CO Bigelow

Today's gentle installment into the world of "Should it say 'Buy This!' or 'Get This!'" comes with a shout out to the Junior Files only reader Lauren Z., who, to the extreme surprise of this writer, asked why I hadn't written anything new in a while. This incredible turn of events coupled with the fact that the poll has nearly doubled in votes overnight has answered the age old question," If a junior art director blogs in the woods, will somebody read it?"

In lieu of such good news I felt it was the perfect opportunity to trash a campaign, because lets face it when you're up you're a bit cocky.

C.O. Bigelow products are sold throughout the US at various large chain-y Bath and Bodyworks style shops and boutiques. The brand is styled after an old fashioned snake oil apothecary style to beauty. Bigelow emphasizes the scientific technology their chemists created 168 years ago in New York City with use of simple ingredients and some catchy copy on their bottles. Great story. Great product. Their product packaging:

Is something I consider brand delicious. Simple, clean but magically transporting me on the set Deadwood. Holding this in my hand, I imagine claw foot bathtubs and the gentle sipping of hot whiskey for my ailing consumption. And with visions of curly mustaches, bowler hats and a scratchy victrola, I go to bigelowchemist.com and find this:

And perhaps in a strange twist of events or cosmic ad magic, the music stopped.

Literally, my pandora music station stopped and pathetically informed me of its new policy for limited free music. (Which I need to express, will be the death of pandora.)

Now I know what you're thinking readers (Lauren), "It's really not THAT bad, is it?" But when you peg today's age of fast moving flashy web pages, impeccably well designed branding styles and a consumers nearly heroine dependent addiction for the new cool you have to ask yourself, is doing bare minimum worse? 

CO Bigelow is really missing the boat on this one, and I have to admit sadly that its negligence has changed the way that I viewed the brand. In short, CO Bigelow's package design to website transition has left me feeling abandoned.

I found my mustachioed gentleman, fell in love then realized he has a Taz tattoo on the inside of his arm. 

BaMadMen Republic

Jumping into this hectic career choice inevitably comes comes with its price. Late nights and endless deadlines, and invariably having family members tell you "winning" commercial ideas they thought of in the shower. 

One of the perks to this business, however, is that you are compared to AMC's brilliant take on the advertising world in MadMen. "Yes," you will boldly claim to your aunt Tildy, "I am Don Draper." 

Recently Banana Republic decided this bold showing of the 50's ad man biz was worthy of good suit and partnered with Lionsgate for the promotion along with followers Clorox, Vanity Fair and Variety. 

Though this may be no great feat of advertising genius it did provide a great sense of what a good suit can mean to a man.

And lets face it, Jon Hamm can sell just about anything:

One thing I really love about this is that Banana Republic has decided to take on a quieter approach to branding themselves to the hit show. Rather than take on an obnoxious approach like GM's screaming logo treatments in Michael Bay's Transformers they simply tagged themselves in the corner and let you see the show. 

Print for this campaign seems pretty cut and dry though I would like to take a moment to compare their ads:

To a print ad I made in my second semester portofolio class:

Interactive for this brand/show marriage is also pretty great though I'm not sure if BRep had anything to do with it (this may be the work of 8 O'clock Coffee), but such free publicity are the perks of tagging yourself with such a beloved show. 

Overall I give Banana Republic a tip of the brandy glass for this move. 

Mitsubishi's blend of car commercial.

And after a few months of handing the parents straight chicken soup I'm back and coming to you from New York's Lower East Side. Viciously critiquing from what little knowledge I know of today's hectic world of advertising. Aww, short is the sword I wield. 

My come back installment comes in the form of Mitsubishi's Lancer commercial entitled "Blend".  Lets take a look:

 

I know what you're thinking, "What could I possibly see in this car commercial that I actually want to comment on?" And you're right, there is nothing to comment on since it's just the same as any other car commercial we're bombarded with. And if whoever is the voice man for all these commercials is paid with cars then his garage must be bigger than Leno's. 

That was not the commercial I wanted to talk about rather I wanted to talk about its much cooler twin:

I saw this particular bit during a preshow at the Sunshine theatre and instead of chucking my popcorn/raisinette duo at that screen like usual, I turned to my neighbor excitedly and exclaimed, "For once, I actually want to drive that!" 

Mitsubishi finally experimented away from the same drones of fast moving, light shimmering off the dash, rave music blasting, trivial one in a million commercials we see everyday. They did something simple: they showed that the car could drive great and that it was actually fun. I'm impressed by the simplicity of the idea behind the commercial and even more impressed at how the motion of placing a camera behind the camera makes the act of driving the car in risky fast movements completely plausible. 

This reinvention of the typical luxury sports car commercial only further enhances that despite having the same parts you can always make something new every single time. And just as CPB reinvented the sale flyers in newspapers for Old Navy, so too can Mitsubishi's team reinvent the car commercial. 

But its sad the say that this reinvention only came with the price of birthing its boring typical brother. I can only imagine the intense stare down between the creative director and client on this one as the account person finally exclaimed, "Why don't we just do both, see how they do?"

Still, I commend the effort of putting out the reinvention. Hopefully Mitsubishi will see the potential as well, quite frankly I would love to see more of these out there in the world, maybe even a few professional test runs featuring real buyers in the passenger seats. I would be more than happy to ride shot gun in case anyone is asking. 

Marley & Me

Being in El Paso Texas for a month inevitably leads to developing a close relationship with salsa, Tejano music, and of course, the Super Walmart shopping center. 

This past Tuesday, after getting a plea from the old folks for a six pack of Ensure (because they simply party that hard) I came across this DVD package design:

And seeing this I had to remember the words of Norman Rockwell:

"If it doesn't work, put a dog in it. If it still doesn't work, put a Band-Aid on the dog."

And after mulling it through my head for several hours, since the highlight of that day was Walmart, I decided that I needed to really look into this package design; for although I enjoy simple design style this is like the wheel of design layouts. There is an art director out there that got paid to put a dog on a box and call it a day. Can it truly be this simple? Can one really buy their weeks supply of Pigma Microns in various colors and point sizes with five minutes of design work?

How can this be true? 

To answer these questions I did what any terribly bored but terribly disturbed junior art director would do and I made an entire Marley & Me design timeline chart:

And despite my better judgement, and after a quick foot to mouth dinner, I realized that this design layout did, in fact, have quite a bit of effort put into it. And I have to give credit to a designer who can take the same picture of a dog and play with it as much as this one has; because lord knows I would have stopped after number 4 and called myself a copywriter. It also goes without saying that the final design is, by far, the best design in the bunch.

So Rockwell was almost right. 

If it doesn't work, put a dog in it. If it still doesn't work, then you just haven't play with the design long enough.