You might have thought we were going to say “Che Guevara.” And you probably even finished our sentence before we did. Well, not if you have seen this billboard for the NFS: “Give those who stutter a second”. Ro Ro Roger that! Created by Y&R Not just film (apart from ‘film’ they also do cut up billboards) and JC Decaux.

How ironic. Last week Jorn Wemmenhove wrote a Viewpoint about the proposed ban in the Amsterdam city counsel on outdoor banners on buildings and scaffolding. Wemmenhove wrote: “Personally, I believe too many advertisers do not care enough about the effect of their creations on the public space; they’re primarily interested in commercial effectiveness. Solely created to sell, advertising can be invasive and indeed visually polluting, especially in the public space. You can turn off your television or skip the pages of a magazine to avoid ugly ads, but you can’t turn off the buildings in your city”. Outdoor operator JCDecaux would like to add another medium to Wemmenhove’s argument: “You can’t turn off a billboard” the ad is literally telling us.

Quite spectacular this outdoor ad for the Adidas F50 Adizero. Not only did Adidas change the tram stop benches, the real boots were also incorporated in the outdoor furniture. Created by 180, TBWA\BEC and JC Decaux.

This is quite an innovative ad for Samsung. We’re a bit late showing it, since the Olympics are already over, but the mechanism of this ‘spectacular’ is quite impressive. The video basically speaks for itself; you can film and mail yourself directly from the interactive tram halt. The content is a bit lame, but we’ll forgive Samsung. At least we’re getting the message that de Samsung Omnia has an app that allows you to follow the Winter Olympics wherever you are – although we have to say that we could do the same with the offcial Vancouver App on our iPhone. Anyway, it was made by Media Republic and 2010 in collaboration with JC Decaux.

Wow, you must be pretty desperate to show an ad like this. We like it, cause it makes us philosophical. How effective is this? Would the potential advertiser think; ‘I was planning not to do outdoor anymore, but just because I have to look at this unattractive body every day in traffic, I am going to rent it for the rest of the year – just to make sure it won’t come back. And what if the decision maker is a woman? That depends on what she’s used to, of course. Maybe she’ll ask Interbest to put the text somewhere else, just so she can imagine it’s a Calvin Klein ad. Ummm. No, that’s not very realistic either. The most likely scenario is that the passer-by will simply chuckle, unconsciously thank Interbest for the free entertainment, simultaneously feel sorry for them and maybe even decide there and then to allocate a bigger part of the advertising budget to online… Anyway, it was made by Y&R Not just film – as you can see apart from film the agency also does outdoor.