The answer to your ultimate traveling dreams is this travel pillow, which is undoubtedly an original invention in the market. The MonPere was a project which started on Kickstarter and managed to raise $112,000 (Canadian), which was three times more than the expected goal.

The MonPere is a hand-shaped travel pillow which was designed to offer consumers a great in-flight snooze. The pillow was invented by Sylvain Bérubé, a Canadian sports therapist who saw how hard it was for his daughter to travel comfortably and wanted to do something about this. His invention led to the hand-pillow which gives your head proper support, while also keeping your back and neck in line while you sleep on the move.

The successfully-funded invention allows you to bend the pillow in a variety of shapes, meaning your head will always be adequately supported, and it is strong enough to rest comfortably thanks to the silicone inside. This bendy but resilient silicone has a washable cotton cover and is guaranteed to give you a comfortable rest, regardless of how uncomfortable your seat or spot may be.

The positive outcome of this is that users of the pillow will not lose out on vital sleep and arrive at their destination in a better mood than they would have had they lost out on sleep. According to MonPere, skipping necessary sleep can also increase back pain and the risk of heart issues, so it is especially important to be considerate of your health when traveling.

After four years of testing and trialing, the hand-shaped pillow was ready for the market, and the design proved best after ‘countless tests and prototypes.’ MonPere will allow travelers to forget the days their head would bounce around while trying to sleep, and putting yourself into these hands will certainly have positive results.

You probably know that advertising is an expensive game, judging by the number of commercials we’re bombarded with on television, social media, print media, etc. Some of these ads are good, some are OK, and some are downright terrible. Good ads are made by people who have a real passion for their craft and think outside of the box to convey an idea and connect with the audience. We found some examples of people who pushed the boundaries of advertising.

“Sometimes there’s a man for a time and place. And that’s the dude.” Fans of The Big Lebowski will instantly recognize this line and the below image from the opening five minutes of the movie.

In it we see The Dude prowling the grocery store for some milk in his bathrobe, which he ends up paying for with a $0.69 check. This creative storeowner surely would have attracted some customers based on the clever promotion and iconic image of The Dude with a carton of half-and-half in hand.

We LOVE this flyer ad for haircuts. Honestly, we’re always bombarded with commercials for shampoos and other hair products, but when do you see an actual ad for a haircut – or at least one as original as this?

We wonder how many people ended up taking more than one number slip, just to get a glimpse at what – or who – was hiding behind those locks. They probably left with a smile on their face and ended up giving the hairstylist a call.

The Sims series has been around for what seems like an eternity (the first game was released in the year 2000, to be exact), and in the time has become one of the best-selling franchises in gaming history.

People are drawn to the game’s ability to create an alternate and typically ludicrous life for their character in the game, and for people who get sick of dealing with their family on a regular basis, this game probably provides a lot of relief – as this well placed bus stop poster alludes to.

Artists have been using light in their work for millennia, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t appreciated to this day when original work comes around – and this piece definitely fits the bill.

Pictured is a Japanese movie advertisement printed on two sides of a piece of newspaper. But, when held under light, you get the full picture – quite literally. An ingenious piece of work that belongs in a gallery, rather than a newspaper.

Here’s a great example of using space – and in this case, height – to get a literally huge message across to as many people as possible, and using humans as living, interchangeable ‘props’ in the ad at the same time!

When viewed from above, these people look like fleas clamoring all over this pooch. Your eye can’t help but be drawn to it. Plus, who doesn’t like dogs? A great advertisement.

Another great example of using space to deliver a subtle yet powerful message. This ad uses negative space beautifully to promote pet adoption. Negative space is the space between, within and surrounding an object in an image, often to form another image or symbol.

It may take you a few moments to make out the animals, but once you do – combined with the sweet images in the positive space – you have a touching and poignant ad.

Sure, this ad technically falls under the spectrum of print media, seeing as it’s a photo. But the beauty of said photo is that it makes you wish you were in that room to see just how cool this Lego Moby Dick-inspired ‘sculpture’ looks in real life!

Seriously, all we want to do is get to that room right now and touch the whale. Such a simple and clever piece of work, using your own product and a generic copy of a DVD about whales to generate a ton of interest. Well done Lego.

We’re fairly sure this poster was put up in the London underground, given the curvature of the wall. It’s prime real estate for advertisements (and not cheap), so you have to make the most out of it, given it will draw thousands of eyeballs a day.

This gym company went with the direct approach and injected a bit of dry humor for a good measure. Their not-so-subliminal message? If you come and work out at our gyms, we’ll help you live longer. Simple, but effective.

Back in 2019 Samsung partnered with JCDecaux Singapore to create an out-of-home wireless charging station, located at 10 selected bus stops around Singapore.

