Street Art vs Vandalism

Stumbled across an amazing artist the other day.

Someone that makes you question what art is in the first place.

He has made himself notorious by running into galleries such as the Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art and hanging pictures of his own work.

And breaking into the London Zoo and scrawling on the wall of the elephant's pen: "I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring."

Banksy

My Adventure at the Recycling Depot

Well, my plans to set up a proper recycling program here at Creative Wonders finally bit me in the backside as it was made clear that it was I who must take care of the heaps of pop cans, pickle jars and cereal boxes overflowing from the blue box and heaping up by the door at the end of the hallway. So I packed it all up. Then I headed to the recycling place under the Second Narrows there.

It is a strange place the recycling depot. But it taught me a lot. Actually there was a watchful guardian who made sure the green glass stood apart from the clear glass, that paper ended up in its place and that tin stayed separate from aluminium. He pointed out a thing or two in his rather brash and impatient way.

You don’t get any money for pop cans and beer bottles at the Recycling Yard, those you must save for the liquor stores and supermarkets respectively. This is a huge pain and if anything needs to be done about the recycling system in this country, that is it. However, I did find out that you do get money for Tetra-packs, such as Sun Rype apple juice containers, who would have known?

The surly guardian of the recycling heaps explained many things to me. You can tell the difference between tin and aluminium lids by their magnetic properties. Tin sticks to a magnet. They have one set up there for you to make it all the easier. They don’t like it when you leave lids on olive and pickle jars. Labels neither. There are also numbers on the bottom of just about everything so you can tell what bin to throw it in. This comes in handy. You can’t recycle soy milk or paper milk cartons. Apparently soy is considered a cooking product and not a beverage, so it slips under recycling laws, who would have thought?

Either way, the reckon the recycling adventure proved to be quite eventful and if it taught me nothing, it taught me to put out separate piles for paper, glass, metal and lids for the future, so it doesn’t have to be me doing all the sorting all by my lonesome next time in the white hot sun. Me and the Guardian of the Recycling Heaps, that is.

Measuring Ad Effectiveness

One of the biggest difficulties faced by advertising agencies is how to measure the effectiveness of their ads.

How can you tell if an ad is moving someone into awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance or action?

How do you measure the levels of consciousness in the face of the tangibility of sales?

By honing in on one variable, the expectancy placed on an advertising agency is made a little easier.

These ads, for instance, are great examples of ads centred around the variable of recogntion.

1-800-GOT-JUNK - RATS.

Rethink are the masters of Talk Power. Get people talking about the ad itself and as a byproduct the name of the brand is shot to top of mind. It's effective for a new service. When you get people talking about your ad, familiarity will soon follow.

Familiarity and Talk Power are also great ways to build new business for an advertising agency.

The only problem with Talk Power is that advertisers come from a bit of a biased perspective. We all work in advertising, so we talk about ads constantly. We love ads. Truth is, we are even kind of obsessed. But how much does the average Joe talk about the stacks of money in the transit shelter or the infamous Boardroom Kiss?

I don't know. Once people are prompted to talk about advertising, they talk about ads freely, especially when they find out that someone at the table works in the industry. But it is hard to find a setting where the ad men remove themselves from the control group. But regardless, there is no doubt that SOME ads become a part of our everyday conversation, and they can become stables of our culture. However, the degree to which these ads are discussed amongst housewives and grandmothers when ad men are nowhere to be seen is questionable.

There are certain measurement tools used by academia: brand/ad recognition, recall, purchase intention, brand/ad liking or hating etc. Personally, I think that the only way to measure effectiveness is sales, making advertising one of those nearly impossible to measure variables as a part of a bigger equation.

Recognition, effective at driving sales or not, certainly can't hurt business.