Event Ads: High-brow vs Low-brow

Here are a couple of ads for two different events. One's a little more artsy, while the other is a little racier. These are all high resolution pictures so just click on them to see the details.

This one is for some sort of burlesque show. I guess that's what they used to call dancing before it was called dancing. Now burlesque is supposed to be classier than the dancing, and it seems that the pseudo-bomehian hipsters are advertising this event.

It's got a decent title, but I kind of look at the picture and woman doesn't seem too voluptuous to me. It might be because the image is kind of grainy (more like blocky because of pixels), but if the women are supposed to be the focus of the evening then it should be that the women should feature more prominently in the ad. Here she's kind of washed out.


You can tell that this is really artsy because its compared to the divine decadence of the weimar republic berlin. Wow; guess the person who put this together read some history books or some sort of movie on this period on TV. I seriously doubt that anything in this city could rival the cabaret culture in berlin between the world wars. To make a comparison like that the creator of the ad has to be delusional. This is supposed to an ad for a burlesque show, who cares about the historical references. I want to know how hot the dancers/performers are going to be and whether they got a celebrity performer (whose name might be recognizable outside of the little circle of people that organized the event)!!!!!

Now compare that ad with this little gem. This is a two sided flyer.

Here's the first side.The event is called "One Night Stand". That's already got my attention. It lists the location, the date, the DJs, the preformers and the MC.

Here's the other side. Again, the title is there. But on this side they amp up the attention by putting the picture of the girl in the bikini above the title. Here the title and the image work in tandem to get the basic message of the ad across.

An extra detail in the image that i didn't notice until i looked at the high resolution picture (click on it the picture below to see it), is that the girl is pouring milk over her body. Again reall highly suggestive and sexually charged.


Its clear that this ad is a lot better thought out and put together than the first one. So the artsy ad basically falls flat because they lose sight of the big picture -- guess they were too self absorbed or whatever. The second ad has a simple message that it wants to get across and it does it both with the title and the images. Even the artwork in the second ad is better -- the bikini matches the background and the lettering in the foreground. Both events are trying to use "ass" as the selling point, but only one of them does it effectively.