Stay the night, steal a Banksy.

In keeping with AdVerveBlog reader Zed's incendiary appropriation of Banksy's anti-advertising manifesto, Melbourne's Art Series Hotels attracted guests and plenty of earned media by inviting them to stay the night and try to steal Banksy art hanging on the wall. If you could get it out of the hotel without getting caught, it was yours.

The hotel tracked the thieves via GPS so it could contact them afterward to send authentication documents and campaign follow-up. This looks like it was lots of fun and the hotel's stories about the burglary attempts are great. Even celebrities got in on the theftery. More importantly, it apparently also resulted in a 300% ROI and nearly 7 million impressions on Twitter alone.

So what are you guys waiting for? Go disrupt, go make culture. In the world of subversive anti-art, all's fair.

Hanksy does Bill Cosby and Ted Danson.

What's cool about Hanksy is that he's able to bring that element of hip, slightly awkward and nostalgic irony to the otherwise serious work of provocative street art. Via.

...Because Was Your Belief Ever Truly Suspended in the First Place?

We give the fashion industry a lot of leeway to be pretentious: that is, to produce a false universe that's supposed to feel aspirational but is often so far out of the realm of the real that it becomes little more than snobby farce.

Part of this is our fault; we don't ask fashion a ton of deep questions. (Do we even want to?) And as long as it's teetering on this precarious ledge, the door is open for somebody to give it a little shove.

Case in point: Etam Takes on The Kooples

Fashion here is manifested by The Kooples, a beautiful high-end French-meets-hipster brand whose founders, in a recent issue of Grazia, confessed to having visualised the ad campaign before setting themselves to the actual task of designing.

The offline ads are homemade (digital's done by Digitas) and follow the same general format. They highlight a glamorous-looking couple, list their names, how long they've been together, and sometimes where they met. (The stories never go deep; couples typically only boast a track record of a couple of years, and often meet at less-than-profound places.)

If you seek relatability in a Kooples ad, you'd be hard-pressed to find it: this is drugs, sex and rock-n'-roll for the privileged set, only thinly disguised as love (if you think it is at all), or even as real people.* And while I dig the brand, every time I come across one of these ads I still have to stop and be like "Are you fucking serious?" Because matchy daft couples that somehow managed to outlast their coke-laced one-nighter aren't the people I want to dress like.

I apparently wasn't the only one who felt this way. Out of left field comes budget brand Eram, who, with help from Havas' agency H, takes the Kooples concept and exposes it for flagrant plastic shammery:

Translation: "Karl is a photographer. Bahia's a DJ. It was love at first sight at a New York rooftop soirée."

Close in for the kill: "These shoes cost €49,90 -- and that, that's actually true."

Followed by tagline: "Eram: You'd have to be crazy to spend more."

Same basic idea for this one: Barry's an architect, Keira's a performing artist, they met four years ago in a Berlin squat house, these sandals cost €39,90 and that's the truth.

This comparative work serves Eram's brand perfectly: it's a format and a message that drag you back down to earth ... where, incidentally, you'll find even the prices more terre-à-terre.

More images at Dark Planneur's blog.

Examine What You're Asking People to Believe.

(Even in fashion.)

A lot of the time your audience will cut you slack. Once in awhile, though, they'll be like, "Seriously? Are you sure you want to be saying that?"

When this happens, sometimes it's best to stick to your guns, as I'm sure The Kooples will. But other times you should ask whether they're right: did you -- and your brand -- get lost in the weeds during conception?

All that said, here's full disclosure: I'm a Kooples shopper. I have never been inside an Eram, and because I'm elitist and spendy, I'd prefer to keep it that way. Do these appropriations make me want to change my mind, considering they validate how I felt about The Kooples' ads?

Not yet. But I still like that somebody called them out. And I like that Eram had the balls and the finesse to do it well. This is the beginning of a relationship.

A big thank-you to @BranislavPeric for furnishing me with the agency information.

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*I stand corrected. A friend messaged me today to say he knows a Kooples couple, and they're really a couple!

Mad Men, Meet Mr. Men.

Warm cuddly courtesy of The Poke, which even wrote a fine little Mad Men tale in true Mr. Men style. (How much more excellent it would be if it were embeddable!)

More "I'm On a Horse!" Old Spice Appropriations

That people keep taking the dialogue of this Old Spice ad, and interpreting it the way they like, is a tribute to the work's contagious quality and the brand's success in reinventing itself for a weirdly diverse new audience. (Who'd've guessed? And VO5, are you paying attention?)



This one is still my favourite though.

Old Spice deserves credit for being willing to let its brand navigate uncharted waters, and for not punishing users for their enthusiasm. It's kind of sad that we're still at a point where we actually have to thank brands for behaving like that, but I'm hoping we're moving in a direction where companies are less reluctant to trust their most powerful salespeople.

Verizon Takes the Piss Out of Big Red

"You'll watch YouTube on a horse*!"

Excellent. And I love how it depicts compulsive phone-checkers as complete face-to-face contact cretins, because that's what we've become, plus it totally goes against the get-closer ideal presented in the original Big Red ad. "So kiss a little longer..." Baby, NOT WITHOUT CHATROULETTE ON.

For the .02% of you that'll undoubtedly go, "What's Verizon on about?" -- come on, you know the one!



Unless it plans to do something neat with the whole "Big Red" thing (which I don't really see happening), would be cool to see more kitschy nostalgic hat-tips from Verizon. ("Zestfully Clean" is just askin' for it!) With all the variety in mobile, won't be hard to find the one somewhat-relavant tie-in that brings it all together. (You know, like taking the name of Big Red gum and using it to refer to how the map of the US is covered in "big red!" splotches that represent Verizon's service area.) =P

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*The horse is definitely the statement-maker this year. Consider. It is almost enough to make you want one, just to have around, you know, as an uncomfortable conversation piece. Or you can actually become a serious equestrian and learn how to ride in the middle of a big urban city, which in some ways would be funnier. My dad did this a few years ago and the goddamn horse bit me. He later sold it to a girl who trains horses for rescue service. So that valiant little nipper is still out there somewhere, maybe in the Swiss Alps, putting Saint Bernards out of work.

'He is the Least Interesting Man in the World.'

A depressingly-more-relatable take on Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World" campaign, which I find kinda epic, mainly because it deluges my auditory orifices with quotes like these:

"His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man's entire body."

"His blood smells like cologne."

"He can speak French ... in Russian."

Stay thirsty, my friends.

AP Goes Gunning for Shepard Fairey

The Associated Press is going after Shepard Fairey for taking an Obama photo taken by an AP news photographer -- and turning it into one of the most iconic art images of the Obama movement.

From TechCrunch:

Fair use is under attack, and the AP is leading the charge. Artists like Fairey take copyrighted images and reinterpret them all the time. Many argue that is what art is. Fairey’s Obama poster certainly made a bigger impact on our culture than the original image, which he reportedly found by doing a Google image search. He is being represented by the Stanford Fair Use Project.

The argument follows that Fairey should be protected under Fair Use because the image was changed so significantly that even AP didn't know it was derived from one of their own until a few weeks ago.

Last year AP tried waging war against bloggers over fair use of its news material. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington boycotted it.

A Charlie Brown Agency Christmas

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Probably the Only Time 'Mad Men' Ever Won a LOL.

"There's funny captions right under the picture so you think the cat is talking."

Via. See ep 2 of "Digital Mad Men." Kinda reminds me of the GI Joe appropriations, except you don't have to be high to enjoy them, and being at work makes them all the more pleasurable.

'Come Wander with Me'

The song's origin.

Its reinterpretation.

Its rebirth in advertising.

Long way from home.