Brand Immersion: Public Service or Advertising?

In the same vein as the previous post about the health care company whose advertising was of service...

Last week I was walking through the Times Square subway passage and was treated, along with thousands of other commuters, to holiday wall murals. Red, white and green graphic snow scenes. Every third or forth mural had a smallish logo placed in a corner.

With limited logo placement but strong visual continuity - those who experience these murals know within minutes this is from Starbucks. Because these murals appear where advertising posters usually hang - I walked from one to the next in a kind of eager anticipation to see which brand was responsible for this little bit of visual pleasure. Granted, I'm always looking for innovative advertising so maybe others were less inspired to find the brand - but regardless, I've overheard people talking about how nice it was to have the subway passage filled with holiday scenery.

Starbucks is a brand that gives us a "third place" - not work, not home, but that lovely place to stop in for a moment or for an hour and just be. Now they've taken a little bit of that and extended it to the New York underground.