Ambient Ads, Really Cool

Contrasting with traditional Ads like TV comercials, posters, radio and so on, ambient ads take advantage of the environment, perfectly combining content with the media, which always give audience surprise and deep impression.

People get used to the traditional ads channels and can escape from it according to experience easily. For example, when comercials appear on the TV, people go away to do some other things and get back accurately to continue with the TV programme. Ambient ads are kind of unavoidable because you don't know when it will appear. As a result, ambient ads are kind of being received passively and risk being percepted as offensive. Anyway, I am quite fancy about talented ambient ads. However, I can hardly find even one in Hong Kong. I am not sure about the reason, maybe because of the risk or some regulations against the ambient ads which, after all, have to do some change on public facilities.

Ambient PSA(public service advertising) is more acceptible than commercial ambient ads because it's non-commercial attributes but for public interest. On the other perspective, commercial ambient ads are thus more tanlented and creative than the ambient PSA, to make themselves more easily to be accepted.

In the way of conveying the message, ambient ads usually impress audiences by inviting them to experience themselves in various ways, taking advantage of the three-dimension environment.

Here are some examples of tanlented ambient ads I think really cool.




ambient PSA. emotional and impressive by asking you to experince yourselve abruptly.









commercial ambient ads asking for your experience.

copy: at this moment ,your bum is completely exposed. if it were in a sexy pair of jeans, it would attract attention all the time!








another successful commercial ambient ads I think.












There are, of course, other talented ambient ads as well which I can not put all here. Ambient ads is really something magic, but we should be really careful when using it as it is also easy to cause people's offensiveness. Ambient ads should be pleasing, entertaining, without disturbing people's normal life. However, it is hard to define whether you have disturb others or not, it is impossible to please everyone, after all.

The Rich District

Before I came to HongKong, I have heard that Kowloon Tang is a rich distric. However, to tell the truth, I did not notice it the first three weeks. I just find that, compelling to the Mongkok, here is much more quiet, with fewer cars, fewer people, fewer tall buildings. Today, I went out for a walk, and what I saw convinced me that this district is really a rich one.

One of the scenes that convinced me can be seen from the picture I pasted. It is a gate of a house. the golden rice on the gate attracted my attention in the first time. It is really special and beautiful and somehow glorious. We can imagine luxious interior design inside and that when we ring the bell, a servent will come out to open the gate, and some precious dog barking in the garden. The rice not only makes the house much more beautiful and special but also expresses the wish of a good harvest, which in the modern world tranforms to maybe wealth. As a result, I guess the host of the house must be a business man.

Materials always come the first. When we find someone spending money on things relating to spiritual satisfactory, he must be a rich man. Art ,as well as any other form of the beauty, in most cases are just for the rich.

Ideas Here?

The first time that I saw this ad, I totally ignored it. I thought it must be kind of PSA(public service announcements) telling people to save energy after I have noticed the big bulb on it. PSA is always easy to be ignored as the messages they carry are those cliche not new to people. Until one day I waited a bus there did I realise that It actually had nothing to do with public service.

It should be a commercial ad, as we can find the name "JCDecaux Texon" and the contact number on it. The bulb is actually not a usual bulb with something like a bottle in the middle, as well as the slogan"ideas here", but they are too small to be discovered. However, this new discovery makes me more confused about the ad as I can not get the information from it.

I can not agree it as a succesful ad. It is unattractive with its small size and the visual use of the bulb, which I haved mentioned before that is easy to be ignored as a PSA or ads of bulb repairing. In addition, I think it is exposed to the wrong audience. "JCDecaux Texon" is the name of an advertising agency, so the audience should be businessman. However, people who take the bus are mostly housewives, at least not the businessman. The last but not the least, even if I am the target audience, I still can not get the information from the ad. I do not understand the relationship between the bulb and the slogan and it can not move me to call the number attached on it.

Modern Rules

It is a Fire Escape Map posted on the back of the door of my dormitory room. We should be all familiar with it. But seriously, how many of us have read it? Not too many, I guess. We kind of ignore it because firstly, we know what it is, we know roughly what it talks about. In other words, there is no curiosity to drive us to read it. Secondly, it's not that relevant to us. The opportunity for us to encounter a fire accident is really small...wait, it's not actually true. The first night I arrived here, I heard the fire alarm ringing in my hall. I was so surprised but luckily it was just the smoke that caused the trouble.


Well, what I want to say is that such kind of information is important. It tells us how to escape a fire in a simple, straight way. The map was posted on one of the most obvious places to remind us every time we close the door.

We can find many other maps or instructions in especially modern cities. These instructions contain all the rules that people should obey when live or travel in a modern city. The styles of the design are similar, brief, straight, kind of cold and authoritative which is more like a command. It is, of course, consistent with the modernity.