Explorette

"It's 6pm, do you know where is your wife?" - It says. "International leader of extra marital dating. Ashley Madison - Life is short, try the adventure."

I'm so so so so sorry but I think I have something called marketing OCD and sometimes it really hurts in my heart.. sniff sniff.. I have to express my frustration.

I started to notice far too many emails from Etihad since a month or 2 so I ran a search in my emails to actually check if it was just my imagination or real. 

The results were striking! (you need to take a deep serious voice when you read that expression)

Here we go ahem ahem... Etihad what are you thinking?!

November (so far - still 2 days to go): 10 emails. October: 19 emails. September: 15 emails. August: 15 emails. July: 18 emails. June: 14 emails.

Breaking news: there are only 30 or 31 days in a month. That's more than one email every 2 days! (In case you ask, yes my personal information is quite updated in their system)

So I want to ask - like in your advertising campaign - WHY? Shall I visit etihad.ae/why like it says in the TV ad?

"Download Gulf mag for free until end of September for 0 Euros".

2 of my favourite things combined: Brands and Street Art (and especially Banksy).

Brand + Banksy = Brandksy

(Kindly) Kill yourself at home.

The British dared. 

Ps: In Paris, they're putting glasses walls on the track so people can't jump. Less fun, right? Oh just kidding.

Paris City against HIV/AIDS.

Every Summer since 2009, Paris (the city itself) advertise for prevention of HIV contamination. The campaign this year is going to run from July 11 to August 21, and I bumped into it on several occasions during my stay in Paris.

The concept is simple and very efficient, clearly targeting both Parisians but tourists as well (various languages) which I think is great. Tagline: "In which language do we have to tell you? Protect yourself!" and the condom saying "I'm your friend" in many languages. 

I sent this to http://www.joelapompe.net a blog dedicated to hunt copycat and coicidences in advertising.

The Original - for Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai:

Less Original - for Visa and their Olympics campaign, from Burj Khalifah, Dubai:

Same concept, same advert, not the same topic though.

Euro 2012 (of course, football!): What I am still wondering about... 

1. What's up with Ronaldo aka Cristina's free-kick OCD: 3 steps back, then open your legs more than usual, then pelvic thrust, then shoot. Huh?

2. Who is the guy that thought the first of putting advertising boards around the pitch: smart dude! I looked back many years ago on black and white photos and there're still there, so pretty old concept.

3. If you've been watching all the games on Al Jazeera:

How many times have you seen the Pepsi pcchhh hhhha 'brought to you' thingy.

How many times have you seen the Hyundai ad from the babies to the adults with Benzema in between. 

How many times have you seen the Pepsi ad in the stadium with Messi on a fridge, Drogba and the rest of the clica.

... Now that's frequency!

4. Back to the boards around the pitch. So how many people actually visited the websites advertised on there, from what I can remember we had:

McDonalds Passion Meter: www.passion-meter.com was probably the most frequent of all sites advertised. 

UEFA Respect campaign: www.exchangeyourjersey.com

Not quite sure there was any websites advertised for Canon, Continental, Castrol. But seriously, how many people visited these sites from seeing them on the boards? Would love to see these stats!

5. I think Castrol had their logos in Chinese rotating between the English ones. Not sure where this company is from but is there that many Chinese-speaking people watching the Euro? I mean, there must be a reason why you'd put your logo in Chinese? I'm wondering...

What I learnt or realize though:

1. It's beautiful.. a Spanish guy. 

2. Germans got groove, sometimes. But even sometimes, who would have thought! There are even some pretty pretty German guys, what has the world become?! :P

3. Cameramen love Eastern European chics.

4. You can read on lips in multiple languages.

I went to the Philippines for a few days and this is a few things I came across there.

Anne Curtis is on all adverts! Whoever she is, she is THE star!

     Paris Hilton is launching some real estate property in The Philippines called Azure, she is on TV, billboards, magazine to sell that place. Lame...

God advertise on billboard. I wonder which media agency he uses...

Some brands get free advertising from Jeepne (the local bus transport). Hello Emirates!

Yo Mama!

Again, love Ace hotels marketing. Great subject line for mother's day products!

Time Out Dubai website adverts bonanza! 

Is this like a display adverts sizes and formats course? Lol.

The Internet Show, Dubai 2012.

For the love of branding and good taste, I was wondering who designed this logo or decided to go for it? And the rest of the event branding for that matter...

So old style (and in a bad way), so tacky, so painful for the eyes. What's up with the fonts, I mean fontssssssssss? the reflection effect? the colours? Oh and beautiful internet awards board by the way, I'm sure some people did it on purpose to lose not to be taken in photo in front of that...

New Film-Advert by Mercedes-Benz France.