Find the logo

How hard should you have to work to identify the sponsor of an ad?  According to Dave Saunders in his book, "20th Century Advertising,"
"One of the strongest human instincts is to want to make sense of what we see. We are intrigued by the unexpected and don't like being left with a mystery...we are drawn in to solve the visual riddle or to read the copy in search of an explanation."
The question, of course, is how long the average reader will keep searching. That's the fine line you walk in ads like these. If fact this one has a double riddle. Once you realize the bunched-up magazines are forming the image of a brain, the question becomes, "What magazine would claim to be such brain fodder?"

Speaking of which, found the logo yet? Here it is:


Update 5/6:  New to my site?  Here's some previous posts worth checking out:

Who's the father of modern advertising? Is it him or him?

You know about "Got Milk?" but do you know "Got Mink?"

See how the 1960s counter-culture influenced advertising here, here and here.

Here's how "Jaws II" was actually more influential than the original "Jaws."

Read about Advertising Minimalism here and here.

What's the big Superbowl commercial that Apple just hopes you've forgotten?

New posts every weekday.  Come back tomorrow.

Comments

aryzha said…
One of the greatest Economist ads of all time!
June 20, 2011 at 7:19 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fly Me Again

Image
We referenced this ad campaign in an earlier post , but it really deserves its own entry. This memorable/notorious American Airlines campaign appeared back in 1971, at the behest of National Airlines'  Lewis Maytag  who sought to modernize the airline and the image of its stewardesses.  (Yes, they were still known as stewardesses back then.) At the time, airline advertising had frequently based their messages on the friendliness and attentiveness of their stewardesses, but previous efforts tended more toward the chauvinistic end of sexism spectrum, treating them more like Ladies Of The Air than ladies of the night: (Despite the caveman ethos of the headline and illustration, if you click on the ad to enlarge it and read the copy, you'll see it's actually about men being so beguiled by their stewardesses that they often took them for wives -- after first mistaking wives for servants, I suppose.) But now, with the sexual revolution and women's liberation in full swing (an...
Read more

I wanted to like this ad, I really did

Image
When I first came across it, I (wrongly) assumed it was the work of Doyle Dane Bernbach, using a very minimalist layout to catch attention and evoke emotion, sort of like they did with the Polaroid ads in the ‘60s . No logo, just a simple headline, and an intriguing illustration that tells you nothing about the product, only the elation it will inspire in the woman in the your life. What an incredible way to portray a woman leaping into the arms of her man, I thought, showing only what’s necessary to imply the situation, spurring the reader to imagine the embrace, the eyes, the kiss.   Brilliant, I thought. Then I read the headline.    “Wear an Arrow Shirt and you'll simply sweep her off her feet!”   No.   No, I don’t believe this ad, even for a minute.    The only way to sell this scenario is if the emotion implied feels true. Even in 1949, it’s hard to imagine anyone got this excited about a dress shirt. Unless he just got home from the service and t...
Read more

Not just hyperbole

Image
Maybe you've seen this classic Guinness poster, created back in the '30s and assumed that it was nothing more than silly hyperbole: And you'd be partly right. The idea is actually based on the high iron content of Guinness (probably from the water used), though of course, the benefit of this is exaggerated to an unbelievable extent in the poster above. That didn't stop the image from becoming so iconic that a pint Guinness became known as a "girder." The image also inspired this parody from Heinekin some 40 years later (though its likely that many young drinkers never realized its source), that both fit the idea into its own ad format and made the male sexual subtext even more implicit: (Best not to take any of this too seriously, though. In reality, the pictures in the Heinken ad would have to be reversed.)
Read more