythm and spacing. The unit behaves like a piece of the stream, not an unrelated rectangle alongside it.

What is the biggest risk with “platform mechanic” ideas?

If the platform changes the format, the idea can break overnight. These executions need contingency planning for UI shifts.

How can other brands apply this without copying the metaphor?

Find the repeatable content pattern in your audience’s feed, then design an insertion that only makes sense in that exact pattern and moment.

Kaiak: The Online Banner You Could Smell

A banner that refuses to stay “just digital”

Everyone loves cool ad executions, but some are clearly advertising for advertising people. This one shows up at exactly the right time. Award-show season.

The work comes out of Brazil for Kaiak, Natura’s men’s fragrance. Kaiak has been reformulated, and the brief is simple but brutal. How do you sell a new scent online when the one thing people want to do is smell it?

Click the banner. Get the scent.

ID/TBWA solves it by building the missing sense into the media placement itself. Custom hardware is attached to computers in lan houses (cyber cafés) across Brazil. A special banner appears on the browser start page and reads, “The best selling men’s fragrance in the country just changed. Want to try it? Click this banner. It’s scented.”

When someone clicks, a scented strip physically emerges from the attached device. The digital impression turns into a real sample in the moment where “try” normally breaks down online.

In Brazilian urban markets where lan houses function as high-traffic digital hubs, turning a cyber café PC into a sampling machine creates mass trial without needing retail testers.

Why it lands: the medium becomes the product experience

The reason it works is not novelty alone. It removes the biggest barrier in fragrance e-commerce. Confidence. The real question is how you create purchase confidence for a sensory product when the screen cannot deliver the sensation. By turning the click into immediate sampling, the campaign makes the claim verifiable in the moment of intent, which is why it converts curiosity into trial. For sensory categories, the best digital work engineers a real trial moment, even if that means adding physical infrastructure. The click is not a promise. It is the delivery mechanism.

Extractable takeaway: If a product’s value depends on a sense the screen cannot deliver, redesign the media so “try” happens at the click, not after it.

The business intent: accelerate trial for a reformulated bestseller

This is a trial engine dressed as a banner. The goal is to reduce hesitation around change, create fresh talk value around “it’s different now”, and push people toward purchase with a sensory proof point that normal digital formats cannot provide.

How to make digital do something physical

  • Identify the missing sense. If the product relies on touch, smell, or taste, do not pretend pixels can replace it.
  • Build a credible “try now” moment. Sampling only works when the action and the reward are tightly coupled.
  • Choose distribution points with dwell time. Cyber cafés, waiting rooms, and shared devices can behave like miniature retail networks.
  • Keep the instruction brutally simple. The banner copy does not explain the tech. It explains the outcome.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the “scented banner” for Kaiak?

An online banner placed on cyber café computers that dispenses a physical scented strip when the viewer clicks, enabled by custom hardware attached to the PC.

Why build hardware for a banner campaign?

Because fragrance requires sampling. The hardware turns a digital click into immediate product trial, removing the biggest barrier to buying scent online.

What is the core mechanism?

“Try now” is built into the media unit. The banner instruction is simple, and the click triggers a physical delivery moment that proves the claim.

What does this teach about selling “sensory” products digitally?

If touch, smell, or taste drives purchase confidence, you need a credible bridge to real-world experience, not just better copy or imagery.

What is the most transferable takeaway?

Identify the missing sense, then engineer a sampling moment where action and reward are tightly coupled and instantly legible.