Photography in advertising

I was recently researching Annie Leibovitz, a contemporary photographer, for another class but found her work interesting. She always uses celebrities in her photos, starting off doing stuff for Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. Later she started doing photography for ads, her main point of focus still being celebrities. She would never concentrate on the product in the photographs so these ads are photographed to look more like portraits rather than ads. Of course in class we also try to do this. We want our ads to be so interesting and eye catching that you forget it's an ad.

Here are some ads she photographed for Disney that I thought were absolutely beautiful:









Check out the rest from this campaign

Another campaign she photographed for was American Express. Using celebrites, she showed them in personal environments. There's a certain "story" behind each one, like much of her other work. Here are some examples:






I found all of her work to be amazing and the ads are all beautifully designed. It definitely inspires me to create better visuals for my ads and it opens my eyes to all the different possibilities in advertising. A professional photographer can be helpful in some cases depending on the ad. I encourage the class to take a look at her work for some inspiration!

How the IPad can change advertising

You can now get magazine subscriptions on your IPad. Since not everyone owns an IPad yet, sales for magazines on the IPad weren't expected to be as high as they were. However, different genres have much different starts. For example, science and tech magazines do much better in the beginning. Popular Science was one of the first on the IPad and Family Circle and Better Homes and Gardens won't even release until 2011. Popular Science averaged sales of 14,034 in the April, May, June and July issues. IPad sales were equivalent to 12% of it's newsstand sales. Wired, a techie magazine, beat everyones predictions. Wired sold 105,000 copies, way above newsstand sales. This was equivalent to 19% of newsstand sales. Beyond sci-tech titles, Men's Health made less than 1% of newsstand sales. Same thing goes with People and Glamour, both being major newsstand sellers. Overall, IPad magazine sales are doing well. The years 2010 and 2011 are exploratory years. This is the time that we learn as we go so since sales are doing well for IPad magazines, things will only improve.

This digital platform offers a wide scope of opportunities to interact with users. So what does this mean for digital advertising on the IPad? I think there are many creative things we can do in magazines on the IPad to get users involved like games or videos. It's pretty much endless on what we can do. Right now we still have tangible magazines and we will have them for awhile but I'm afraid of when all magazines become digital. This could change advertising history for the better and for the worst. I would still like to have traditional print ads as well. Any ideas on this?

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Walmart & new beauty product

Fat Foam is a hair color that is actually a foam so the color doesn't drip and stain any furniture and clothes, which is the main problem of hair color today. This is an innovating idea but it might come to a surprise as to how is marketing this new product in the US. Not a high-end beauty company but Walmart.



It's not unusual for ideas like this to come from Japan to the US, for example, Proctor and Gamble's first Swiffer mop. However, it is unusual for a retailer to do this, beating national brands to the punch. Fat Foam will be launched exclusively at Walmart stores for the first six months but after that, it will be released in other retail stores. But still, it's pretty ballsy of Walmart to lead product innovation with a new brand in hair color, a category that never had private label in the past. Because of the high risk of failure in hair color, there is a high consumer resistance to trying private label or new brands so Walmart launching this new hair product does not seem like a good idea.

I feel that Walmart is just trying to take over. I think John Frieda should have launched the new hair foam but Walmart kind of took over the idea. John Frieda is much more of a respected brand and no matter how cool of a product it is, consumers will always look at the brand first to make their purchasing decision. Me personally, I wouldn't trust a new Walmart hair product especially hair color. I don't think Walmart should come out with new beauty products at all.

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Major changes

Can anyone guess what this logo is for? Yeah, it says "Gap" and we all know what the Gap is but this new logo doesn't feel like the Gap brand we are so familiar with. If you forget what the Gap logo for the last 20+ years look like, here it is:



This new logo is the latest "evolution" for the brand. They are updating products, rolling out pop-up stores and getting new hot designers such as Patrick Robinson. They aren't just creating this new logo for no reason. They actually did think it through when they made their design decisions. The logo is in line with the label on Gap's popular 1969 jeans line. The new logo is supposed to reflect that "For the last two years we've been working on evolving the brand identity for Gap". "The new logo is more contemporary and current and honors the heritage of the Gap brand with the blue box but takes it forward".

The plan is to roll out the new logo on the North American Gap.com site, create momentum, and feature it in the upcoming holiday campaign. However, there were tons of negative responses online. With 1,500 stores worldwide, replacing signage, updating credit cars, and changing employee name badges will end up costing a ton of money. The change of the logo is a huge decision and the brand doesn't want to lose sales because of it, like Tropicana once did. Tropicana came out with a new package design and sales dropped 20% between January 1 and February 22 costing the company tens of thousands of dollars. The new packaging was only on the market for less than two months. Sometimes it could be beneficial to ask consumers before making major changes like new packaging or logo design.



When I first saw the new Gap logo I didn't even know what brand it was for. The font is completely different and I think that's what threw me off. I hate the new logo. But I thought there must be something good about it. They wouldn't just change the logo for no reason so I wondered if other people thought it was terrible like I do or if I was just over thinking it. Turns out, other consumers also hate the logo. Gap posted the new logo on Facebook and got tons of negative feedback. This created debates and the brand was getting a lot of buzz. Gap has now said that they would like some logo ideas from consumers even though they feel strongly about the logo they already designed.

I think it's important for a brand to ask consumers how they feel about major changes like in this case. I mean, you have to make the consumers happy or else sales will go down. Any thoughts on how Gap should deal with this or new logo ideas for Gap?

Advertising Age

Trees CAN talk!

A science magazine in Brussels (EOS) has a unique campaign out based on talking trees. What does this have to do with the magazine? The tree "talks" about its feelings and environmental issues. Want to know what a tree goes through from day to day? Check out twitter and facebook for daily updates, youtube for actual videos of a tree's point of view, or soundcloud (a music based site) for a soundtrack of a tree's life complete with passing cars, wind, birds and rain. To get the full tree experience, go to the main site for a combination of everything.

So how does anyone know what trees are really feeling? Well, the use of accessories like a co2 meter, a PH meter, a small wind turbine, a webcam, a decibel meter, an infrared camera, and a thermometer come in handy. With these tools, we get the experience of what a tree sees, hears and feels.

When you go to the main website, you get this whole experience. The facebook and twitter posts include things like "Busy doing osmosis to collect some of this tasty rain" and "Me and my friends are doing overtime filtering fine dust out of the air". These posts make you feel closer to the tree because of the humanistic nature of the posts. They are also funny and educational.

I spent my Saturday getting to know this tree. The posts, videos, pictures and soundtrack were fun and interesting. By the time I was ready to write this blog, however, I forgot what the campaign was for. There is very little branding throughout the websites. This could be a good thing as well as bad. Consumers don't want to be overloaded with branding but will they be able to connect the talking tree with EOS?