Be The Brand You Want To Be

Artist Bruce Yan ties together some famous brand logos with some equally iconic pop culture characters and gets all up into your mind space. (Bruce Yan via Galley 1988)

Previously on Popped Culture…

Princess Leia, Coppertone Girl

Sugar Smack: What Kids Crave

Viral Marketing

Logorama

An entire universe from buildings to people made out of corporate logos, replete with car chases, shootouts wild animals and natural disasters, Logorama is a tour de force of graphic design.

The Oscar-nominated animated short used at least two thousand logos in its creation and is more than worth the 14-minute runtime, which is saying something coming from a short attention span web junkie like myself.  (Hat tip to Neatorama)




Previously on Popped Culture...
Viral Marketing
Bad Commercials Are Good For You
And I'll Whisper, "Would You Like Fries With That?"

Tom Hanks: Corporate Shill

For years actors A-list actors resisted appearing in commercials. Anyone who wanted to make some extra money would jet off to Japan where they could pitch jeans, booze, pachinko and whatnot without looking like a sell-out. ‘Cause Hollywood film-making is otherwise a hotbed of integrity.

This has been changing over the past couple of years. Named actors are still avoiding the camera, but they are flocking to ad agencies to do voice over work. I know this because Kiefer Sutherland seems very insistent that I own both a Ford and an Intel chip Mac.

Which brings us to Tom Hanks. He doesn’t do commercials, he’s all about branding opportunities – which is where the real money is. I just caught a bit of You’ve Got Mail on TV over the weekend (I was channel surfing) and even 10 minutes worth reminded me how much it was an ad for AOL. And course there was Cast Away, which I mostly remember as being about an obsessive FedEx employee.

Now he’s turning his thespian skills to a little coffee startup in Starbucks Saved My Life. Hanks will play a former ad exec who lost his job and wife and ended up working at Starbucks. Life lessons are, um, learnt. Wow, when Tom shills, he shills.

Makes me think he’s being doing this all along and I’ve just never noticed. Let’s see… Forest Gump was about pushing chocolates; The Da Vinci Code = more copies of the book; Toy Story – duh, toys; The Man With One Red Shoe, um, pairs of shoes. Ok, I’m stretching now. Feel free to leave your own Tom Hanks Shill-o-Matic suggestions.