Hasta La Creative!

Upworthy, a nearly two-year-old site that curates and repackages content with headlines built to share, has charged into the media landscape as one of the most talked about (and imitated) viral media sites.

Founded by former MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser and former Onion Managing Editor Peter Koechley, Upworthy says its goal is to draw attention to meaningful topics, from body image issues caused by Barbie dolls to the plight of torture victims. One recent post — with the headline “I Got A Bus Earlier, And A Woman Was Being Tortured Right Next To Me” — shows bus-shelter ads depicting torture victims. Fast Company referred to the site as a “soulful BuzzFeed.”

Critics have accused the site of dangling click-bait to draw visitors. But Upworthy argues that pageviews make only a “flimsy” measure in any case, one useful only to sites that deal in banner ads (which, like BuzzFeed, it does not). Upworthy’s pitch to advertisers is that it can draw eyeballs — and social media shares — to branded content posts in the same way it does for its own stories.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Once again, a snack-food brand learns why it should carefully stage-manage any attempts to crowdsource flavor ideas on the Internet.

The latest round of Lay's "Do Us a Flavor" campaign, which launched last month, has predictably brought out the trolls, who've suggested, among other things, flavor ideas like Disappointed Parents, Orange Juice 'N Toothpaste and Sinus Infection.

You might recall Mountain Dew going through something similar when their "Dub the Dew" campaign was hijacked by nerds who filled the online ballot with Gushin' Granny and Fapple, among other uncouth suggestions.

Say what you want about the immaturity of the Lay's trolls, but at least they aren't bringing out the Hitler jokes. Not yet, anyway.

And of course, Lay's is surely eating it up.

Audi is to be the first brand to advertise on Waterloo Motion, the new giant digital screen at London’s Waterloo Station.

Campanhas de grifes de moda costumam apostar no abstrato e no onírico, deixando o espectador com cara de “nhé” na maioria das vezes.

Em sua nova campanha, a Lacoste faz um pouco disso para representar o momento em que um homem se arrisca e tenta beijar uma mulher. O resultado, porém, é bem mais empolgante que a média do segmento.

O comercial – “The Big Leap” – faz uma analogia entre a manobra arriscada (do beijo) com o salto de um edifício rumo ao desconhecido, em uma incrível aventura visual, assinando com “Life is a beautiful sport”.

Criação da BETC Paris.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Twenty percent of Americans speak a language other than English at home; 55% of Americans support same-sex marriage and 87% of Americans support interracial marriage.

With those numbers in mind, how does a commercial about an interracial family eating cereal draw more controversy and criticism than Radio Shack’s Beats Pill Blurred Lines Ad?

Back in May, Cheerios released the first version of its Super Bowl ad with the young girl talking about heart health with her white mother and then giving heart healthy cheerios to her black father. With almost 5 million YouTube views, this was the most watched cereal ad in history, and it turned out to be the most controversial.

A small minority of the American population thought the ad was offensive, which lead to thousands of blog posts, tweets, comments, and news clips supporting Cheerios and the General Mills brand.

This average commercial was a huge win for Cheerios because of the free media coverage it received (see Google Trends) and because the brand looked like a hero when it stood by its cause.

“There are many kinds of families, and Cheerios celebrates them all,” Camille Gibson, vice president of marketing for Cheerios told USA Today, “it’s been a very positive response overall.”

The ad was enough of a success that Cheerios brought back the family for the Super Bowl. This would have been major news had Coca-Cola not stolen Cheerios’ thunder.

Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” ad angered conservative Americans who believe English should be the only language spoken in our country. Most were so up in arms about the rampant use of Spanish, Hindi, and five other foreign languages that they didn’t even note the two dads roller-skating with their daughter halfway through – the first gay couple to be featured in a Super Bowl ad, nonetheless.

Coca-Cola’s message isn’t that we should all learn Tagalog, it’s that Coca-Cola is a product for everyone, no matter their race, gender, age, or sexual orientation.

“‘It’s Beautiful’ is exactly what Coca-Cola is all about: celebrating the diversity that makes this country great and the fact that anyone can thrive here and be happy. We hope the ad gets people talking and thinking about what it means to be proud to be American,” said Katie Bayne, president, North America Brands, Coca-Cola North America said in a press release.

