My portfolio - Blue Moon

This might be my favorite in my portfolio.

I went with long-copy for a beer advertisement, which is certainly not characteristic of the category, but there is method to my madness.

Blue Moon pretends to be a Colorado microbrew from the "Blue Moon Brewing Company."
Said company does not exist. Blue Moon is an invention of Miller Coors, and not a bad one at that, considering anyone who knows anything about beer might rather drink human bile than Coors or Miller Lite.

The strategy with this full color, full page print spot was to create a personality for Blue Moon (and to perpetuate the legend of the Blue Moon Brewing Company). The thing that stands out about Blue Moon is that, when served on tap, it is usually garnished with an orange slice. I used this as an added bonus for the ad, because if people had seen someone drinking some weird beer with an orange in it, they would now know that it was Blue Moon if they didn't before.

Click image to see it full size

My portfolio - 5 gum

I've decided to post the work I've done for my portfolio on the blog. I'll take feedback, constructive criticism, or plain old gushing affection.

The first client is 5 Gum, a hip, new-ish chewing gum brand from Wrigley.

Ad specs: Print, Full Page (8.5 x 11), 4 Color
Things to note: it's sugar free, it comes in 7 ambiguously-named flavors, the package is shaped so that the sticks are arranged in a 3 x 5 box.

I chose to take an attitudinal positioning because, quite frankly, there are very few distinct product benefits for various brands of gum.

Special thanks to all my friends who posed for the ads:

Execution 1:


Execution 2:


Click either image to see it full size.

I took my shirt off in public for the sake of advertising...

...or something like that.

Last week The NewHouse, the student ad agency I am a part of, took to the Quad to start a flash mob, that is, a spontaneous gathering of people in public used to garner attention from passers by for a cause.

The cause was to call attention to Hopenhagen, aka COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference which will convene in Denmark on December 7. We've since followed up with a connection to the online petition.

Several members of the agency (myself included, as evidenced in the horrifically pale image above) gathered on the Quad at 12:07 pm on Wednesday and removed our weather-appropriate attire for clothes (or lack thereof) more suited for the beach. We hope the message was clear: if we don't do something about climate change, the seasons as we know them could disappear.

Our work with this global client comes through Ogilvy and Mather, who I assume found out about TNH after our 2009 National Championship.

The flash mob was an experiment in a lot of non-traditional methods, including viral (we used facebook to the point of over-hyping the event) and guerrilla marketing. Our event drew reporters from several campus publications and the campus TV station, increasing impressions exponentially at no cost to us.

There's a lot of potential in events like these and we may begin seeing them on a larger scale. Ray Lapena, a friend and contemporary at Syracuse, organized a similar event (although his involved more clothes and more dancing) to build hype for his campus organization, First Year Players.

It's only a matter of time before these advertising messages will be appearing more often as advertisers attempt to get around people's ever-developing filter towards traditional marketing.

It helped that it wasn't freezing, like we expected. It was a mild 50 degrees, which may represent the start of global warming in Syracuse. I'm used to snow at this time.

I did a real ad (!)

Sorry for a lack of updates over the past couple weeks.

Big news: I conceived/designed a real ad that will run in a Northeast Florida directory this fall.

Story:
The company I'm an intern for, Showcase Publishing, creates directories for chambers of commerce in various areas around the country. We don't charge the chambers for this service, our revenue comes strictly from ads in the directories and on online, which we sell to members of the chamber so as to "enhance" their listings in the directory.

We've been working on the book for St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce, and my job was pretty much to sort, record, and file all the "insertion orders," or requests for ads. On a whim, I asked our designer on the project if I could "do" an ad. He took one of the orders I had just handed him and handed it back to me, and said "here, go at it." I borrowed another designers computer for access to Adobe CS4, and less than an hour later I had a pretty good looking quarter page magazine ad for CartSmarts of St. Augustine, a new golf cart sales and service center.

I assumed the owner, who requested the ad, would ask for changes because in his request, he indicated that he had seen little to no return on investment in his other forays into advertising. Since his business was very young, I'm not sure how quickly he expected a large turnaround, but then again I also don't know how often Florida's octogenarians buy golf carts, and how much competition there is in the market. It might be as big as used car sales in the Northeast.

To my surprise, the owner approved the ad within days, asking no questions and requesting no changes. Either it was as good as I'd hoped, or the man is easily impressed. Either way, it feels really good to have someone willing to pay for your work. I'll post the ad here when I feel it's safe to do so.

Blog reads you - Adamvertisement #1

Now that I'm the proud owner of Adobe CS4, I thought I'd use the blog to share some of my ads and other creative work.

This first ad is something I just finished up once I got InDesign installed, it's a quarter-page advertising tourism in Branson, Missouri. This was an assignment for my ADV 207 class, in which we had to hype up the entertainment in Branson because Las Vegas had gotten so far ahead after that "what happens in Vegas" campaign.

To understand the ad, you have to be familiar with the Russian reversal, made famous by Cold War comedian Yakov Smirnoff:

Because Yakov had his own theater in Branson (on the strip, if it can be called that), I hatched the idea for this ad (click to enlarge):