there's nothing Mediation likes more than a decent tease campaign, and this one has certainly been splashing itself around London's transport network at the moment. tube card panels, cross-track 48s and station dominations have all been showing images of Obama outside No. 10, golden footballs, overweight kids and what I think is a pic of the magnets from the new large Hadron Collider at CERN.
the tease (then reveal) model is as old as the hills; use the medium of outdoor to tease the public with non-branded images that provoke questions as to what they are, and why they're there... and of course which brand they're for!
it's an approach that's increasingly rare these days. partly I guess due to the requirement for more demonstrable returns on investment (essentially with this strategy you're paying for the space twice), but it's also a model that has somewhat been reversed in recent times...
its Fallon's fault. ever since the set of their San Fransisco Balls effort was captured and posted before the ad was released, it's become somewhat fashionable to do the opposite of the tease model. now several brands advertise the making of the ad... on-set photos of the recent M&S summer ad for example made the national press.
I guess that why I like this campaign. not only is it demonstrating confidence with it's investment, but in a post-information hyper-transparent age it proffers a little mystery to a sometimes all-too-knowing media landscape.
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29.9.08 supplemental:
the campaign is for The Times. sales and marketing director of Times Media Katie Vanneck as quoted in an article on Brand Republic: "The Times is the only national daily without a dogma -- the paper does not tell you what to think but encourages the reader to question and to challenge.
"We wanted to reflect this ethos of 'show and not tell' in our brand campaign which is why we have gone for strong, simple images that set you questioning and thinking.
"We want readers to think again about our times and to think again about The Times"
...mission - I suggest - accomplished. thanks to Eva for the comment on the post and the heads up...
Brand Republic have got to the bottom of it... should have guessed a media owner would be behind this campaign. Opinion seems to be divided as to its success. I like it. It made me curious and that's always a good thing. Be interested to know what people outside our industry think of it!
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/849248/Times-revealed-advertiser-behind-3m-mystery-images/
Posted by: evamay78 | Monday, 29 September 2008 at 21:57