Short Shift

Shut up, Peppy.

Welcome back to The Short Shift, everybody!

I like wacky executions of good ideas. The quirkier the better, especially if they actually support or highlight the product being sold. Show me some elves making my delicious snacks; show me Mayhem causing some vehicular recklessness**; show me  cartoon scrubbers whisking away the horrible, depressing filth of my bathroom; show me Terry Crews growing Terry Crewses out of himself for no reason whatsoever to sell deodorant. The world needs all the Terry Crewses it can get.

Surround your product with whimsy as much as you want, as long as you present the product itself in an honest and straight-forward manner. It can make a dull, utilitarian product as fun to engage with for 30 seconds as anything else.

AND NOW I IMMEDIATELY START COMPLAINING ABOUT SOMETHING

Don’t do this:

If you’re thinking about doing this, just don’t. Don’t sell a product, especially a car or truck, products that have very specific guidelines about what they can and cannot safely do, by literally showing it doing shit that it cannot possibly do.

Oh, what was that, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles?

You’ve done this before? Continue reading →

Still swinging for the fences with “52 All-New #1s”, which seems like a great way to terrify new readers while chasing the ghost of the 90s speculator market.

But, all in all, it is everything that the radio spot is not: exciting, entertaining, evocative of the drama and adventure of the product. It might be better to hitch the relaunch to the stars of Nolan’s films, Arkham Asylum and other hot DC properties, but they’re on the right track and it will be interesting to see what, if any, effect the commercial will have on the visibility of the books.

(via Comics Alliance)

Before/after washing

As concert-goers milled about a nationalism-themed concert in Gera, Germany, they were met by show organizers with free tees featuring a skull and flag and the slogan “Hardcore Rebel.” The shirts had been donated to concert organizers by an anonymous donor, and since Neo-Nazis apparently love the hell out of skulls and black tees, they were snatched up and taken home.  Those who bothered to wash the shirts (no judgment, you guys) soon realized that the shirts carried a hidden message: “If your t-shirt can do it, you can do it too — we’ll help you get away from right-wing extremism,” reads the shirt after a washing, along with contact information for the anti-extremism organization Exit-Germany.

“Rather than protesting against the festival from outside, we wanted to set up a message inside,” writes Bernard Wagner, founder of Exit. “We can no longer just rely on the far-left and political rituals to curb far-right culture.”

Exit wasn’t trying to turn the hearts and minds of every recalcitrant extremist attending the concert, but rather the young, not-yet-committed youths and those looking for help breaking free of the grip of the movement.

Pulling one over on an unsuspecting group usually isn’t the most ethical game-plan, especially when the message you’re pushing undercuts the group’s core beliefs, but in this case it’s pretty commendable and inventive. It’s a tricky business slipping in a message of change to someone on the edge of such a live-altering and personal decision, and this is a pretty smart way to do it.

Neo-Nazis tricked by T-shirts (Toronto Sun via The Next Web)
An antifascist message that even neo-Nazis will wear (Guardian)