Reflections on new work uploaded on addictlab.com (1)

I'll be commenting some of the great concepts that are being uploaded on our addictlab.com site. Here is work from a Belgian promising talent, Gert De Clercq
It's called Black Box.
Technique used : Acryl on Carton boxes.
And the message ?
What first seems no more then boxes with well known brands printed on them, gets a twist when you focus a bit more.
All logo's have been subtily altered, changed, creating humoristic, sometimes cynical but always intelligent messages.
The boxes are conveniently empty... Aren't todays marketing hypes not all about the packaging and not about the content?





Go to Gert's Labfile

Smart brand consultancy with build-in chaos

Too many brands act as if they rule the world. Well, in some cases it is actually true.
I was just listening to an interview by a local soft drink reseller on the streets of Johannesburg claiming that his one-person-shop will have to close down since Coca Cola announced shortage of carbon dioxide. (The Gas that adds the fizz to cooldrinks.) Or that other global brand using stars and stripes to play the worlds policeman in regions such as Irak.
I saw this great cartoon of the brands logo: the American flag, where the stars where left out , with the message: 'Didn't earn your stars today.')

But I didn't want to talk politics.

Here you are, five star marketeer, paid by your client to bring your client' s brand in the picture.
But do you think beyond the actual brief? Do you think about the relevance of what you do?
Like in chess, how many steps ahead are you thinking? Do you take into account 'external' elements that could influence your creation?

Let me rephrase that, since 'external' elements will anyway, sooner or later, be an influence to what you have created.
How do you cope? Anticipate? Panic? Or do you always - like I believe you should - have a build-in chaos system to be a balance to the theoretical strategical and thus rational level of what you wanted to obtain?

Here is a project of AddictLabmember Olivier Vanderaa:
Brand\Non brand is a short photographic series using brands displayed in real life on billboards and neon signs as a fictionnary material. It aims to treat these advertising objects as a plastical material, going often beyond the border of existing marketing schemes, real spaces and standard commercial messages and significations.

I love Olivier's work - check his citysnapper projects, by the way, on addictlab.com

But look at the picture of the Massive Logo. (Massive is a lighting company)
I'm sure the marketing team that commissioned the logo to be put on the roof of the building, didn't take into consideration ... that local traffic forced a whole lot of people commuting to look at the logo... from the other side.
Not just once. But everytime they go to their work.
How do you take that into account, cost-per-contact-wise?

In the case of the MacDonald logo, also part of Olivier's work, you must admit that their brainbashing communication is quite fruitful. How much of the light should be broken so that we wouldn't see the logo anymore?









I welcome all pictures depicting brands & logo's in unusual situations, in your neighbourhood.
Jan@addictlab.com