Now that there’s a buzz about Tropicana’s openness to fan-feedback in general, and about its packaging design in particular, why not create a platform for people to submit their design ideas? How might Tropicana lovers re-envision what that OJ carton could look like given the chance? In fact, why pick just one new design? How about different winning carton designs printed in “limited editions”? Why not deliberately set out to discover and promote emerging artists, giving them their first break of mass exposure through orange juice cartons in grocery stores across the country? If it’s art, suddenly there’s a whole new reason for choosing one OJ brand over another. It’s not just about a “campaign,” it’s an opportunity to create culture.
And now I’m discovering that Evian has been onto something very similar for years already, (Thanks, John), giving a whole new meaning to the term “Designer Water.”
Partnering with famed designers, Evian has been creating special, limited edition “Prêt-à-Porter” bottles which sell for upwards of $13 a pop, designed by the likes of Christian Lacroix (2008):
Been meaning to post about this for a while, but been mad busy.
I’m super digging the ad campaign for the The Surrogates, due out September 25th. Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Robert Venditti, the world of the Surrogates is a future in which direct human interaction has all but ceased. Instead, people interact via surrogate androids, which they can design to manifest their most idealized form. If you’re balding you can have a surrogate with a full head of hair, f0r instance, or if you so desire, your surrogate could even be a different gender. It’s Second Life come to life: your perfect avatar, but in the flesh. Or ate least, flesh-like. These surrogate robots (which are owned much in the same way we own cars, with insurance and VIN numbers and whatnot) go out into the world to indulge in experiences without consequences, and through a sci-fi assortment of sensory inputs, their operators get to feel it all from the safety and privacy of their secluded homes. The movie stars Bruce Willis, but the ad campaign gives the star only a passing mention. Instead, the really clever thing about the Surrogates ads is how deftly they transpose the movie’s alternate reality into ours:
At first, glance, driving by, you think, from the poses of the models that the billboards they’re on are probably advertising some sort of industrial-themed new jeans brand or something. But after a few moments you begin to realize there’s something off here:
And the question the billboards keep asking starts to sink in:
The ads succeed not by ADVERTISING the movie, but by projecting the very vision of the future portrayed in the movie –beautiful, doomed– seamlessly onto our daily reality.
In April 2007, Italian Vogue featured an editorial spread by photographer Steven Meisel, entitled “The Greatest Show On Earth,” which featured members of L.A. circus troupe, Lucent Dossier:
The current, September 2009, issue of Italian Vogue features an editorial spread by Steven Meisel entitled “Performance,” and involving a gaggle of cross-dressed models done up in decidedly Circus, and dare I say Lucent-like, styles and poses:
Back in early 2006, Chevy tried to get on the whole “consumer generated content” bandwagon (or bandSUV, I suppose), with a website which allowed users to easily create their own “ads” for the Chevy Tahoe using provided video and music assets. In theory, the idea was to generate interest in the vehicle through user created ads circulating virally around the web. But just months ahead of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, with all things “green” and “climate crisis”-related just on the verge of tipping over from environmentalist niche to major mainstream movement, the cluelessness of the folks at Chevy about the extent of the negative sentiment for this vehicle became all too quickly apparent, as the most popular results generated by the their ad-creator came out looking something like this: .
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Three years after what remains one of the most infamous examples of a social media reality check, Chevy is pursuing perhaps the greatest rebranding of any American car company, (not that it has a choice, exactly), with the debut of the whopping 230mpg, electric vehicle: the Chevy Volt. .
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A phenomenal advancement from the environmental perspective, for sure, but from the marketing side, perhaps, it shouldn’t take a government bailout to get you to really listen to what consumers are telling you. .
Now that there’s a buzz about Tropicana’s openness to fan-feedback in general, and about its packaging design in particular, why not create a platform for people to submit their design ideas? How might Tropicana lovers re-envision what that OJ carton could look like given the chance? In fact, why pick just one new design? How about different winning carton designs printed in “limited editions”? Why not deliberately set out to discover and promote emerging artists, giving them their first break of mass exposure through orange juice cartons in grocery stores across the country? If it’s art, suddenly there’s a whole new reason for choosing one OJ brand over another. It’s not just about a “campaign,” it’s an opportunity to create culture.
![[surrogates-jeans1.jpg]](http://social-creature.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/surrogates-jeans1.jpg)
![[surrogates-booots.jpg]](http://social-creature.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/surrogates-booots.jpg)
![[surrogates-skirt.jpg]](http://social-creature.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/surrogates-skirt.jpg)
