To promote Sony’s NWZ-W270 MP3 waterproof walkman, DraftFCB Auckland packaged it inside bottles full of water. The bottles were then put in special vending machines at pools and gyms across New Zealand.
The packaging innovation gave Sony a unique way to display their product and instantly demonstrate its benefits to the target audience.
To promote the Nivea sun screen range, Draftfcb Brazil developed a magazine ad with actual solar panels and a USB port. This transformed the ad into a whole new Nivea product that beach goers in Brazil could use to charge their phones. 🙂
Sun. Beach. Sunscreen. Mobile Phone. Solar charger. It all ties together quite nicely. Don’t you think?
UTEC, The University of Engineering and Technology in Peru, believes that engineering can change the world. So they decided to start by changing a local problem and in the process getting more students interested in applying for their engineering program.
Lima is the second largest capital in the world set on a desert, and the lack of potable water is a huge problem. Since the presence of rain is almost zero, UTEC used the atmospheric humidity which is about 98% to build the first billboard that produces drinking water out of air!
To launch the British television drama Secret Diary of a Call Girl in New Zealand, agency DraftFCB had an ‘actress’ engage in call girl like behavior in a house window opposite a top radio station for three successive nights.
As expected the girl’s behavior caught the eye of the local DJ and he wasted no time in broadcasting his observations to the world. Other DJ’s nationwide also picked up on the story and talked about it for 72 hours. Then on the final night with public interest at its peak the ‘actress’ closed the blinds to unveil the message. 🙂
The countless listeners during this period generated thousands of Tweets and Facebook posts, helping make the premiere of Secret Diary of a Call Girl the most talked about premiere of the year.
Last month I wrote about Austria Solar’s annual report, whose pages became visible only when exposed to sunlight.
Now Buenos Aires based bookshop and publisher Eternal Cadencia has released ‘El libro que no puede esperar’ i.e. ‘The book that cannot wait’ – an anthology of new fiction printed in ink that disappears after two months of opening the book!
How is that possible? Well the books are silk-screened using a special ink and then sealed in an air-tight packaging that once opened allows the printed material to react with the atmosphere. The result being that after two months, the text vanishes.
In the age of portable electronic readers and e-books, I think this a magical way of adding an element of urgency to reading while motivating readers, promoting authors and at the same time benefiting physical book publishers.
A ‘Mini’ has only the things it really needs. That means getting rid of the superfluous and keeping an eye on the essentials. Mini calls this ‘Minimalism’.
So the Draftfcb/Lowe Group in Zürich created over 20 posters (genuine, unique work of art) all over Switzerland that demonstrated the Mini art of omission in a very simple way.
