Sleep Comfort, Chery, a morphed logo and... A wedding list?

In my daily AMA (Ask Me Anything), the above ad came en masse. "Why the rings?" "What does the car have to do with anything?" "How much do I have to buy?" "That's not the original logo, is it?". Well, fear not kids.

All right I shall attempt to answer as best as I can. The rings, may or may not indicate a wedding list at Sleep Comfort. Or it may indicate the marriage of the two bands (Sleep Comfort and Chery) who are on the roaster of the same agency mind you (which, may or may not have been the origin of this cross-over ad). This might, or might not, explain why the car has to do with anything - clients of the same agency. Now, the ad, I think, leaves it a little fog as to how much to buy to - what might, or might not - be a draw on the car. Now as you can see the above photo, yes, the Sleep Comfort logo was morphed for the purposes of the ad, which brings us back to the rings.

Naturally, this would not be the first time an agency combined clients. Look at this Cyberia and Warde combo from 2007:

Surreal - Hanx and a throwback to Cyberia - Warde

Surreal - the cereals - apparently teamed up with Hanx - the condoms for a double ad (for Valentine's that is!), one is "great for spooning" and the other is "great for forking", will let you guess which is which har har. Kidding aside, obviously this is a great media placement for both brands. All of this brings me to a throwback from 2007 in Lebanon, where Cyberia and Warde both had the same agency (Leo Burnett) and did crossover panels whereby the Cyberia ad jumped over the Warde one. This was another media buy play... Not quite the same but not too far either.

Lock, stock images, and two smoking barrels

Image credit: Mahmoud Ghazayel

Ah stock images. Again!

I sometimes wonder when, all of us armed with cell phones with incredibly efficient cameras, all agencies STILL do the same blunder. The image above is courtesy of Mahmoud Ghazayel. Cyberia and Almaza, both using the same stock imagery.

Let me tell you this story, I was once supervising a group of graduate students on their final year. Their brief was to do a campaign for Bank of Beirut. About 3 sessions later they all came to me with the same issue, they could not find good images online of the bank to use in their projects. Now, if you have not seen me going berserk you have truly missed something. And indeed, they were treated to a one sided shouting match. Why? Right opposite the gate of the university we had a beautiful Bank Of Beirut branch. All they had to do was go down there, politely ask to photograph and then come back and chose whatever images they wanted to use.

Did any student think about that? No. Why? Stock images of course. If there was no stock images or readily downloadable images from the net, they'd immediately panic. That all of them were armed with sophisticated cell phones would never occur to them. But at least the Cyberia/Almaza blunder is not as horrible as the Byblos Bank/Condomi mishap whereby the same image was used by both brands, in the same magazine, a few pages apart.

Cyberia has a new ADSL offer.

Lately I have been asked why I am featuring ads which - at best - are ho-hum. Because, to quote George Hillary when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, "because it's there!". What does that mean? The amount of ads in Lebanon has reached such a critical low, that any ad done - no matter its quality - is worth mentioning. A campaign can linger on billboards for months on end, or it can be exhibited on a dismal number and still be visible (just as a comparison stick, in 2005 if you wanted your campaign to be "seen" - meaning simply to appear among the fray - they required number of billboards to be booked was no less than 500). 

Of course, you might say - yes that's because there's the advent of digital Tarek, wake up and smell the Facebook. Really? How  many ads have you seen as of late? And by that I mean something other than a corny (mostly stolen or uncredited) image with a logo on top? Little. Incredibly little.

On all accounts, this brings us to Cyberia and its efforts on Instagram in a neatly done, very minimal ad, which involves a nice opening shot with a proverb that goes "he who changes his habits, has his happiness diminished" only to be followed by a second frame which says "only not so with Cyberia" (creatively, to be honest, I would have went with the other proverb that went "any change brings relief" (el na2le fiha el faraj)).  The ad goes on to then detail what Cyberia (an internet provider) is giving as an ADSL offer and its numerous perks.

See the full ad here.