One of the 'quickfire' briefs that was incorporated into the Co-Respondence book I showcased in an earlier post, was to create ambient advertising, Something with which to subliminally influence, or interact with the audience as they pass by & engage with the advert.
After disposing of a fairly atrocious viagra idea (featuring an inflating phallic balloon embedded into a double page spread; which was later discovered to have been unconciously influenced by the old wonderbra advertisements of a similar concept) myself, and my partner for the brief took it upon ourselves to visit every clothes shop in town and hassle/harrass them for the use of a mannequins legs for the afternoon.. I must have sounded like such a pervert begging for prosthetic limbs, but hey, if you don't ask you don't get right?
Thankfully the staff at H&M were absolutely wonderful to us, and with our severed legs in tow we set about recreating the infamous scene from The Wizard of Oz, to promote a theatrical production of the tale in the Grand Theatre. I was surprisingly comfortable clothes shopping for tights, skirts and shoes whilst clutching the naked buttocks of a moulded plastic lady, perhaps I shouldn't admit to that.
The outcome, as you can see, was a little more 'leggy' than we'd hoped for, so apologies for portraying a childhood classic as a sexy romp, but it was essentially just a visual, with which to get the concept across, and in a limited space of time, I was more than pleased with the result, Some elderly passers by were fairly pleased to catch a glimpse of some upskirt action too thanks to the coastal winds.. disturbing!
The second ambient solution we came up with required nothing more than a skateboard and some string, promoting a Vans campaign for urban interaction, having fixed the skateboard to the seats of the bus shelters here; which appropriately look like rails from a skatepark, and thus are lacking in comfort, but are inspirational in idea forming apparently.
Paired up with an image of a skater having 'bailed' and put his head through the adshell at the end of the bus shelter, it offered a challenge of sorts to the target demographic for the advertisement, to do one better and turn elements of the urban environment into interactive skateparks.
Hey, if all else fails, at least it was worth it for the looks we got from the general public, I am wondering why we never put the maimed naked mannequin onto the skateboard and took her for a walk round the park though.
