Old Spice Brings New Spice | Slipcovers for Your Walls

This Old Spice brings New Spice is a misleading title, but this blog post started out with inspiration from the recent and popular Old Spice commercials. These creative Old Spice ads, similar to the Target ads have helped to change advertising. Honestly, and stands to reason as they are both creations of the advertising juggernaut Wieder + Kennedy firm. Like many other “ladies,” I love the Old Spice ads. I like a lot of things that are creative, out-of-the-box and innovative. These however have helped to bridge the gap between traditional TV commercial media and social media. Just when Isaiah Mustafa, the actor who portrays the “Old Spice Guy,” has become noticed and his YouTube videos have gone viral, he’s “hanging up the towel,”so to speak. He’s received many other offers for bigger and better things, not surprisingly. What is innovative about these commercials, however, is not only their approach and his delivery, which is so spot on, but that they cross-connect with all streams of social media. The Old Spice Guy has answered about 185 twitter requests via YouTube videos while posed in the shower with only a towel, of course. He even delivered a marriage proposal for someone, and she accepted. This kind of cross-connection campaigning is completely different and I think has set a new bar, bringing new spice to traditional TV ads. Adieu, Old Spice Guy, we’ll have to enjoy these for now — until we see you again on our local cinema screen, or better yet Netflix, why leave home?

Things that are new and different are exciting but do they last, do they have merit, will people understand them, and are they worth the risk? These are just some of the questions that have come to light recently in trying to launch our new designs in our efforts to help the Gulf Coast’s recovery.

The hand painted artwork is done and now I have the tedious task of spending about one to two hours per image (12 +) to create the print files from which the web files are then created. Each image has four individual print offerings, plus they can be part of a larger mural. For the web versions, that is 48 x 3 (thumbnail, medium square and popup). You can do the math, but I come up with 48 print + 144 web versions in about 48 continuous hours of work. It’s pretty daunting and tedious to think about and then we have to do the web page. I’ve completed three images at this posting and that doesn’t even include the patterns that I did not mention. So the question, “Is it worth it?,” becomes really important, especially when other questions like, will people like it, where will they use it, and will they purchase it come to mind? I think the best way to determine this is to cast a wide (Gulf Coast) net and ask for your feedback. Proceeds from their purchase will go to two organizations that we have selected that are on the forefront helping wildlife and environmental cleanup.

We posted a while ago about our efforts to help the Gulf Coast recovery. As a Louisiana native, it’s an issue that is very personal to me and I’m passionate about wanting to do something; yet, I know I am too close to it to be unbiased. I used my art to help with rebuilding efforts after Katrina and both my partners and I want to do something similar here. (PS: I write about this more in detail, regarding the creative process, by the way, in my Art Is Everywhere post this coming Friday and art as a response.)

Here’s a glimpse at the latest work. I’ve posted a blog poll to get feedback and of course you can always comment with more specifics but we’d like to know your thoughts. The concept here is to offer an interactive mural — a way for the customer to design their own mural, (which is a completely new concept), from these already painted creations. This is an example below. The hard part is how to explain this on a website where we don’t have the technology to create something with code to drop and drag in the images. I wish we did. We want to offer something new — metaphorically, a little Cajun seasoning to spice up traditional methods to allow the customer co-create their custom artwork.

casart_Gulf-Coast_Mural_ArtisEverywhere_casartblog — This Casart mural can be created in other configurations with these separate panels

Here’s an example of one of the individual panels with wording. They will also be offered without wording in a white or water background. Be sure to vote in our polls below (please be patient, there’s a little load time).

casart_Pelican_wWords2_blog — Casart Pelican for Gulf Coast recovery

Since you can’t bring your wall artwork with you to show others in public, what about wearing your mural, or parts of it — on your shoulder? I came up with a new Crawfish Cotillion design made with the crawfish that I painted. So, I thought, why not make it into a weekender or beach bag that you can hopefully use on the Gulf Coast beaches? Here are some preliminary designs for this concept, showing two ways to offer the crawfish design (horizontal and vertical or just a vertical pattern) + we’ll have this in many colors. See below for just a few and please vote for your favorites.