Alternative marketing thinking

Some banks look at the most unconventional ways to satisfy their consumers. Wells Fargo roped in Pentagram to design a new User Interface for all its ATMs. Straying away from the usual screen that aligned task buttons only on the left and the right, this new UI saw the entire screen being used up with new visually simplified buttons. The new ATMs have two main features that got everyone raving about them. First, the fact that customers could deposit a stack of checks without sealing them in envelopes made processing time shorter and lowered costs. Up to 30 checks can be inserted at one time, and all checks will be scanned individually and be updated with status. In case the scanning identifies an error in a certain check, the customer is asked to fill in the missing amount. All steps can be reviewed with the history button that allows for a look at the previous steps. The second outstanding feature is an upgrade of the existing Quick Cash button. This feature has been allowing Wells Fargo customers to withdraw an often used amount in one single step, instead of going through a multi-step procedure. Designer Holger Struppek, part of the design team that worked on this in Pentagram talks more about the new ATMs here.

The history of the world can be seen in the way currency has been designed. Some bank notes can tell tales of days gone by. Others educate people of the success achieved by a nation. Of their great leaders, scientists and more. So it is important that Germany’s Hypovereinsbank’s Banknote Collecting Foundation, G&D will be opening the doors of its banknote museum to the public for the first time. On display are some of the world’s rarest currency notes. 1,000 cash note from the Chinese Ming Dynasty from the time of the Great War of 1368-1398; one of the oldest banknotes in the world. The world’s rarest banknote: the only existing 100-mark note dated 1914 from the former colony of German New Guinea. More from the Hypovereinsbank’s press release.

Visually, aesthetically and ideologically brilliant; Gregory Colbert gave the world Ashes and Snow – his epic work. His collection capturing the symbiotic relationship that once existed between human beings and the animal kingdom. He uses this film to introduce the Animal Rights Foundation, where advertisers are encouraged to pay 1% of the total media buy for all ad campaigns that use animals.

Volkswagen got The Ice Box to make a life size ice sculpture of their Polo Twist model and parked it outside the Saatchi gallery in Belvedere. Coming chilled with free air conditioning, the Polo Twist enjoyed the surprise and sudden interest factors that come with innovative advertising.

Using cardboard, the primary source of shelter and warmth to millions of homeless urban people, artists create art to help get the underprivileged off the streets. Read more.

Justine Smith is an artist with a unique talent. She plays with money to create her art. A well known collage artist, Justine recently moved to making art using the banknote and knife. Her work as an exploration of our relationship with money and our response to it, in a political, moral and social sense, while exploiting the physical beauty of the note. For the artist, a banknote is not only an abstract representation of our labour, but the imagery depicted on it also symbolises the ideas and ideals of a given country’s culture and the society that its people live in. ‘Money Map of the World’ compounds many of Smith’s ideas relating to money. This piece of work took seven months to produce and is made up of banknotes from every country in the world. Smith’s series of flowering plant sculptures and gun sculptures investigate the ideas of extinction, corruption and the impact of power and money on an individual. Discover more here.

Lovers of data have found a new place for worship. Swivel, a place where data can be uploaded, shared, tagged and discussed. Just like at YouTube , you can create an account and share all kids of data, even explore mindless stuff like the co-relation between wine and violent crime in the US . Old Bag at Indexed on the other hand uses data as an art form to create useless graphs and chart sets.

Hilda Kozari of Pure Design has created three Air installations that simulate the smell of familiar cities. These olfactory translations use perfume, personalized installation art and combine city smells with the creator’s interpretation of sights and sounds of three prominent European destinations to recreate the urban landscape. Smells like a cool new way to promote products like ice cream, maybe even a unique tourist destination?

Volkswagen’s new mini site lets users go all arty with their dream machines by creating, viewing and taking prints of their customized car designs. This direct marketing effort aimed at promoting the newly launched Special Edition Beetle Luna is targeted primarily at women for whom “style is the most important factor when choosing a new car”. Elsewhere the VW Hotel Fox project is open in Copenhagen

W+K Tokyo Hybrid Labs acts as a magnet to attract the most innovative creative talent who have made Japan their home. These artists collaborate under the W+K umbrella to develop new ideas using music and visuals creating new concepts of communication. The first event of this unique communication experiment, Tokyo Now, made up of 5 minute episodic features will air on new-age Japanese television channels.