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McCann Erickson has launched an integrated social media campaign called Not-So-Super to raise awareness about sex trafficking for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition.

“Sex trafficking is commonly perceived as something that happens far away, in other parts of the world. We are eager to try to change that perception.” said Tom Murphy, co-CCO of McCann New York. Because of this, it’s all too easy for people to dismiss the sex trafficking epidemic as something that doesn’t concern them, but it’s a very real issue much closer to home than many suspect.

McCann’s “Not-So-Super” campaign shines a light on the sex trafficking epidemic happening in New York, elsewhere in this country, and all over the world. “It is the buyers of commercial sex who drive such a high demand that girls as young as 12 are trafficked across state lines to meet it. We need to address the day in and day out demand to bankrupt this so-called business model and put an end to the buying and selling of young girls once and for all,” says Sonia Ossorio, President, National Organization for Women – New York City. So McCann is hoping their campaign can help curb the demand for commercial sex, which spikes around big events like the Super Bowl, that leads to the exploitation of women and children by pimps and sex traffickers.

At the center of the campaign is the “Not-So-Super” website and the above video, a harrowing look at the victims of sex trafficking and the increased demand placed on sex workers during the Super Bowl and other big events (accompanied by an increase in the likeliness of physical abuse at the hands of their clients and pimps/traffickers). It’s hard to watch, especially on the Friday going into Super Bowl weekend, but it’s an important message that needs to be shared and a stark reminder that some dread the impending arrival of the big game. The website also offers a telephone hotline for people who are or may know victims of sexual trafficking, and a variety of other resources. The full campaign will “span film, print, street activities, a website and twitter initiatives.” Hopefully, “Not So Super” can help make a difference for victims of sexual trafficking at one of their most vulnerable times of the year.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New York is crawling with celebrities in town to attend Super Bowl XLVIII in New Jersey this Sunday. At the Jaguar and Deadspin party at Skylight West in Manhattan on Wednesday, we asked Colin Kaepernick, San Francisco 49ers quarterback and Jaguar endorser, to pick his favorite Super Bowl ad in history.

This is the commercial he’s talking about:

We also asked Mr. Kaepernick, who played with bare arms in frigid Green Bay before losing the NFC Championship Game to the Seahawks, who he likes to win the Super Bowl. He’s not going with Seattle.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Over the course of the NFL’s regular season this year, the data team at Varick Media Management was hard at work trying to find out what happens when you apply ad-buying technology to picking football games.

Thats right. Football games.

It turns out, you get a high percentage of them right.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

180 Amsterdam is a launching a new integrated campaign for ASICS, which continues to highlight the brand’s “Better Your Best” mantra.

The new campaign “will have an even stronger and more powerful focus on how ASICS products and technologies help athletes across the board continue to improve in their sport.” This is evident in the TV spot “Gotta Run” for ASICS: Gel. It features an obnoxiously always up athlete, running from sport to sport all day and saying “gotta run” when jetting from one place to the next, before coming home and collapsing into bed without a shower. His poor significant other removes the shoes (which must smell indescribably awful) from his feet, making the ad come full circle from the beginning, when the guy plops out of bed and right into his ASICS. It’s a bit over-the-top, but should appeal to ASICS’ athletically obsessed core audience.

180 Amsterdam’s campaign will run all year long and feature “a mix of TV and print advertisements, digital brand films, point of sale, event activation and online engagement to strengthen ASICS image as a True Sports Performance brand.” Look for the “Marathon Campaign,” “a print and film campaign that celebrates the special qualities, attributes and personality of one of the world’s most selective groups”; the “Advantage, You” tennis campaign, featuring Gael Monfils and Samantha Stosur; and the triathlon video featuring “Ironman World Champion Pete Jacobs and his wife Jaimi on location at their Noosa home” in the near future. And please, if you’re going to work out all day, remember to take a shower.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Chrysler has confirmed the worst-kept secret on Madison Avenue, saying Friday it will be back to advertise on the Super Bowl this Sunday. Bob Dylan, the 74-year old music legend, will star in one of the spots, according to Billboard.

Chrysler has created some of the most successful and critically-praised spots in the Super Bowl in recent years: last year’s ode to American farmers, Clint Eastwood’s gravel-voiced “Halftime in America” speech before that and Eminem’s “Imported from Detroit” classic three years ago. So it comes as no surprise that the newly newly-renamed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is back with three new spots on Fox’s telecast of Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday.

The first will debut during the first commercial break in Sunday’s game between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks at MetLife Stadium, according to Chrysler spokeswoman Diane Morgan. The second will air during halftime. The third will run in the first commercial break of the third quarter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Lorde is a humble, homegrown New Zealand star, and she's taken out a full-page ad in the New Zealand Herald to make sure everyone back home knows she hasn't forgotten that.

Ahead of her performance at the Laneway music festival on Wednesday night this week (apparently her only summer show in New Zealand, where it's summer, Yankee suckers), the singer of anti-materialist anthem "Royals" penned a handwritten note for the ad celebrating her performance Sunday night at the Grammy Awards in L.A., not to mention the two awards she picked up there, for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.

"hiya if you're reading this, Joel & I won. HOLY CRAP," reads the letter, referring to her producer Joel Little. "I just wanted to say thank you for the time you've given me over the past 14 months… without your support there's no way I would've ever gotten to stand in the middle of the Staples Center and perform in my school shoes."

It's a classy, charming statement of appreciation that fits nicely with her acceptance speeches, and broader down-to-earth positioning—a nice example of when marketing can perfectly align with honesty. Or at least, with an exceptionally convincing illusion of it.

See the full ad below.

Record playoff audiences and surging social media buzz suggest Super Bowl XLVIII viewership is poised to capture the top position as the U.S.’s largest television audience broadcast of all time, according to Adobe Digital Index research. What’s more, Fox Sports’ announcement that it will live stream the game to iPads just about ensures that this year’s game at MetLife Stadium, in New Jersey, will also be the most mobile Super Bowl ever.

For marketers, however, this year’s Super Bowlwhich, for more than two decades, has been a showcase for the most innovative and expensive advertising of the yearhas become a more complex challenge. While the worlds of digital and broadcast have merged into one from the viewer’s perspective, they remain somewhat disconnected on the marketer’s side. Social media marketing, online video releases, and mobile optimized web sites are now key to creating that trophy-winning Super Bowl marketing moment. That’s why many marketers have assembled teams of digital specialists to augment their grand broadcast investments to score some big-game points.

Continue reading at AdAge.com