Advertising

Motel 6 Road Trip Through Time

Motel 6 chose an interesting way to tell consumers that they’ve been around for a half century. They “time traveled” both the station wagon and the family of four inside through the decades by morphing them into the latest styles. For those who are baffled about how Motel 6 got its name, here’s the story. The motel chain was founded in 1962 by two building contractors in Santa Barbara, California, who figured out how to offer bargain rates by calculating out the cost of land, construction and ongoing maintenance. By cutting out any frills, they decided they could offer rooms at $6 a night and still make a profit – hence, the name Motel 6. Of course, inflation and other factors have caused room rates to go up multifold over the past 50 years, but relative to other hotels, it is still considered affordable to penny-pinching families.

This commercial was made by Dallas ad agency, The Richards Group, which has been running Motel 6 ad campaigns since the 1980s. They were the ones who came up with Motel 6’s famous tagline “We’ll leave the light on for you.” The Richards Group teamed with the production firm King and Country (K&C), which made the 30-second spot from start to finish – production, direction, editorial, animation and VFX – completely inhouse. Rick Gledhill directed for K&C.

Architecture

A Red Building That Is Totally Green

A spectacular façade isn’t all that the Kuggen, an office building in Gothenburg, Sweden, is all about. It is totally sustainable too. Designed by Winngardh Arkitektkontor, the Kuggen was inspired by a cog wheel (hence its name in Swedish) and the saw-toothed edges of a leaf.

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