Lazy Hour

Advertisements are supposed to create a buzz,that’s their task, that’s what they do and sometimes the Ad agencies go a bit further than the usual limit to make that happen. Everyone looks at the Ad and thinks, oh! That’s Bad! And that ‘bad effect’ stays on the mind much longer than a typical everyday advertisement.  Just think; when you are browsing through the pages of a magazine, when do you stop to look at an advertisement? only when there’s something different on that Ad, and that ’something different’ factor always comes in the form of a controversial theme or subject or a graphic !

Here are some advertisements that created a lot of Buzz using their controversial themes.

‘The French AIDS prevention and information org’, (aides.org) has come up with some scary posters campaign to remind people of the dangers of AIDS.

‘Die Burger’ the South African Nationalist Newspaper ran a campaign against United Nations (UN) Role on Africa Countries using a series of interesting Photos. Although their own role is debatable, still this Print Ads created a lot of Buzz.

This Italian Ladies hair dresser knows how the dirty mind works! A simple twist and angle in the picture created a Lot of buzz.

Let’s confess, donating organ is never a sexy thing; until The Organ donor’s Foundation started running their campaign with this super hot girl on magazine covers. It certainly created a lot of buzz, but did it work? Well, I am not too sure!

PlayStation 2 has a lot of  Teenage gamers playing round the clock to screw up their school work and making sure they end up running a successful food business (read McDonald’s); but when they published this Ad featuring a teenage soldier probably from a country in Europe;  most of the audience was not so happy. Games are for hiding from Reality not to bring the cruel reality in your living room!

‘Converse’ is always a common choice among wanna be hipsters. Just go to Williamsburg, Brooklyn and count the number of Converse shoes you see in an hour. Another very famous ‘cool thing’ among wanna be hipsters is ‘che guevara’, who gives them the inspiration for revolution (obviously from the basement of their parents). But what would happen if you mix both of these? Well, think no more; Converse already did that for you by Placing Che in one of their shoes!

‘Amnesty International’ is quite famous (or Infamous!) for their graphically violent Ads to protest against …errr. … Violence! So when they decided to run this Ad campaign in Europe, many people thought it’s too graphic , many others thought its just a mirror of reality; and the producers of the Movie  SAW  definitely found the opening scene for their next movie!

No matter what the reaction is, at the end of the day, it’s the Buzz that counts. And all these advertisements created a lot of that for sure.