Hasta La Creative!

When I worked on the Coors business at Integer back in the day, the brewery provided a lot of perks, primarily in the form of baseball, basketball, hockey and concert tickets. Broncos tickets were above my pay scale at the time.

Not surprisingly, the King of Beers plays the perks game at an even higher level.

According to NJ.com, Bud Light is leasing the 146,000-ton Norwegian Getaway for Super Bowl weekend 2014. The brand plans to use the ship as a floating hotel for 4,000 weekend guests.

At this time, the ship is still under construction in Germany. It’s scheduled to arrive in New York Jan. 26. The big game will be played February 2nd at MetLife Stadium. The game is being billed as “the first outdoor cold weather Super Bowl.”

Sadly, Joe Six-Pack won’t be able to book a room on the party boat — rooms are reserved for Bud Light VIPs, including key distributors and retailers.

David Daniels, marketing director for Bud Light speaking to ROI said, “An experience like this drives brand health and equity, and that will translate into sales long-term.”

You might wonder why a B2B event like this would impact sales. In beer, as in many things, you need shelf space at retail. No shelf space, no sales.

The post Bud Light To Anchor 4000-Room Party Boat in NYC for Super Bowl XLVIII VIPs appeared first on AdPulp.

In August of 2012, we blurbed about four creative twentysomethings (Digitaria writer/designer Grant Spanier, account planner/former Campbell Mithun Lucky 13 intern Laura Fitzpatrick, former CM copywriter Vince Koci and filmmaker Jake Woodbridge) going on a brief roadtrip out west “in search of inspiration — risking life, limb and Dysentery in the name of creative enlightenment.” Well, nobody got Dysentery, but more than a year later, the travelers are looking for some Kickstarter funding to help turn their 15-day roadtrip footage into a fully-produced documentary. The total cost: $30,000.

The three-minute-and-twenty-second pitch video offers a sneak peek of the journey and quite a few talking heads. The questions seem to focus on the origin of creativity, mainly about whether the American West is the most creative region in the country. As a Northeasterner, my reflexive response requires me to disagree with that idea completely, but it can’t hurt to ask. In the name of (social) science, right?

And as someone who took a cross-country roadtrip with a video camera myself, I can understand the allure of driving out west. The West Coast may not be more creative than the East Coast, or the Midwest, or wherever you live, but there are different creative approaches and mindsets out there, and exploring whatever those differences may be is an impressive creative endeavor in its own right. I’m interested to see what their finished project turns up.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Proving John St.'s point that prankvertising has gone way too far, here's a stunt from Brazil in which an actor dressed up as Chucky, the diminutive Child's Play villain, ambushed people at bus stops by crashing through the glass of a Curse of Chucky ad—and proceeded to chase them with a knife. The stunt appears to be the work of a TV show, though it's clearly an ad for the movie, too. The best part is when the victims fight back, sending Chucky himself running for cover. It's all quite over the edge, though when you're promoting a horror movie, anything goes. Via Disco Chicken, who really hates this kind of stuff.

If there’s one thing the Internet loves (aside from cats and pornography), it’s cheesy celebrities from bygone eras. This has accounted for the revival of figures like Rick Astley, who has reemerged in the public consciousness thanks to rickrolling. RPA seeks to cash in on the phenomenon with their “Happy Honda Days” campaign, featuring Michael Bolton, the man once referred to as a “no-talent ass clown” in Office Space who returns to advertising after stints in spots like the one for Optimum earlier this year.

The campaign contains four new spots, all of which feature Bolton singing. Each spot begins by asking “What does it feel like to get a great deal at Happy Honda Days?” before answering with an original holiday song from Michael Bolton. (These would have been much funnier if they had made Bolton sing “When a Man Loves a Honda,” but I digress…) Our favorite is the spot featured above, in which Bolton’s singing is met by blank stares (probably the most honestly depicted reaction of the four spots/how we would react in that situation). As you can surmise, RPA went for the goofy approach with this campaign, in the hopes that people find the spots memorable. It would help if there was a little more variation among the four 30 second ads, as they all feel like basically the same spot. In addition to the TV campaign, there will be a live social media event on November 22nd featuring Bolton delivering personalized messaged under the promoted hashtag #XOXOBolton, as well as print and radio campaigns.

We don’t know about you, but we can’t see or hear anything about Michael Bolton without thinking of this. Credits and second “Happy Honda Days” spot after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sometimes, the best parodies are the most subtle. Case in point: This truly impressive face dub of disgraced Toronto Mayor Rob Ford onto the body of Jean-Claude Van Damme in his "Epic Split" ad for Volvo Trucks. There's really nothing to it beyond the face switch, but the effect is so perfectly executed by New York-based visual effects shop Artjail, it's plenty satisfying. "We were completely in awe of the Volvo-Van Damme 'Epic Split' spot," Artjail writes in its YouTube summary, "and remain completely in awe of Mayor Ford's epic lifestyle north of the border." Check out Artjail's demo reel after the jump and see some images of how it was done over on Fstoppers. Hat tip to Evan Travers for sending me this one.

Last year, AgencySpy brought you coverage of graphic designer Jason Sadler, some guy who wanted to make selling himself out as crazy and overblown as possible.

He began his foray into the world of turning himself into a walking billboard for money with IWearYourShirt.com, a website where people could volunteer to wear sponsors; t-shirts around for a fee because they were really hard up or something. Next, Sadler decided to take his experiments into human commercialism to the next level with BuyMyLastName.com, a site that allowed him to auction off his last name for the entirety of 2013 for $45,500 to Headsets.com.

Now, evidently out of ideas, Jason HeadphonesDotCom will auction off his name once more for 2014 before taking his great-grandfather’s name until he dies or gets bored. What’s in it for brands? Well, check out this little nugget from the press release:

The company associates $250,000 in sales and just over $6 million of advertising impressions in less than two months directly to purchasing the rights to Jason’s last name. “The publicity impact was beyond belief. Our recognition factor jumped right away and still lasts now. Best $45k I have ever spent,” said Mike Faith, Headsets.com CEO.

So, there you have it, if you’re a brand on par with Headsets.com. The winning sponsor will also have their brand name appear on the cover of Jason’s new book (which you’ll find info about at, what else, SponsorMyBook.com), so really, you can’t go wrong. Bid at BuyMyLastName.com.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As, ahem, hand jobs go, the gig is pretty straight forward. Not much skill is required. Unless, of course, you have the finesses of an elephant operating a bulldozer with a bear trap as a back hoe attachment.

However, when it comes to hands given the job of selling LG Smart TVs, the gig is a little bit more difficult and requires a bit more skill as you will see in these six, hand-powered ads illustrating epic battles for the remote.

Seriously. We’ve never before seen such skilled hands. The jobs these hands do are simply amazing. It makes regular hand jobs look, well, positively fruitless, limp and entirely unsatisfying.

Ukraine-based Escape created the…ahem…hand jobs.

Officers were searching for the man who opened fire on Monday at the headquarters of Libération, a left-leaning daily, severely wounding a photographer’s assistant.

Last Thursday saw soccer star Lionel Messi become the world’s “first life-size, living avatar” dubbed Lifesize Messi, to promote EA Sports’ FIFA 14 for PS4 and Xbox One. W+K Amsterdam have just rolled out the follow-up TV campaign, “Messimorphosis.”

W+K chose to show a gamer morphing into Lifesize Messi as a metaphor for “how the game now feels more alive” than ever. The execution comes across something like an Aphex Twin music video. In other words, quite unsettling.

The spot opens with our gamer sitting on his couch, loading up his Xbox One. As he presses a button, he looks at his hand to see it changing before his eyes. Soon, his entire body is morphing into the Messi avatar, and it’s pretty damned creepy. There’s a shot of the kid’s unnerving smile, and a really freaky one of his face melting into Messi’s. This is pretty strange stuff. The close-up of his feet turning into cleats is just plain gross. We don’t see any gameplay (which looks pretty good, but not mind-blowing) until the final few seconds of the spot, with most of the 58 second ad devoted to the Lionel Messi metamorphosis. Clearly, W+K is banking on Messi’s star power and the lifesize avatar schtick — and presumably not factoring in that the morphing stunt will weird some people out. One thing you can say about “Messimorphosis” is that it’s certainly memorable.

If you’re easily disturbed or grossed out, avoid this one at all costs. If, on the other hand, you’re a big fan of FIFA, Lionel Messi, or are under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, then this one’s for you. Credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

(TrendHunter.com) A ‘Purrsona Cat Eye Bed’ is a cat bed scratcher that keeps your pet occupied and away from your furniture. If you’re looking for a way to steer clear from cat sheddings on blankets…