The press release at the time stated: “The public will be able to interact with these builds and experience the Wireless PowerSharing feature of the latest Samsung Galaxy S10+ flagship smartphone.” An outstanding piece of advertising that wonderfully combines utility and entertainment.

How’s this for a bit of product placement in the best possible location? The geniuses at Sony’s gaming marketing arm (and/or their advertising agency) had the foresight to stick a poster of the upcoming game Horizon Zero Dawn, which featured Edinburgh Castle, on a bus stop just outside of the real thing!

This move surely inspired a lot of Edinburghers (not a food, that’s what they’re called) – as well as lot of other Scots – to buy the game to see how the famous castle is portrayed. Lovely stuff.

Signage is one of the oldest advertising techniques in the world. Stick a big piece of wood to a two-by-four, slap up your message in big, bold letters, and voila! Instant advertising.

Of course, for such a technique to work the words you employ must hit home to your audience. In this case, the message is perfect. It’s simple, it hits the target audience, and, most importantly, it’s true.

When all else fails, and you feel that you’re simply not getting your message across, plant a big picture of the most popular actor/actress, meme or pop culture reference right next to your product.

It’s a ploy not used by man (presumably because of copyright infringement), but for this local grocery store, they had no problem using the Ice King from Game of Thrones to draw some attention to their goods.

We love a good bit of wordplay in advertisements – especially if they include a pun or two. But to fit two in whilst also referencing Eurythmics to sell cheese? That’s magic.

Moreover, the clever people who did this work at a Swedish store! So that’s a Swedish sign written in English to sell French cheese using the lyrical frame of a British duo. There has to be a joke in there somewhere…

Social media marketing, much like advertising, is a multi-billion dollar industry. Of course, large firms and companies spend countless dollars advertising on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But what about bringing a physical version of the ‘Like’ button into a store? Now that’s something different.

The real-life button adds interactivity to your shop, and you can see what products fellow shoppers enjoy – a handy tool if you’re on the fence as to what to buy for the week!

You can’t go wrong with using imagery from one of the most popular T.V. series of all times to help sell your products. When the image in question shows Queen Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones holding a dragon egg which looks suspiciously like an avocado, you’re on to a winner.

After all, this grocery store obviously knows how much of a pain it can be to find a perfectly ripe avocado. A bit of humor – and the Mother of Dragons – goes a long way.

This is a perfect example of guerilla marketing (an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise interactions in order to promote a product or service). Many of the best guerilla marketing campaigns use common features in urban environments to great effect.

Take what Procter & Gamble did with Mr. Clean and a city crosswalk. By having one stripe painted bright white and adding Mr. Clean’s torso to it, they sent a powerful but simple message: “Our product can make even the dirtiest surfaces clean.” The brand is so powerful, they didn’t even need to add a logo to it!

FedEx is a massive company that is known, among other things, for its quality marketing. They even have a subtle marketing symbol in their logo (you can make out an arrow in the negative space between the ‘e’ and the ‘ex’).

FedEx has a legion of delivery trucks and vans at their disposal. So why not use them to deliver products and sell a message at the same time? Some genius had the back of FedEx’s trucks painted in their competitor DHL’s colors which, along with the message ‘Always First’, gives the illusion of FedEx speeding ahead of the competition.

Here’s another innovative idea that allows customers to interact with the product on airport shuttles. Why shuttles? Well, the ad is selling IWC’s Big Pilot Watch – a range of high-end watches based on the pioneering days of aviation.

By making hanging straps on the shuttles look like the watches, standing passengers could ‘try on’ the timepiece on their way to the plane, and perhaps be inspired to buy one themselves. If nothing else, it guarantees a ton of eyeballs on your product. Ingenious!

Say what you will about McDonald’s, but the fast-food behemoth knows how to market their products. We could have chosen any number of campaigns that the company has used in the past, but this one is our favorite.

As part of their campaign to inform the public about their free coffee promotion in Canada, the company turned a regular streetlight into a giant McDonald’s coffee pot, pouring coffee into a giant McDonalds’ coffee cup. There’s no way you wouldn’t notice that when walking down the street!

You may have noticed how big companies use vehicles to market themselves to great effect. The bigger, the noise, the more likely to catch your attention – the better.

Braun used this strategy to advertise their electric toothbrushes, painting a 3D Oral-B brush on the side of street cleaning trucks. With the truck’s powerful cleaning bristles painted white, the ‘toothbrush’ stands out beautifully against the black tires – a great way to show how powerful they think the toothbrush is at cleaning.

There’s something to be said for smart advertising in the right places for your target audience. For Irish stout maker Guinness, that was at the pool table – more specifically, on the tip of pool cues.

Pool players are likely to enjoy a drink while they play, and if you have a brand’s logo and distinctive black & white colors in your face every time you line up a shot, you’re more than likely to order that brand’s drink! The positioning of the ad on a tool reminds potential customers that Guinness is a friendly, helpful, and resourceful brand.

