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 I want you to imagine you are standing at your local bus stop…

Maybe you are reading the paper and listening to your favorite Strauss waltz on your pod thingy,  you are mentally preparing yourself  for yet another day at the grind stone, you are craving yet another early morning coffee… Then you see it, a big bright red fire engine is stopping to pick you up and beam you to servitude, a big red bus that is pretending to be a fire engine, a big red bus telling you about super hot Tabassco sauce.

Do you think you might remember that?, maybe, you might even tell your workmates, family and friends about it. You might even notice that everyone the bus passes or is passed by, pays a whole lot of attention to its unique appearance.

They did in Belgium, what a great Advertising idea!

 Yet another clever painted bus, that is sure to grab a whole lot of attention.

Just imagine the reaction…

When your customer opens their mail to find a a bright colorful ball with an appropriate (or if you are a little daring, a lightheartedly inappropriate) pun printed on it thanking them for their custom and inviting them back soon.

At least it’s going to be remembered long after an expensive color brochure packed full of brag and boast highly polished promo speak.

Leslie Allison-Seei, Partner of Robust Promotions fame sent me this idea that she has been working on with a new business appropriately named Send A Ball where you can find all the details on this clever alternative to boring brochures and flowers.

These clever guys and gals just keep coming up with great Advertising ideas.

The beauty is, they always manage to do it in a way that supports their brand and unique market positioning.

I like clever graffiti…

I don’t mean the mindless tagging stuff, but a clever piece of graffiti can often turn an ugly urban landscape into a work of art.

But putting my likes aside, here’s a great idea using non destructive graffiti (masking tape) to draw the attention of passers by to your business.

 I’m sorry if you don’t get this…

Let me try and explain… (Which will probably make it even more obscure)

Cricket is a sport that has almost religious significance in  countries that were colonized by the English, and we now take great pride in beating them at.

Vegemite is Australia’s favorite breakfast spread, it is a yeast extract, bitter in taste and almost black in color, and based on the English product called Marmite.

So all this has been combined into a very clever piece “In Humor” celebrating inter-country rivalry using highly emotive symbols.

Get It?… Oh well I did try… It’s sort of an Australian version of the combination of “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Baseball.

Axe, producers of a shower gel (whatever happened to plain ordinary soap) are renowned for their clever Advertising ideas, here’s a couple just to show you how clever and memorable these people are.

To graphically show the effects of beach pollution…

Satchi and Satchi collected trash from various beaches, packaged it to look like seafood and displayed it at local farmers’ markets. These pics are from a print run of posters for those who didn’t attend the market.

So often stairways create a bland welcome to a business and even stop potential customers from entering.

So I was absolutely thrilled to discover these two very clever creative Advertising ideas which could be adapted in many ways to a variety of businesses.