On the T yesterday, my husband and I were both struck by this ad campaign for Zipcar, which took over the better part of our Orange Line car. (Disclosure: I am a current Zipcar customer.)
It’s simple yet effective. The story is visual, with the ad showing ways that you can enhance your (presumably urban, since you’re on the T) life by taking advantage of Zipcar — a day trip with a friend, a big shopping outing, etc.
What I particularly like is how they overlay the functionality of the website — that’s exactly how it looks when you reserve a car for a block of time — onto the main visual element. To me, this not only introduces the viewer to the functionality of the website, which is the main way you use Zipcar, but it emphasizes the fact that Zipcar use is not a major commitment. You only use it as much or as little as you need to; it fits into the pockets of your life where you need it most. Zipcar then closes the deal by offering their signature deal to new customers.
All in all, a smart, simple campaign.
Nice post Georgy. That is an example of good design. Elegant in it’s simplicity and delivers the message they want to get across.
Jeff
It usually freaks me out when I see an entire train car of one ad spot. This was no different. I’m a current ZipCar customer as well, so I understood what the spots were about, but I wondered if others would be confused by them. I know its not overtly confusing, but I just wondered what non-clients thought.
When I click on the second picture, I get a bigger version of the first one. I was curious to see what the second ad said for the same reasons Jess outlined. Does it explain what Zipcar is or just assume you know already?
I like the train car takeover as long as they vary it up. If it’s all the same exact ad, it gets annoying (and ineffective) quickly. To your point, I thought about that too. My husband — who isn’t a Zipcar customer (just a passenger
) — understood what the visuals meant. I think the fact that it naturally, both in the ad and on the site, resembles a timeline (and they include actual times in the ad, like 7AM-1PM), makes it intuitive for those who aren’t already familiar with the Zipcar web interface. But that is always something to be mindful of.
Oops, fixed it (I had image embedding fail at 6:30AM
)
One of the placements has more explicit copy than the others, but since all the ads in the car work together and complement one another, I don’t think that’s a huge concern. The tagline in the square ad does succinctly explain what Zipcar is, which is good.