Archive for December, 2005

OK, so here’s how it’s done

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

All right. Having shown you some awful examples of outdoor advertising, here is probably the best use of outdoor advertising in the last 10 years in Australia. Yellowglen, by Mildara Blass (now Fosters).

It showcases the simplicity of a great campaign. What is the essential element of sparkling wine? Bubbles. What is the aspirational quality of […]

Bus ads

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

As is my wont, here are some more bad examples of outdoor advertising. These are bus shelter ads. It’s an unusual medium because some people will read them close up but the focus is really drive-by traffic.

Why so small? It’s my attempt to simulate the effect of driving by at 92kph. Yes, I just got […]

Tutorial: how to annoy your audience

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Steve Vizard’s company, Cornerbox, is making a new comedy show for the Ten Network. It’s called The Wedge. Some poor promotional thinking from Ten on this. They’ve been running a teaser campaign which mentions the web site; don’t bother going there - it says “Coming Soon”.
Thanks to Andrew at China Grey who alerted me […]

Outdoor ads: scale and speed

Monday, December 12th, 2005

Of all the major forms of media, the simplest seems the worst understood. Outdoor advertising involves looking at an ad while you’re a substantial distance away and driving at high speed. Most viewers are driving a car; so they can’t look for long. A half a second maybe? Passengers might have two seconds.
The rule […]

Powerpoint awfulness

Sunday, December 11th, 2005

On Friday I attended a conference on the future of the Australian wine industry. Some terrific presentations but some just awful. It amazes me that 18 years after the product was invented, people still don’t understand the basics of giving a Powerpoint Presentation. Some of these people are in senior executive roles; do they never […]