Optical Illusions in Advertising

I'm a big fan of optical illusions. I think it sort of goes hand in hand with doing magic. Anyway, I came across an ad by Clearasil that uses an optical illusion and I wanted to share it. The caption at the bottom says "As soon as black spots appear, use Clearasil".

This ad works because the illusion relates directly with the product it attempts to sell AND it is cool enough that people want to share it. You also can't escape the reference to the product.

Too many ads are created for television that have people laughing and talking about it the next day at the water cooler, but no one know what the ad was selling. These type commercials win awards for the agencies that create them, but they drive the companies that hire them to the poor house. Creativity should only celebrated when it adds VALUE.

Sometimes value can be added in ways that are not measured in dollars and cents. But when a company hires an ad agency to generate product awareness and thus increase sales, that CAN be measured in units and dollars.

--Julian Franklin

P.S. I got this image from the blog of a friend of mine in India. You can check out his original post here: http://smokecanopy.blogspot.com/2006/01/clearasil.html