Cherryflava

Invisible ads: Selling stuff to cool kids only

Posted on 23. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.

For people not wearing sunglasses at night, a particular house in Sydney seemed as it should. But for cool people wearing polarized sunglasses – they saw an ad for Lynx deodorant. Having written that – it sounds odd, but the video explains better.

Unleash chaos? Even our art world is filled with chaos – no need for risqué advertising gimmicks here, we’re kinda full up.

via

Cherryflava 2011 report card: Our year in review

Posted on 19. Dec, 2011 by Jonathan Cherry.

As well as being the year of The Protester [Time magazine's person of the year] , for us 2011 has been the year of pushing ourselves into uncomfortable new spaces.  We started this year with a mission – to take everything that we’d learnt from producing alternate reality games for our clients over the years, and packaging the unseen, fantasy mechanic for retail and event applications. In essence we’ve transformed ourselves from a marketing company, into a technology company.

This year we’ve focused on just a few key areas of specialisation. We’ve done a significant amount of work in the realm of 3D projection mapping, which on a global scale has seen a significant amount of growth as a brand presentation mechanism. We’ve concentrated our efforts on the production of 3D mapping, which culminated in the production of the Dimension Data’s Annual Sales Conference mapping on a custom built 14 x 5 meter set. We worked with the world-class team from Motif Studios to create a mixture of visual and audio delight that really blew the audience [and client] away. Having seen many of the mapping examples from around the world – we’re pretty confident that ours was right up there with the best of them, which is where we feel the most comfortable.

See our post on The re-engineering of a conference for more on what we created for Dimension Data.

The other area of specialisation that we really got some good traction with this year is RFID. It stands for Radio Frequency Identification and as a technology we’ve been exploring its uses as a means to trigger our branded experiences and integrate those real-world experiences with social media platforms like Facebook. In a very short space of time we’ve developed, prototyped and built some pretty powerful machines that talk directly to actionable applications like Facebook. The result was that we turned the recent Axe Cloud 9 Party into an interactive media space that added to the experience of being at the event and gave the Axe brand some very cool brand exposure on Facebook.

So this year has been a great one in the sense that, once again – we’ve prepared ourselves well for 2012 and our mission to help brands create fantasy experiences for their clients and stakeholders.

A huge thanks has to go to all of our business partners and clients for making 2011 the success that it was. The team from Dimension Data / Internet Solutions, Habari Media, BAT, G2, Steenberg Vineyards, You Know Who, BConfident, Go4Word, CCPP and Motif Studios – thanks for sharing the vision and pushing the boundaries with us.

As is tradition here at Cherryflava – at the end of every year we give ourselves a public grading for how we feel we have performed throughout the year and this time around we will give ourselves a B+ for 2011. We are exploring in a unique, niched arena not only in South Africa but globally, but with our unique background and mixture of talents we’re well set up now to deliver even more in 2012.

Thanks do much for reading and joining in with us this year – have a great holiday.

The blog will be taking a break over the festive season until posting resumes on the 9th of January 2012.

Isn’t it just that we all hate this type of advertising?

Posted on 26. May, 2011 by Jonathan Cherry.

The American media / public are apparently getting hot and bothered over this Dove print ad – that according to some commentators could possible be communicating that this skin cream will magically transform a black woman into a Latino woman and then, after continued use, finally to a white woman.

Now the overall racial make up of Madison Avenue is in question and the public are demanding blood.

But isn’t it just a case of a small spark lighting a bush fire that is primed for ignition. Aren’t we all just a little sick and tired of being stereotyped and convinced that we need to buy the crap that these consumer machines feed us like blind zombies? Any trigger will do.

The industry needs to realise that what people want is authenticity and transparency. In other words, what’s hot right now is something that the global advertising industry is not.

More: Dove Ad Casts Spotlight On Madison Avenue Racism – Huffington Post

Update: Unilever South Africa sent us this in response to this post:

“We believe that real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes, colors and ages and are committed to featuring realistic and attainable images of beauty in all our advertising. We are also dedicated to educating and encouraging all women and girls to build a positive relationship with beauty, to help raise self-esteem and to enable them to realize their full potential.

The ad is intended to illustrate the benefits of using Dove VisibleCare Body Wash, by making skin visibly more beautiful in just one week. All three women are intended to demonstrate the “after” product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience.”