We have an election in Melbourne in 2 weeks time, admittedly I’m not very political and fairly oblivious when it comes to such things, but I don’t believe I’ve seen anything recently, advertising for one candidate or the other. I expect I’ll be placing a blank ballot paper in the box once again.

If a candidate were to take a leaf from the M&M’s book of advertising though, I think they’d have me with these poster designs.

Cast your vote.

Yellow, he’s the man for me.

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Vote #1 poster designs

It’s been a good 20 something years since I had had my face painted as a kid, I think the tiger was my creature of choice if memory serves. With this collection of amazing body art from WWF and AT&T advertising, as well as the uShaka body art and graffiti expo you might just be able to convince me to do it again.

What do you think?

I particularly like the WWF ads.

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Illustrated hands

Advertising is an big part of many web sites and to make it work, targeted advertisements are essential.

Choosing static advertisements to display is easy. For example, stock imagery, printing services and finally web hosting and all fairly logical choices for a graphic design blog such as mine, where at least one of which will likely appeal to any visitor.

In theory, Google Adsense dynamically generates appropriate ads based on the content of your post. In theory…

Posts on printing should ideally display relevant services, web design posts might show hosting services and logo design posts might show services being offered by fellow designers. Without a little guidance however, Google doesn’t always get it right.

The bulk of my posts are about logo design, branding and corporate identity, followed closely by general graphic design then onto web design, printing, SEO and other related subjects.

Further down you’ll see Adsense ads being display at the end of this post and it would make sense that ads be shown in proportion to the above mentioned content, as things stood however 19 / 20 of my blog posts we’re followed by this:

The only content universal to my posts are my themes sidebars, however there is little regarding web between them and nothing about domain registration. For whatever reason Google decided the only thing suitable for my blog was this one domain registration service, regardless of what the post was actually about.

Obviously this isn’t ideal as the bulk of my advertisements were not likely to be of any interest to readers. By using tags to focus on or exclude content you can help steer your Google ads in a more relevant and profitable direction.

By encapsulating the post content of your website for inclusion, while excluding sidebars, footers and headers etc. more relevant ads should be displayed.

The following code can be used to specify relevant content.

<!– google_ad_section_start –>
This is relevant content that should be examined.
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

While this is used to exclude it.

<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –>
This is content that should be ignored.
<!– google_ad_section_end –>

After adding this code to the appropriate sections of my blog I immediately began seeing advertisements I previous hadn’t seen in several months without it. The domain registration ad is still floating about, and while there is still an occasional irrelevant one the spread of content is a definite improvement.

Give it a go.

Better ads = more clicks = more income.

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How to use Adsense tags for more relevant advertisements

In order to promote the Pantone colour guide book to design students, Basheer Graphic Books commissioned this 8 metre Pantone rainbow consisting of over 5000 colour swatches, built by the agency Bates141 in Jakarta.

Pretty.

There wasn’t a whole lot of information on the project unfortunately, but interesting none the less.

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Pantone rainbow to promote design books

It’s always interesting in advertising to see how competing brands sell products which are essentially the same, in this case bottled water.

Obviously there’s the convenience of buying a bottle when one is out and about, but outside of that I’ve always wonders why people regularly pay for something which is essentially free from the tap.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to people that many bottled waters are simply tap water, one particular bottle featuring the snow capped peaks of Mount Everest is actually filled in Texas. But then there’s this…

Kona Nigari is desalinated ocean water, sold as water concentrate, which goes for a whopping $33.50 US per 60ml bottle. The punch line is, you’re instructed to dilute it with regular water.

As bizarre as this might sound it, the Hawaiian water is apparently very popular. Nearly 100,000 bottles are drunk daily in Japan. Sadly I couldn’t find anything in the way of advertising material for the product, but I’d love to see how you convince people to pay over thirty dollars for 60ml of sea water.

What do you think?

Tap water is .2 cents per litre, let me just do the math…

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Sea water. Only $33.50 a bottle.

Personally I’m not a fan of smoking and I’m not endorsing Camels products in any way, but credit where credit’s due, they’ve got some great advertisements.

Each advertisement, designed by Saatchi & Saatchi features a splash, spill, silhouette or other device portraying the well known icon, while not specifically mentioning the brand or product.

In Australia it has been illegal for manufacturers to advertise cigarettes in any fashion for a decade or so now, though early on loopholes were exploited by manufacturers to continue advertising there product.

If you’re Australian like me you may remember a 2-3 second television ad where Paul Hogan ( yes, that’s Crocodile Dundee ) simply said “anyhow” with a wink. Still a very clear advertisement for Winfield brand cigarettes. I wonder if this isn’t the same thing?

Below are 14 subtle Camel advertisements and also 16 powerful anti-smoking advertisements. Some of the anti-smoking images are fairly graphic, if your squeamish you might want to stop after the Camels.

Anti Smoking advertisements begin here.

What are your thoughts?

Are the Camel advertisements so alluring you’ve deciding to start smoking? Or have the anti-smoking advertisements convinced you to quit?

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30 examples of strong and subtle advertising