Walking to work today, I saw these confusing posters. I had no idea what these posters were for - I could not make heads or tails out of the image that was used to create them - the brain, the heart (I didn't know it was supposed to be a heart, I found that out later) and the final image of the spine.
When I got into work, I looked up the website isbrave.com and found a really confusing site that is set up like a blog. There is an "artsy" video and toward the bottom there is a Twitter looking application that states, What is Brave? - where you're supposed to post a comment telling Diesel - who or what is brave. Whatever you post, will then turn up as a statement under it. At this point I still didn't know what they were promoting. Only after I clicked on the news button was it revealed to me. This is a promotional site for Diesel's new fragrance - Only the Brave. They are also using the rapper Common to promote this new fragrance. Diesel states that, "Common embodies what it means to be brave and how to overcome adversity." You can find links on isbrave.com for their isbrave Flickr page, isbrave YouTube page and isbrave Twitter page. I'm sure there is a Facebook page for this product, but I couldn't find the link to it on the site.
Now I'm sure Diesel intended these ads to peak your interest and purposely kept it vague so that you would go to their site. But I found the whole experience very annoying. There was no immediate payoff, you didn't know right away what you were looking at, they created links to all the newest social sites with no purpose - and really no content, no good navigational direction on their site and there is barely mention of the product they are promoting.
What is brave? - comes across as though they are full of themselves, who cares what is brave? It sounds as though they are using this statement, "what is brave?" to promote some sort of charity or cause, but they're not. They are using it to promote their cologne instead. The name of the the cologne, Only the Brave and the question what is brave? is a play off of there indian head logo that Diesel uses. All this rubbed me the wrong way. There is no wit or clever idea, just brashness and artificialness to their campaign. Thumbs down for this promotional campaign. I expected better from Diesel.
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