Paint chain spoofs fashion ads

Home Channel News, May 3, 1999 by Monica Toriello

Janovic/Plaza hopes to build its brand in New York City with Calvin Klein-ish mini-billboards

LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. -- Janovic/Plaza, the 17-store paint dealer based here, is employing a sarcastic, brand-building outdoor advertising campaign that makes fun of pretentious fashion marketing of the type popularized by Calvin Klein.

On 30 mini-billboards at street-level subway entrances around New York City, the company is hanging black-and-white posters advertising fake products, only to splatter them with paint a few weeks later.

In March, posters for a men's cologne called "Hunk" went up, showing a young, good-looking couple with no clothes on. In April. a vitamin called "Roids 2000" was promoted. Finally, in May, posters for a brand of men's underwear called "Snug" will appear around the city. All the ads feature scantily-clad models striking provocative poses.

Within a week, paint splatters appear on each panel. Two weeks later, the panels are further defaced, with the "Jan" in Janovic becoming visible. By the third week, the entire billboard is painted over with the slogan "Janovic Paints New York" in the lower right-hand corner.

The campaign, created by New York ad agency Dweck & Campbell, "taps into consumers' growing immunity to the clutter of fashion advertising and pokes fun at it with a New York sense of humor," said the dealer's chief operating officer Adam Janovic, It aims to establish Janovic/Plaza as a fun, savvy retailer with a New York attitude. "We're showing people another way to use paint," he said, only half-jokingly.

"Janovic Paints New York," in fact, isn't just a slogan -- it's the plan. Janovic/Plaza will paint taxicabs, fire escapes, garage doors, security gates, fruit stands and sides of buildings all over Manhattan in an all-out brand-building effort. In the summer, painted people will make appearances in crowded areas, sporting the "Janovic Paints New York" slogan.

Adam Janovic believes that outdoor advertising is the ideal medium because of the pace of life in the big city. "Paint is a difficult item to inspire people about, and people here don't have time to watch television or listen to a radio spot," said Janovic. "Our campaign is an intrusive one. We're getting in front of people during their daily routine."

Dweck & Campbell went so far as to create actual bottles of Hunk cologne and send them to fashion editors, along with a tongue-in-cheek press release that began: "H is for heroic. U is for unnerving. N is for narcissistic. K is for kinky." The release ended with the invitation, "Unleash the Hunk in your man today." The cologne smells like paint thinner.

Janovic declined to reveal the cost of the campaign, saying only that it's an "expensive' one. However, whether New Yorkers have gotten the joke is debatable. Janovic admits that it's hard to tell whether the ads have registered with the public, much less whether they've boosted sales.

"It's an image-oriented campaign, so it's obviously harder to measure than price-and-item ads," said Janovic.

The specialty retailer had 1998 sales of $45 million.