Marketing masterpiece: Crazy good recreation of Van Gogh’s bedroom defies superlatives.

Van Gogh’s newest bedroom

There is so much I like about this concept I don’t know where to begin.

The idea: To celebrate the Art Institute of Chicago’s new exhibition bringing together all three of artist, Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic “Bedroom” paintings, the museum has joined forces with Airbnb to create a stunning real application of Van Gogh’s evocative boudoir, which people soon can actually stay in for ten dollars a night plus the price of exhibit tickets. Good luck with avails. Thankfully, a detailed display marking the renovation is currently available for viewing and is blowing up social media.

Rightly it should. Look at what they’ve done. Inspired by an idea from Chicago advertising agency, Leo Burnett (my alma mater!) and the media agency Spark, brought to life via the uncanny efforts of Ravenswood Studios, the result speaks for itself. We can’t believe our eyes.

This is truly a multi-dimensional “campaign,” employing so many weapons in the modern marketing arsenal: advertising, promotion, PR, experiential and social. They all come together here -flawlessly. So much so, I wouldn’t know which category to enter this in at Cannes. Doesn’t matter. It could and should win in all of them. The idea has an “it” factor we rarely see in any category, let alone all of them. Honestly, in concept and execution, I think this idea blows every ad on the SuperBowl out the proverbial (albeit slanted) door.

What I also love is its timelessness. The 21st Century evoking the 19th. Technology made something so very analog: a celebration of an oil painting and a bedroom! From oldsters to hipsters, who won’t dig this? Who wouldn’t want to experience it?

From the Chicago Tribune article: “It’s sort of crazy how excited people are over the project,” said Glenn Ragaishis, who oversaw the room’s fabrication at Ravenswood Studio, the Lincolnwood firm that, more typically, builds sets for Lyric Opera and other theater companies.

Yes, crazy. Crazy as the artist himself. Crazy good.

The Chicago Tribune article linked above has a photo gallery. Here is another story from Adfreak.

Fascist propaganda takes over NYC subway eliciting criticism along with great buzz.

Lots of scuttlebutt over the use of Nazi imagery on several NYC subway cars to promote Amazon’s new show, The Man in the High Castle, which imagines our world had Hitler won World War 2. The campaign incited many riders to complain and inevitable criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, among others – and it did so without even using Nazism’s most reviled symbol of all, the Swastika.

I’m not surprised by the furor (no pun intended) but I’m not deterred by it either. Propaganda and advertising are supposed to illicit a reaction. That this campaign mixes the two is not gratuitous. The world would indeed be a scary place if Nazi’s were running it. That’s what the show is about. And that’s the point to this campaign. Copy ties it all together. But not before you’ve been flummoxed by the images.

I have spoken numerous times to marketing communications classes as well as at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes about the power of propaganda and its influence in modern advertising. I even use Nazi imagery as an example. It’s kind of a pet subject of mine. Ever since creating the “curiously strong mints” campaign for Altoid’s, I’ve respected the awesome power of signage. Out of home media – be it billboard, poster or experiential, when it’s done well, when it becomes iconic, is a game changer. A painted wall becomes a neighborhood landmark. There’s a semi-permanence to the medium that film and video can never possess.

Throwing stones in glass houses? One might question the campaign’s location. New York City is home to a great many Jews, many of them direct descendants of those who were killed by the Nazi regime. Maybe such images should never be foisted upon them -or anyone- in a public place (especially a railway car). It’s a fair argument. Even in today’s terror-ridden landscape, Nazi Germany still holds a special place in the cellar of evil. Its infamous symbols and propaganda demonstrate this evil with searing intensity.

That said, I’m all in on this idea. Precisely because of just how nervous it makes everyone. That means it’s working.