Mercedes: Escape the Map
"In Escape the Map, an interactive UK effort by Mercedes Benz, consumers get to help a woman and her car escape a sinister Streetview version of Hong Kong. A TV spot directed by Carl Erik Rinsch directs viewers to a websitewhere they find 'Marie' and her C 63 AMG Coupe trapped in Streetview. Marie needs to escape from the map before her face is forever blurred-out, like everyone else who's pictured there. Participants must help crack the clues in order to be entered for a chance to win the car.
The campaign, aimed at attracting a younger consumer to the Mercedes-Benz brand, is by AMV.BBDO. It also includes a YouTube Homepage Takeover, bus advertising, and a cover wrap in free commuter newspaper Metro that uses augmented reality app Blippar."
(Creativity Online)
Fig.1 Agency: Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO London, Client: Mercedes, Director: Carl Erik Rinsch.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Adrift in a shopping maze: it's a successful no-exit strategy
"Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at University College London, has come to a conclusion that Ikea stores are 'designed just like a maze'. In doing so he's given scholarly validation to a feeling that will have occurred to many shoppers as they blunder around the blue and yellow hangar looking for a new TV unit only to emerge with two candles, a wok and a bottle of lingonberry cordial.
Penn went on to suggest that it was Ikea's strategy to keep customers inside the store for the maximum time possible. They achieve this by setting a route round the store from which it's difficult to deviate. Taking the shortcuts (which are only there to conform with fire regulations) often leaves you adrift in a sea of lampshades.
The effect is to boost impulse purchases. See a coathanger, and you might buy 'because the layout is so confusing you know you won't be able to go back and get it later'."
(Ian Tucker, 30 January 2011, The Observer, Guardian News and Media Limited)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Jean-Paul Sartre's: No Exit
"No Exit is an existentialist play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The play begins with a bellhop leading a man named Garcin into a hotel room (the play portrays Hell as a gigantic hotel, and realisation of where the action is taking place dawns on the audience in the opening minutes). The room has no windows and only one door. Eventually Garcin is joined by a woman (Inez), and then another (Estelle). After their entry, the bellhop bolts the door shut. All expect to be tortured, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realise, they are there to torture each other, which they do effectively, by probing each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant memories. The three often see events concerning them that are happening on earth, but they can only observe and listen."
(http://no-exit.biography.ms)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1989) "No Exit" and Three Other Plays, Vintage Books. 0679725164
Fig.1 Olivia Bucks/The Oregonian, Actors (from left) Maureen Porter as Estelle, JoAnn Johnson as Inez, and Tim True as Garcin rehearse Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit" on a raked stage at Imago Theatre.[http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2009/10/imagos_no_exit_tilts_toward_su.html]
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
Woman of the Dunes (Suna No Onna)
"Junpei Niki is an amateur entomologist. He aspires to discover a new kind of insect, and takes a weekend trip to the dunes to look for insects. He finds a village there, where villagers live in deep sand pits. He decides to stay at a widow's house in a pit just for a night. He learns that in this village in the dunes, residents must shovel the sand almost continuously to prevent the house from being buried in sand. The next day he realises that none of the villagers are coming back to pick him up. He makes several attempts to escape from the pit, and tries to force his excape through taking the woman hostage. No one in the village, however, cares Junpei's action since he is in danger himself unless he and the woman shovel the sand. Still dreaming of escape, Junpei gradually starts to feel comfortable and accepts his fate. While Junpei shovels with the woman, villagers deliver newspapers, a little alcohol and tabacco. The woman sleeps naked under the sand that continuously falls on her white skin, which is a scene Junpei likes to watch. The woman is almost idiotic and plain, but innocently aspires to buy a radio when her nightly work brings enough money. ... At the school where Junpei used to work, people decide to report his missing to the police, but they soon give up and forget him."
(Kumiko Sato)
Originally posted on the Whitney Museum Portal at:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/kxs334/academic/fiction/abe_suna.html (this link is now dead)
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
