No, you didn’t miss hearing the name of the product in it’s rhythmically hip voice over. And no, there were no words on the screen hinting at the name except for that floating  G. The first few times I saw this ad, I was confused, stunned and pondered, “What IS G?” My mind lingered on the question for a few seconds before the following commercial wiped the slate clean. The next couple of times, I tried to pay extra attention to the words in the voice-over desperately trying to discover what it was a commercial for. I even used the DVR once to rewind the commercial. After that, I tried to identify the people in the commercial to find a link, but didn’t know who half of them were. I was at a loss. Why did the makers of this commercial not want me to know what it was selling?

At about the 6th viewing, I decided to do some quick interneting to find an answer to what I ruled was an extremely ridiculous and inefficient ad. I was baffled to find that this was the same sports drink which once asked “Is it in you?” Whose black and white commercials once showed athletes working hard while the brightly colored liquid sweat from their pores. And (dare I say it?) actually showed it’s product and repeated it’s name in the ad—more than once.

So, what can we learn from this cryptic message? It’s as simple as this—Don’t be cryptic! Especially not in your marketing or branding. Don’t assume your consumers or potential clients will go through the trouble of researching your ad to find out who you are. Luckily for you, Bullpen’s here to help you with all your marketing needs. If you think you may need some help, give us a call at 713.652.2030.

Have you figured it out yet?
To keep in line with the cryptic ad, here’s a slightly less cryptic pictogram to provide the answer:

This Mother’s Day was a special day for several reasons.  My 3-year-old son, Harry and I decided to walk with 2,500+ Houstonians along Buffalo Bayou in the Y-ME Walk to Empower, a 3-mile walk to raise money to fight breast cancer.  Having lost a mother and a mother-in-law to cancer (not to mention Harry losing two grandmothers), I couldn’t think of a better way to start this special Sunday.

EMS Global’s marketing guru, Trevor Eade, invited us to join their walking team – “The Pipeline Posse”.  Even better, Trevor had Bullpen’s t-shirt experts produce the team shirt – a navy Hanes Beefy Short-Sleeve Contrast Stitch t-shirt with (count ‘em) ten screens total (1 on the front, 4 on the back, 1 on the right sleeve, 4 on the left sleeve).  The 3 shades of pink on the front and left sleeve created an amazing 3-D effect.

The weather was absolutely perfect and shortly before the start of the race, the MC announced that EMS had won the best overall t-shirt of the 20+ teams!  It made the walk that much sweeter to wear the winning shirt that Bullpen produced up and down the bayou with pride.  The only thing that could have made the day better would have been if we could have joined the Pipeline Posse at their brunch at 1308 Cantina on Montrose, but alas… the 3-year old and his dad were spent.

Y-ME public service announcement

Colin

Here’s the screenprinting layout for the back:

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