Skip to main content

Sexy Media

You know that Fashion Week has lost direction when goody bags have grocery items stuffed into them. I heard one show had instant coffee samples and olive oil sachets.

Not only is there no cachet in a sachet but it also just seems wrong and irrelevant.

When your expectations have been elevated by the glamorous hype of fashion to have one's bubble pricked by the banality of the supermarket seems counter-intuitive to me. You could argue that, because it is unexpected, it has cut through. Tenuous post-rationalisation I would reply - the kid of argument that supports running irritating ads on a high rotation on the premise that the fact that nobody likes them makes them more powerful.

Ummm…noooooo.

People don't buy things from people they don't like.



Trelise Cooper seems to have zagged while others zigged. According to Simply You she excelled with her invitation and goody bag for kids.

"Trelise Cooper may have stolen the show well before Fashion Week has even begun. This year, while most designers took a stroll down easy street by simply group emailing out their show invitations, Trelise Cooper raised the bar (again) and developed a stylized invitation set to seduce even the most cynical “front-row” fashionistas.

The invitation to her winter 2008 collection show arrived in the form of a small black box. Inside lay an intricately designed coin pendant with the words TRELISE COOPER – WINTER 2008 engraved around the edge."


Having said that, Auckland Fashion Week seems to have passed without the usual breathless media hype. Perhaps the high milk solid prices earned by dairy farmers has reminded us that fashion design is a niche activity and is microbial in its input to the New Zealand economy compared to the net import volumes of 5 packs of kiddies undies and polycotton flannelette jimjams into The Warehouse distribution chain.


Fashion is more interesting though.



Speaking of which: came across this clip from New York Fashion Week 07. An interactive media concept for Elle McPherson Intimates by New Zealand brand Bendon. As pedestrians pass by the store windows the Human Locator's image sensors detect their movement and animate the imagery on-screen. There is something compelling about the technology and it is well used in the context of the Intimates store window.

According to FreeSet, HumanLocator's developers:
Human Locator is an interactive visual system developed by Freeset and designed expressly for advertising. Drawing on cutting edge computer visualization techniques to track full body movement in real time, it allows consumers to actively participate in and interact with advertising. At the same time the system provides advertisers with measurable viewer data. Freeset's Human Locator system cuts through day-to-day visual clutter and attracts and holds the consumer's attention with interaction. Human Locator brings the interactivity of the Internet to real-world environments.


Certainly a whole lot more exciting and relevant than a packet of olive oil.

Has anyone ever done a 'baddy bag?'

Humn Locator link via Brand DNA

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer