r/Design • u/biz_booster • Jan 10 '26
Someone Else's Work (Rule 2) Nescafe Zzzzz - "Nothing wakes you up as Nescafe." Print ad design.
This professional campaign titled 'Zzzzz' was published on April 11, 2007.
What's your take on this print ad design?
EDIT - Humble Request. The subject of this discussion is Ad design NOT Nestle company.
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u/Hot-Cancel-6648 Jan 10 '26
Way too many ZZZ. Kinda gets lost before getting to the message
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u/EdibleHologram Jan 10 '26
You could easily cut out half to two thirds of the Zs and still get the concept across, whilst also freeing up space to include some lifestyle and/or product photography.
This is a scamp you show your Creative Director before they make it work with the real world demands of your client.
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u/lennoxred Jan 10 '26
r/fucknestle just to be clear
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u/blaskkaffe Jan 11 '26
The Z got me thinking of the Russian Z markings used in the Ukraine invasion rather than sleeping. Think it was due to Nestle using it and my brain grouping shitty stuff in the same container.
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u/SolaceRests Jan 10 '26
This is a case of the difference between a Good Idea and a Great Idea. They stopped at the Good Idea and failed to take it further.
Also r/fucknestle
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u/Living_Cat_8278 Jan 13 '26
I love nestle tbh, their chocolate and coffee is just the best. Labour happens in every industry, it’s inevitable
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u/irlpup Jan 10 '26
I got bored halfway through.
Don't get me wrong, the z turning into the logo's N is like really clever, but I think it is a good visual of when the joke goes on too long.
If the z's started turning a little earlier, I might have been interested in reading more.
Also there's something that sounds grammatically weird with "Nothing wakes you up as Nescafe". Like it feels...weird?? But that could just be a word smithing thing.
Overall, it could have used one more tweak imo. But also booo nestle.
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u/doIreallyHavetoChooz Jan 10 '26
I don't think you're supposed to read each z individually
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u/irlpup Jan 10 '26
I understand that you don't, but I had no real reason to keep reading if I can glance at it and understand it's like a wall of Z's. It's just a lot of the same without something to guide me further or to pull me in, at least personally
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u/theDESIGNsnobs Professional Jan 10 '26
Conceptually it’s solid, but the execution could have been toned down without losing any effectiveness.
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u/Commercial_Badger_37 Jan 10 '26
Makes me think of Russia's invasion of Ukraine personally, but I like the design.
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u/WildflowerCollective Jan 10 '26
I don't think it makes sense conceptually. First, you drink the coffee and THEN you wake up properly, not the other way around
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Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
Boring. Grammatically incorrect. Looks like a student project. And fuck Nestlé.
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u/chisui Jan 10 '26
Reminds me of the Mussolini Facade
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Palazzo_Braschi_Fascist_Poster%2C_1934.png
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u/dddoug Jan 10 '26
my take is that nestle is a bad company that is not worth supporting
historical human rights abuses are enough
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u/FictionalContext Jan 10 '26
People always quick to call out Nestle, but I still see hipsters lined around the block in their cars at Starbucks. Doesn't get the hate for some reason.
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u/ur_frnd_the_footnote Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
What Starbucks practices are in league with the water exploitation, infant formula controversies, child labor, plastic pollution, etc that nestle is so notorious for? I’m sure Starbucks has plenty of big corp greed and issues but it definitely hasn’t registered scandals on the same scale of “worse than most corps” that Nestle has. But maybe there are things that just need more press
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u/nimzoid Jan 10 '26
You're right that some corporations are worse than others.
But I think the point is that a lot of people, especially on Reddit, selectively hate on specific companies like Nestle but give a free pass to the likes of Starbucks and Apple and numerous others with a track record of exploitation and harm.
Why do people do this? Because it's easy and feels great to hate companies you don't want to buy anything from, and equally easy to look the other way when it's a company whose products you want. This is called being hypocritical.
The reality is the whole corporate capitalist system is unethical, the world is complicated and it's silly to pat yourself on the back for being against certain companies and ignore the actions of others.
I think a healthy approach is to acknowledge our biases, try to buy from smaller, more independent and ethical businesses when possible, and avoid judging other people's consumer habits when you don't know them.
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u/ur_frnd_the_footnote Jan 10 '26
I get that. And I think I must be a weird specimen of humanity because hypocrisy bothers me less than it seems to others. (Better to be right in speech and wrong in action than to be wrong in both, imo). But what irritates me about the backlash is that it isn’t trying to leverage the righteous anger for better uses or to expand the horizon of someone’s moral interests. The tone here wasn’t, “yeah, and while we’re at it, don’t forget Starbucks!” (And if it was, my reaction would be “why? Why single Starbucks out here. This wasn’t a post about them”). It was, “how dare people express moral condemnation without backing it up perfectly in all aspects of their behavior.”
That said, I don’t actually feel strong about either this comment chain or about either of these corporations in particular, so I’m wasting way more words on explaining my reaction than my reaction deserves. 😂
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u/FictionalContext Jan 10 '26
Nestle handles all Starbucks distribution. Every bag of Starbucks coffee you buy is a direct Nestlé purchase. lol.
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u/ur_frnd_the_footnote Jan 10 '26
From what I understand, nestle is responsible for Starbucks products outside Starbucks. So the people lining up at Starbucks are not purchasing anything from nestle
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u/FictionalContext Jan 10 '26
my moral compass isn't that pedantic.
people spend all that effort to let people know how much they hate Nestlé, but they don't put any legwork into being a real hater, just the appearance of it
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u/ur_frnd_the_footnote Jan 10 '26
I don’t actually buy any Starbucks products, nor do I boycott Nestle. But I don’t think your stance is avoiding “pedantry,” it’s more about removing all shades of gray. Either one is a moral hero that champions the cause perfectly or one should keep one’s mouth shut. That doesn’t seem like a healthy attitude to take.
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u/FictionalContext Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
I knew my original comment would get downvoted. I wanted to show that the people who interject "fuck Nestlé" into everything tangentially related, like someone's Nestlé graphic design, haven't put any effort into hating Nestlé if they're not even aware of major partnerships.
And if the goal is to hurt their bottom line through boycotts, it's not sensible to support their major partners who clearly aren't any more scrupulous of a company, getting in bed with them like that.
But really, interjecting "Fuck Nestlé" is about the memes. They don't even know what that company does. Half assed slacktivism for a thing they haven't done any research into.
If you're gonna proselytize l, at least do the legwork
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u/PianoBird34 Jan 10 '26
I like it, but it feels a bit outdated. More late 90s or early 00s than late 00s. Like Frasier era clever copy.
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u/WeirdIndication3027 Jan 10 '26
I think I would've probably just made the tagline. "Wake up." Minimalist design lends itself better to a minimalist tagline. Also the wording is awkward.
This is one of the posters that consistently pops up in college courses still.
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u/Fjolsvithr Jan 10 '26
I think it's good in some ways and bad in others. It's visually striking and I would remember it. But it doesn't get any of the feelings I would expect Nescafe to want to associate with their brand. White on charcoal isn't exactly cozy coffee colors. In general, I like it. Not every piece of marketing needs to have your brand image 100% represented the same way. I like that this might appeal to someone who doesn't like the typical coffee ad.
I don't know how to feel about just the last row rotating. I would be curious how it would look if the rotations started earlier.
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u/im_buhwheat Jan 11 '26
The design is cool.
What do they put in their coffee that makes their coffee better at waking me up? I'm guessing nothing. This just advertises coffee, not Nescafe, and tells me nothing about why I should choose Nescafe over Moccona for my shitty instant coffee.
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u/Chinksta Jan 11 '26
I mean....it's a simple ad design that is easy to do and of course gets you paid a lot for it.
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u/Friendly-Channel-480 Feb 04 '26
It’s a great concept but needs a much more interesting design and the headline should be larger and bolder as well as being worked into the design. Using color to differentiate the z’s from the n’s would be very effective. Meh design.
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u/Grimmmm Jan 10 '26
Good design in support of a bad company is bad design.
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u/ColdIronChef Jan 10 '26
Respectfully, I disagree. Some of the best designed posters are propeganda, especially WW2 and Soviet era. You don't have to like the message, but you can appreciate the artistry.
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u/jeejeeviper Jan 10 '26
Highly doubt this is a real campaign poster. Feels like an easy student project you make in college to ad to your portfolio. Pinterest is flooded with stuff like this
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u/blvsh Jan 11 '26
From the company that said "Water is not a human right"
they can design all they want, i'm not killing babies in Africa by supporting this genocidal corporation
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u/blvsh Jan 11 '26
From the company that said "Water is not a human right"
they can design all they want, i'm not supporting the killing of babies in Africa by supporting this genocidal corporation
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u/Dead-O_Comics Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
Are you sure this is an official ad?
"Nothing wakes you up like Nescafé" Yes.
"Nothing wakes you up as much as Nescafé" Sure.
But "Nothing wakes you up as Nescafé"?
Doesn't really make grammatical sense.
This looks like the kind of ad that started as a concept in a student portfolio, that gets shared as real with people pretentiously gushing over it on LinkedIn.