The official Tumblr of Fast Company.
New York City’s dirtiest water now conveniently drinkable!
Early this morning, employees of ad agency DDB put cup dispensers next to pipes that are releasing some of the dirtiest water in the city. “We were looking for places where water outlets were pumped out into the streetscape,” explains Matt Eastwood, Chief Creative Officer of DDB NY. Want some delicious water leaking from a subway ceiling? Now you can get a whole cupful.
This has our vote for the most fun marketing campaign of the year: Ad giant DDB collaborated with Pleix, France’s preeminent purveyor of whimsy, to endow the Place du Palais-Royal in Paris with a big, black, magical “Escape Machine.”
Passersby tell the machine where they want to travel, then, at the press of a button, it explodes into a dancing, bubbling, confetti-spewing fete, like some kind of jack-in-a-box straight out of the mind of Michel Gondry. Granted, some of the effects seem to have been added later, using motion graphics. But the best part: They win a free trip!
The Escape Machine is an advert for SNCF, a sort of French Amtrak-turned-travel agency, and as far as guerrilla marketing goes, it ranks right up there with some of the best campaigns we’ve seen in recent months.
