Reinventing the Ball-and-Chain for the Workplace

In olden times, you could slap a cannonball to a dude's leg and feel pretty confident he wasn't going anywhere. Today, the urge to close your laptop, shut off your monitor and give into the Siren call of the TV or the pub can be nearly irresistable. Advertising creatives are not known for ability to focus and concentrate, so the Study Ball works with your natural inclination.

How does it work? It's a ball, attached to a chain. Oh, attached to a time lock. How cool is that?

The Study Ball is a prison-style, steel ball-and-chain that stays on as long as you need to keep you focused on your task. Weighing in at 21 lbs, it's possible to lug around, but why bother. Unless your office begins to fill with smoke, you're not likely to lug this thing around voluntarily.

In olden times, a con couldn't slog very fast or very far before a guard could waltz up and soften up their skull with a club. For safety reasons, you're not supposed to use the Study Ball on kids, or your wife; the timer can't exceed four hours; it comes with a safety release key, and you need to part with about $115 to get one. Also, by safety, I mean legal.

That's a great ad, now feel our wrath!

When I first saw Bob Burnquist and Ty Evans's "Feel the Bubbles" video, I wanted to blog about it immediately. Aero's last TV campaign featured the two potted office plants (read: employees) talking about letting bubbles melt on your tongue in a way guys wouldn't understand. JWT in the UK decided enough was enough and created something beautiful and fun to reposition the brand. Here's the commerical.

and the very interesting "making of" video

It's always easier to apologize later than to ask for permission first, which probably led to the backlash. The creators admit they "borrowed" the idea for riding through balloons from a previous skate video, but skaters haven't been very forgiving. Snickers ripped off a skater video ealier and a boycott ensued. This backlash reminds me of this recent animated type spot by Motrin.

You may have heard a woman innocently talking about the pain of wearing a snuggli, but to a lot of mothers, they heard a condescending "you're a stupid and insecure fashion victim for wanting to carry your baby" and it was all downhill from there.

Whether you're stealing your inspiration, or just being neglectful of people's feelings, people will always find a way to complain about your work. The rule of thumb used to be for everyone one person who boycotts your product, there are a hundred who wouldn't complain out loud, but would sabotage your brand to friends, and a thousand behind them who wouldn't complain at all. They'd just quietly stop using your brand.

I did work for a bedding company that enjoyed provactive headlines and the backlash they inspired. "The Boss is on Prozac Sale" headline was written thinking the only people who could complain were on Prozac so they wouldn't be interested in complaining. The complaints came from the parents of children on Prozac. My personal feeling is you can't please everyone all the time, so you have to do what feels right and handle any flack with dignity later.

The protest signage was created by Stephanie Syjuco.

Advertising Slap and Tickle: Another groovy idea unintentionally backfires

With great power comes great responsibility. Uncle Ben knew it. Spider man learned it. And now the fine people at Honda are geting a taste. Honda came up with a great viral advert that put a smile on people's faces, and it was paved over before I started typing.

Every highway driver knows what happens when you hit a rumble strip. A Japanese engineer accidentally figured out how to create musical tones through the frame of a car by controlling the width, depth and distance between lines scraped in asphault. Before you knew it, drivers in three Japanese cities were enjoying pop tunes while they commute.

Honda engineers used this technique to make a stretch of road in Lancaster, California to play the William Tell Overture. Drivers loved it, but local residents? It didn't take long for local officials to point out some issues.



The ultra dynamic trumpet-heavy, fully-orchestrated finale to Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture loses some lusture when reproduced on aspault. You have to drive at exactly 55mph to really get the effect. Any slower and you get a dull, sickening rumble. Any faster and it becomes a whacked-out, high pitched drone. If you're not driving a Honda Civic, the spacing of your axles will alter the effect. And the Japanese originators knew enough to make their roads far from people's homes. Evidentally in the wide open California desert land, the sound carries further than anticipated.

"When you hear it late at night, it will wake you up from a sound sleep," said Brian Robin, who lives a half mile away from Avenue K. "It's awakened my wife three or four times a night".

Far be it for me to point out someone else's misfortune without pointing out my own. This piece was an invite for the very first agency I worked at. We needed an occassion, so we invented the two-and-a-half year anniversary party. The invite was simple enough; directions, two aspirin, and the suggestion that you would benefit from these the day after. The invites had to be crafted by hand and over 1,000 were mailed. Fast forward a couple of days, and the calls started. It turns out, mail does not gingerly flow on gentle breezes to their destinations like a scene from a Christmas cartoon. Real mail is beaten and rammed through sorting machines. Now picture the attached image with the dime bag, but instead of aspirin, you get white powder. The calls were endless. One was from Customs; summoning us, our lawyer and our checkbook to pay for testing, re-routing and charges related to sending controlled substances through the mail.

Somehow we had more than 1,300 people RSVP. We even had postal workers trying to crash the event. So the question is, are these campaigns really failures, or is the endless apologetic backpeddling just part of the cost of a great idea?