Tech giant Apple is a master of marketing and completely reinvented how to sell electronics to consumers when they launched the ‘1984’ commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer.

Fast forward to years later, and the company is back at it, using the canvas of an escalator to demonstrate just how many apps their new iPhone can hold. The tagline reiterates the idea, and your eye can’t help but be drawn to it as you scale the escalator. Who would have thought steps on an escalator could be used to sell phones?

People who have a genuine fear of heights are unlikely to ever even contemplate going skydiving, but for the rest of us who may be sitting on the fence, sometimes all you need is a little ‘push’.

For Swiss Skydive, they understood that they didn’t have a ton of money to use on advertising their school, but came up with a brilliant cost-effective idea that garnered a huge amount of attention. The marketers put special panes in elevators in multistory buildings so that users would feel like they’re in free fall. Very clever!

If you were asked to name one company that makes batteries, we’d wager most of you would name Duracell. After all, Duracell is the world’s number one consumer battery company by market share. They’ve reached this point in part through clever marketing, like this example.

By adding flashlight decals to existing sources of light, Duracell puts their logo front and center on dark nights (since our eyes are drawn to sources of light), while also implying that their batteries can power anything, from buses to phone booths.

In terms of advertising cost vs revenue, this surely has to be one of the greatest guerilla marketing campaigns of all time.

Indian electronics company Vijay Sales must have spent a pittance on cooking utensils, stencils, and paint. They then placed said utensils – typical barbeque utensils like spatulas, tongs, and skewers – on top of street drains, giving the impression of a round but very filthy barbecue. Add in your messaging and contact information, and the result is a cost-effective but brilliant advertisement.

International Business Machines Corporation – or IBM – is a pretty innovative company. They came up with the ATM and the credit card strip, so it should come as no surprise to learn that their marketing department is one of the best in the business.

In this series of practical ads, IBM used a ramp, a shelter, and a bench, with the tagline “Smart Ideas for Smarter Cities” to solve outdoor problems with practical solutions – all while reminding people of how innovative a company they are.

We love any kind of marketing campaign designed to spread awareness and help the environment and animals. Kenyan hotel chain Sarova managed to do both with a powerful campaign.

You see, Sarova engages in lots of socially responsible activities, including planting trees, working with local communities, and raising awareness around environmental issues. For this campaign, they placed a life-like cheetah on top of a lamppost to raise awareness that humans are destroying animal habits. People on the street would of course notice the animal, then read the “save the trees” sign underneath.

Maximum Ride is a series of young adult fantasy novels by author James Patterson. It can be tricky to sell books – especially to a younger audience – but one sure-fire way of driving interest in a novel is by using huge decals that make it seem as if you’re standing on the edge of a building.

The premise of the Maximum Ride series centers on a group of children who can fly, so this campaign in New Zealand made these displays so kids could get a sense of what that might feel like.

German company Tondeo made clever use of a city’s natural environment to help sell their mini trimmers. The company placed posters with the face of a man in and around bushes and branches to make it seem as if he had a frankly aggressive amount of hair coming out of his nose and ears.

The ads are simple to understand, get straight to the point, and are also humourous – no doubts residents of the city will have been talking about these posters for days on end, and with it, Tondeo.

Escalators are a great location for a creative guerilla marketing campaign. The target audience – which in this case would be anyone on the escalator – literally have no choice but to follow the belt to your desired message awaiting them on the final step.

In this case, marketers were drawing attention to the release of the new Simpsons Movie, using donuts and a hungry Homer Simpson to promote the film. A fun campaign that surely went down a treat (pun intended) with kids.

Pop-up shops have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their success in drawing crowds and promoting a business or product launch – the quirkier, the better!

So when a global company like adidas decided to devote their infinite resources to their own pop-shop, they didn’t disappoint. To celebrate the release of the Stan Smith trainer, adidas built a pop-up in Amsterdam in the form of a giant shoebox, complete with an interactive floor, a ‘Stan Yourself’ station, and a 3D printer for personalized lace locks.

When you have to promote a new ride for Universal, you’d better do something big. Such was the case for the marketing team at the theme park in California, who needed to drum up interest for their new King Kong 3-D ride.

And do something big they did, carving out giant footprints in the sands of Santa Monica beach and even deploying a crushed lifeguard vehicle to create a wild scene, straight out of a movie. That did the trick, and people couldn’t stop talking about the promotion and the new ride.

Depending on the kind of person you are, you either love or loathe a trip to Ikea, where there are endless things to touch, rooms to explore, and items to buy. One could get lost for an entire day in an Ikea store.

The Swedish company has often used its own stores as marketing vehicles, in this case redesigning the primary staircase to look like drawers to show customers how convenient and adaptable their products are.

Vending machines are all over the place, and usually have one big image of a major soft drink company like Coke or Pepsi on it. So to stand out among the crowd (as it were), you need pretty unique imagery, selling point, or both.

