Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.
An extraordinary campaign and product created with real bodily fluids; Magnum ice cream feeds your personality; Yum Yum Peanut Butter goes on a 3D ride; and Primedia has even taken over the changing rooms in-store.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
We all know that working in the creative industries takes a lot more than money and drugs. It takes passion — and blood, sweat and tears, too. The Jupiter Drawing Room has taken this literally in a new campaign which includes a new product paint range aimed at artists, all to promote the 2014 AbsaA L’Atelier Art competition.
Aptly named ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, the special paints incorporate the bodily fluids of artists who take their craft very seriously, it seems.
The Absa L’Atelier art competition is a prestigious competition that has helped kick-start young artists’ careers by giving them international exposure and experience through residencies at the Cite Internationale des Art in Paris, the Sylt Foundation in Germany and the Ampersand Foundation in New York.
In order to win this competition, one needs to enter a piece of art of the highest quality. After interviewing numerous artists, the team at 
Jupiter came to a single insight: in order to create great art, you need to put in the hard work — great art takes blood, sweat and tears.
Jupiter CD Dana Cullinan elaborates: “This became our campaign idea, but because we were targeting artists, a group of people who seek the provocative and controversial, we knew that a traditional campaign wouldn’t cut it.
“So, we created a campaign that was a little different. A campaign that would get them talking and inspire them to put in the necessary hard work to create great art — we created a range of acrylic paints using blood, sweat and tears from established artists.”
Jupiter Johannesburg CEO Jerry Mpufane says: “Nothing like this has ever been done before and it took a lot of hard work to pull off. After extensive research and many awkward phonecalls, we found a medical partner, an artist paint maker and three established artists to get involved: Diane Victor, Willem Boshoff and Bambo Sibiya.”
Lancet Laboratories took on the challenge and provided the sweat of Diane Victor, the tears of Bambo Sibiya and the DNA of Willem Boshoff.
The whole process was documented, creating a series of films which showed the individual artists’ stories of hard work and dedication, as well as the paint-making process.
Cullinan says Lancet made sure the fluids were non-infectious and in liquid form to use in the paint-making process, and Willem Prinsloo from Zellen Paints in Kleinmond, Western Cape, came on board to create the paint, using quality ingredients and pigments from around the world to create the premium range of art paint. The whole process, from mixing to tubing and labelling, was done by hand — an art form in itself.
The paints will be distributed in art stores across the country and all proceeds will go to Assemblage, a non-profit organisation for artists.
So, not only colourful in its execution and application, but utterly brilliant. Easily my favourite product/design and direct campaign of the year so far.
Magnum moments
Magnum SA’s new limited edition Pink and Black new products have launched for different moments.
Magnum Pink Pomegranate and Magnum Black Espresso are two new delicious ice-cream variants for the different sides of your personality, according to the PR spiel.
Magnum Pink with pomegranate sauce is wrapped in a layer of pink pearlescent Magnum chocolate to bring out your “fun, flirty side”. And Magnum Black Espresso can be unwrapped for “sophisticated, elegant confidence”… It contains ripples of intense black espresso coffee swirl covered in a thick dark Magnum cracking chocolate.
So here’s me off to get myself some of that “sophistication and elegance”.
Smooth ride
With out-of-home media being one of the fastest growing media in South Africa, it’s no wonder the application and graphic properties of campaigns are increasing in sophistication, like this 3D Yum Yum Peanut Butter campaign on buses and bus shelters.
Colourful and eye-catching graphics extend the Yum Yum Peanut Butter “Serious About Smooth” campaign,which last year saw three creative executions (the Sumo wrestler, a WWE champ, and Steamroller) on billboards nationally to promote Yum Yum’s dedication to creating the smoothest peanut butter on the market.
As Wesley Shunn, brand manager for Yum Yum, explains: “Yum Yum has a fun and quirky personality that allows us to really push our creative. Consumers responded well to what was initially developed last year.”
So Yum Yum challenged its agencies, both creative and media, to explore even more impactful angles to further extend the successful campaign’s life, which lead to the development of the “structure-crushing” illustrations which have been extended to include buses and bus shelters.
Together with Mediology, Joe Public created a funky hologram effect on some of the bus shelters for the Sumo wrestler, where you can literally see the character hammer the peanuts into smoothness, making the campaign more significant and eye-catching for consumers.
The outdoor media campaign includes bus wraps and bus stops.
Yummy.
Mirror mirror…
Another massive growth media category is in-store and mall media, which Primedia dominates with a wide variety of branded options in almost every available space in store and in the mall — from the loos to shop windows, the shelf, and now even changing rooms!
To generate hype around the new DStv channel, Mnet Movie Zone on 139, wig decals were strategically located in Primedia Unlimited’s TLC change room media environments in Jet, Ackerman’s and Edgars stores around the country.
“The campaign is intended to drive tune-in and capture the intended target market’s attention in a unique, fun and interesting way,” says TLC’s Brett Tucker.
Booked by BlackMarket Media, the TLC advertising campaign also persuades the intended target audience — lower LSM consumers — to subscribe to DStv.
I hope they’re using ‘thin’ and not ‘fat’ mirrors, or their advertising will be wasted. Every woman knows that some retail mirrors make them look worse, while others are more flattering. Solve that problem and sales will increase by trillions, no matter what the product or store!
Shelf Life by Louise Marsland is a weekly column on MarkLives. Tweet new product, packaging and design launches to @louise_marsland or email her at louise.marsland at gmail.com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.
Louise has written about the FMCG, media, marketing and advertising industry for 18 years of her 25-year media career as a former editor of magazines AdVantage, Marketing Mix and Progressive Retailing, as well as websites Bizcommunity.com and FMCGFiles. She currently edits the weekly Wednesday Media & Marketing Page for The New Age newspaper; and is the co-founder and publishing editor of South Africa’s industry trendwatching portal, TREND. at www.trendlives.info, in partnership with MarkLives.com.