One sure-fire way to capture interest is to hijack it from somewhere else. This falls into an area of advertising where you do a spoof or pastiche of an established campaign or concept. If you do it well your audience will smile and go with you. And Interest very quickly becomes Desire. If you do it badly you could get sued.

Oh, bubbles. Us too.

One of my favourite German brands has got it right twice recenlty. I’ll file these under advertising classics. The ads or products they’re mocking are clear. O2 with the first one and the iPod with the second.

But wow. When your advertising is soooo simple, you really have to push the boat out to dream up new ideas. Despite the simplicity of their ads, despite having so little space to be creative, they succeeded!

Your pack is our pack

The iSmoke example in particular captures my imagination. It works across the marketing mix (or through-the-line as a boss of mine used to say). The advertising transcends P for Promotion straight into P for Product. And every time I see an iPod now, I think of Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Just as well I don’t smoke.