Cheap laugh out of fancy stuffs

Last Friday, I did a presentation in front of the whole office. Basically my boss asked me to share my favorite advertisings (us being advertising workers and all)

Tthe first things that comes to mind is the campaign from Italy for the Comic Museum (another reason to move to Italy!). It is from last year – won Bronze at Cannes – and this year.

To get the full effect of awesomeness of this campaign, please allow me to take you through some legendary paintings:

Portrait of the Infanta Margarita

Diego Velasquez, 1653

Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (The Picnic)

Edouard Manet, 1863

The Death of Marat (La Mort de Marat )

Jacques-Louis David , 1793

AND NOW, BEHOLD:

(it’s not too readable. In the middle panel, text on that piece of paper reads: Room Service Bill)

Campaign line: Comics are art. Just funnier.

(Audio: laughing tracks of studio audience on sitcoms + applause)

Love this campaign for several reason:

1. It includes a work of fine art (Manet no less! woot woot). So basically, that alone is enough to make me excited..

2. It juxtaposes, or even ‘clashes’ high brow form of art with low brow sense of humor (comic strip), thus leading us to a interesting idea: is the concept of polarizing extremes still relevant in this day and age, where synthesis/fusion has become the way our life and our world operates (pure “creation” no longer exist, everything is derivative)?*

3. It shows great understanding about the target audience and create relevance. I’ve seen some other advertising that also use visual of fine artwork but there isn’t any coherence in the idea and the execution, so the use of fine artwork become kind of gimmicky.

4. It’s just simply FUNNY AS HELL. DISCUSS.

*Yeah, this is related to Contra.

Bonus:

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