COP 03 / Practical / Ten commandments & 7 sins

One idea that I wanted to experiment with was the idea of featuring the deadly sins, or the ten commandments in the promotional material / tagline. The idea revolves around the concept of repentance, forgiveness from God for any sins the consumer has subjected themselves to. The posters would feature images of the sins, and I wanted to experiment with methods of 'concealing' and erasing the sin, such as filling with colour, changing the colour and distortion.

Since I have established a developed aesthetic for the branding this was translated onto the following experiments. I chose to use renaissance paintings as the 'sin' to create a juxtaposition between the contemporary branding for holy water (using a very impactful wide sans serif and glyphs).

Problems I found with this experiment was that it was hard to find relevant paintings for the other sins, so this would make the whole promotion quite redundant if there was only certain commandments/sins featured.

'Repent with Holy Water' incorporates a sense of authority by using a imperative sentence, relating back to my research into brand theory and using Vance Packard's theories on how advertisements gain sale; e.g “The sale of billions of dollars worth of products hinged to a large extent upon successfully manipulating or coping with our guilt feelings, fears, anxieties, hostilities, loneliness feelings, inner tensions” (Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1980, P 74). The use of the word 'repent' may instill a feeling of guilt and compulsion, prompting the consumer to buy the product, to feel closer to their God and forgiveness.

Although this idea has weight to it, it does not seem to work efficiently as an advertising campaign at this stage. More experiments with other ideas will give me a better understanding of what it is I want to communicate, and working out how to incorporate more of Vance's theories.