TED696 Project
Lion Nathan
Issue 9 | December 2008
Agency
BMF Sydney
Creative Team
Warren Brown - Creative Director;Simon Langley - Creative Director;Chris James - Digital Creative Director;Shane Bradnick - Art Director;Jonny Brian - Digital Art Director;Michael Canning - Copywriter
Production Team
Sarah Tompson; Clinton Bell; Sora Nobari - Online Producer
Other Credits
Ed Stucky - Flash Developer;DMOTE, Luca Ionescu, Studio Number One/Shepard Fairey - Artists
Date
April – June 2008
Background
Tooheys Extra Dry is a popular beer in Australia amongst 18 to 24-year-olds. With the target market starting to drink larger ‘longneck’ bottles, it was time to launch one of their own – the TED696mL longneck. Competition in the market was fierce, so the brand had to stand out in a way that would get the attention of this young target audience.
Idea
Larger longneck bottles are traditionally sold in a brown paper bag. The agency’s creative solution was to take the one thing that makes a longneck’s branding invisible, the brown bag, and turn it into something they could own. To achieve this they created the TED696 Project – a collaboration between a mix of the world’s best street artists, designers and the target market, to design their own unique ‘696’ brown paper bags.
Three top artists - DMOTE, Luca Ionescu and Studio Number One/ Shepard Fairey - were commissioned to design a limited edition brown paper bag to be used in selected Australian off licences. A mail pack (in a brown paper bag, of course) was sent to design colleges and universities inviting lecturers to get their students involved. Budding designers could register and download templates from the TED696 Project website (at tedcreated.com.au) where voting was also open to the public. The top designs were displayed at an event at the MTV Gallery in Sydney where the winners were announced, including overall Judges Winner Michael Watt and overall People’s Choice Winner Paulo Guti.
Results
This was the first time that the brown bag had ever been used as an advertising medium, firmly differentiating Tooheys Extra Dry from its competitors by claiming the medium which all longneck brands are sold in. After the success of the launch, the campaign is ongoing. The best designs created by the public are continually distributed in bottle shops nationally.
Target audience
18 to 24-year-olds
Our Thoughts
It is amazing that so few brands have thought of the bag (plastic or paper) as an advertising medium. The supermarkets slap a logo on but none uses it as an opportunity to continue or even develop a relationship with the people who actually buy from them. It’s typical of BMF, one of the world’s most interesting agencies, that they managed to make the paper bag work online as well as more interesting wrapping for your Saturday night piss-up.