UNICEF did exactly that with their dirty water vending machine. People would pay 1$ to see what would come out of the machine, with a bottle of dirty water dispensed, each ‘infected’ with a different disease. All of the money was donated to the cause of providing clean drinking water to the poorest communities on earth.

Every city on the planet is filled with buses – after all, they’re a great means of getting around town. This is why companies pay a lot of money to put up their advertisements on the vehicle, both inside and on the paintwork.

The Copenhagen zoo hired an advertising firm to make a pretty impressive piece of artwork of a snake crushing a bus, alongside the message, “The wildest place in town.” Who wouldn’t be intrigued to go see the reptiles at the zoo after that?

Dental hygiene is important, especially in today’s world where access to sugar-laden products is rife. Alas, all too often people don’t pay attention and continue to snack away without thinking of the inevitable tooth fillings down the line.

Colgate took a more direct approach to this issue in Thailand, handing out ice cream bars for which the sticks doubled as a wooden toothbrush with the Colgate logo and the message “don’t forget.” A great way of using opposing products to get your point across.

Anyone who’s had a splitting headache knows that it feels like, well, your head splitting open! Pharmaceutical company Advil, to their credit, also knows this, as it was able to create a simple marketing campaign based on the pain all of us have experienced at one point or another.

Using the simple lamppost as a tool, Advil created these posters in such a way that they pierce this unfortunate man’s skull. But with the message, “More powerful than pain,” we’re led to believe that their product can nullify the nasty effect of a brutal headache.

Mars is known for making some pretty big candy bars, ranging from ‘fun-size’ to ‘king-size’ (which weighed 84 grams!). But truck size? Now that’s something else.

To get the word out, Mars used 3D-design and painting to craft an actual truck-sized Mars bar – something so massive you couldn’t miss it. Imagine driving by this thing on the highway. That’s the kind of in-your-face messaging that generates results!

Sometimes marketing campaigns are primarily directed at existing users. They’re so unique, with messaging only users of said product would understand, that they simply confuse people unfamiliar with the company or its product.

That’s what Sony was banking on here with this truly unique print ad for the PlayStation 3 controller, showing a set of human teeth with the iconic symbols from the device. Their existing customers can totally relate to this messaging, as they understand the bond between man and machine.

Shark Week is a week-long block dedicated solely to shark documentaries on the Discovery Channel. It happens every year, and it’s hugely popular (it’s broadcast in over 72 countries worldwide).

In order to promote the program, Discovery Channel Australia placed shark-bitten surfboards (fake, obviously) with information on Shark Week on multiple beaches to draw up interest. It should be added that one of the show’s primary goals is to promote conservationism, as sharks are vital to the ocean ecosystem.

We wonder how many people took a giant leap off the final step of the escalator to avoid this downright scary croc mural. This is guerilla marketing at it’s finest – who expects to be greeted by a snarling crocodile (or is that an alligator?) at the bottom of an escalator?

Well, this National Geographic campaign for a crocodile documentary in Brazil did exactly what it needed to, grabbing everyone’s attention as it was placed in a prime location in a shopping wall.

The McDonald’s logo is one of the most recognizable in the world – one could even argue that it’s the MOST recognizable. As such, people already know what the company and product are all about, but that doesn’t stop their elite marketing team from dishing out reminders now and again.

In this instance, they had a crosswalk in Zurich painted to resemble some fries in an attempt to get people to visit McDonald’s rather than independent food stalls during festival Zurifes. We’d rather see independent stalls get more business, but we don’t make the rules.

Standing out amongst the crowd of beauty products is a challenging task. The market in many countries is oversaturated, so advertisers need to find a way to catch the eye of potential customers in creative ways.

LashBlast decided to do this by painting a turnstile to resemble their mascara wand, set next to their poster – all of which serves to drive home the message that their product gives you long eyelashes. The campaign received lots of media attention, grew sales by 15%, and made LashBlast the number one mascara in Canada.

Another term for guerilla marketing is “ambient advertising” – which refers to the placement of ads on unusual objects or in unusual places, where you wouldn’t usually expect to find them.

In this case, German-based pasta restaurant Mondo Pasta cleverly made the rope anchoring a boat resemble a piece of pasta that was being slurped up by a man clearly enjoying his meal. Some tidy messaging on the side of the sticker completed the simple and effective ad.

Fans of the iconic Stephen King novel It will instantly recognize what the red balloon on the sewer grate meant when the advertising campaign for the movie of the same name was launched in 2017.

Millions of people have since seen the movie, so know that the red balloon is a symbol of the terrifying Pennywise the Clown, but for those who knew nothing of the book seeing a balloon tied to sewer openings and grates must have sparked their curiosity. They presumably went over for a look, and a conveniently-placed message made them aware of the movie.