They’re interesting pieces. On our GPC scale from 1-10, the committee gave this poster a score of 5.1, and they scored the T-shirt as a 5.5. Apparently the T-shirt is a hot commodity in the Hong Kong yoga community, and the business results demonstrate that these pieces definitely succeeded in helping the client grow their business. I can believe it, it’s nice looking quality shirt with a visual on it that draws immediate interest, and upon examination, communicates that the person wearing it is a yoga devotee. Right? Who else can put their leg around their body in that kind of a position? For all intensive purposes, this is decent marketing. However, we’re not looking for just decent marketing. We’re looking for beautifully crafted work that clearly expresses a “product benefit,” and contains some powerful insights that help people understand what distinguishes this studio from others. This T-shirt reflects the idea that people who do yoga want flexibility. That’s absolutely true, but if you dig a little deeper (or find yourself in front of a room full of students teaching an asana sequence), you’ll realize that flexibility isn’t usually the primary reason why people practice yoga. Flexibility is a by product of the practice, but it’s not the goal. The more immediate goals are to cultivate self-knowledge, a healthy lifestyle, and to reduce stress. It’s preventative medicine for many, and a therapeutic practice for a lot more. This poster and this t-shirt don’t really address that. They show you that if you practice yoga, you can do crazy things with your body. But will that goal actually bring you into a studio and onto a mat? A stronger approach would be to focus on what yoga’s emotional benefits are to a human psyche, instead of expressly focusing on what kind of freaky positions yoga can enable you to put your body in….
So…have a look at the piece below. It’s one of mine, it’s not a 7, the typography is terrible, the photography and art direction are questionable upon initial viewing, but reflect the fact that the Yoga Now Studio this ad was developed for is a green, environmentally friendly studio constructed out of cob/clay/mud, and that’s one of their primary selling points. It’s part of the whole sustainability message they sell. So…this was a print ad I made for them, and the focus is not on the freaky things you can do with your body once you practice yoga, but what yoga does for you on an INNER level.
I offer this thought process up to the community at large because this is work I intend to do for the rest of my life, and I’m still figuring out how to do it right. I want to make ads for every yoga teacher and studio I know, because they’re all offering an invaluable product and service, and each teacher is a little bit different and each has their own personality and character, all of which deserve a unique art direction… Anyhow. Hope I haven’t irritated anyone by airing this out, but I figured I’d share. The Planet Yoga work is clearly solid, effective marketing for that chain of studios, and it’s worth honoring and sharing. The Yoga Now ad up above never ran, because Michelle, the instructor in the picture, skipped off to India and Amy Beth, the studio owner, wasn’t going to put a picture of someone who wasn’t actively teaching at her studio in her ads. Fair enough. But hey I made it, so I believe it’s mine to do what I like with…and Michelle, if you’re out there, drop me a line, I’m sad to say I’ve forgotten your last name…
Anyhow, here’s one last yoga campaign from LB/Shanghai, from several years ago. It’s a poster campaign and one ingenious ambient piece, where images of people were printed along flexible drinking straws, so that when you bent the straws, it looked like the people were bending at the spine. That’s a nice, intrusive but amusing way to communicate the physical benefits of a yoga practice while people are drinking their Big Gulps… The posters are just as cool, because they’re double-sided images of the same person, and then they're half-pasted up against a wall. People walk by and see this image hanging off the wall, and are compelled to interact with them to see why these posters are falling off their mountings. After they get a good look, they realize the person in each poster is just doing a really nice backbend... Nice art direction eh? These last two actually did receive a 7+ score from back in 2005…
No comments:
Post a Comment