Both of these ads took simple, inclusive messages, presented them in a warm-hearted way, and faced media firestorms as the result. There’s no doubt that the Cheerios ad was a success, and the Coca-Cola ad prompted media outside of lifestyle and marketing outlets to cover the company and the ad. Five days after the Super Bowl, people are still talking about it.

This begs the question: when will brands start to actively poke the bear using wholesome ads? Arguably they already are. When One Million Moms protested JC Penney for hiring lesbian spokesperson Ellen DeGeneres, they created an ad with two gay dads.

Wholesome is the new edgy. Family-friendly brands don’t need to be offensive by objectifying women or trying to make their products look tough, they simply need to lean slightly toward the left, and endless media coverage and brand advocates will follow.

This contributed article was written by Amanda Dodge, a writer and editor at CopyPress.

Judging from FTD's Valentine's Day ads, maybe love does mean having to say you're sorry after all.

Four 60-second spots by Epsilon Chicago, designed to illustrate that "FTD says it best" for next week's holiday, put couples on a shiny red sofa that's more hot seat than love seat. They bicker about how the guys botched V-Day last year by giving the gals inappropriate gifts (or none at all), when a bouquet or basket from FTD would've worked wonders.

In the best of the bunch, feathers fly. "I got her a parrot," brags our would-be Romeo. "He got me a freaking parrot," his lady-love moans. The guy says, "Oh my gosh, it is so cool … it's majestic … it's regal." She replies, "It's dirty … it stinks … it bites."

These ads don't bite—they're amusing and well acted—but they do feel dated. The rhythm and style recall late-'90s/early-'00s sitcoms, with bird-brained guys and whiny women over-obsessing about their relationship woes. And why do we get youngish white hetero couples each time?

Surely, in 2014, Cupid's raised his aim.

You know how you sometimes watch certain ads and you’re like, “Damn, that’s really bad. Where they trying to make it bad or did they just have no idea what they were doing?” After viewing this gigantic-created ad for Samsung subsidiary ProFluent, a language fluency certification service, we’re pretty sure it’s the former. At least we hope it’s the former.

Watch as these insane applicants go to great lengths trying to convince the hiring manager that they can, in fact, speak Spanish. And then us know from which end of the spectrum this ad came.

BBDO associate creative director Diego Contreras (formerly of Anomaly) is making the jump to directing music videos with his cinematic video for Kool Head’s “Leon,” which he also wrote.

Contreras matches the late-night neon vibe of Kool Head’s dance-y, 80s synth laden track, while at the same time managing to tell a story over the course of the 5:30 video. To get the distinct visuals for the video, Contreras filmed in New York, utilizing “Lomo anamorphics on the Arri Alexa 4:3.”

The “Leon” video came about as a result of the friendship that developed between Contreras and Jason Nitti (producer/songwriter of Kool Head) while Nitti was an art director at Anomaly. When Nitti sent Contreras a folder of Kool Head tracks, Contreras loved the project so much he asked if he could shoot a video. Nitti told him to pick whichever track he wanted, and Contreras instantly gravitated toward “Leon.” As for the idea behind the music video, Contreras told The Music Bed it developed from “a weird TV spot for Converse [he wrote] about kids waking up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a basketball court to play ball. It was about loving something so much that you do it in your sleep. But like 98 percent of our work in advertising, it went into the horrifying black hole of dead ideas. So I brought it back out and used it as a starting point…which quickly evolved into a new story for the video.”

Initially funded via Kickstarter, Diego and producer Will Mahr “pitched in to double the budget” so that they could make the music video they wanted. Check out Contreras’ “Leon” video above, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

SapientNitro Worldwide Chief Creative officer Gaston Legorburu has widely been credited with upping the creative ante at the agency, largely through his philosophy of treating digital with as much care and craft as any other creative

medium.

Under him, Sapient has made moves in Latin America — it recently bought Miami-based La Comunidad — as well as elsewhere in the world, with acquisitions in Germany and the United Kingdom. And in terms of the work, the shop is starting to make more of an impact in the creative space, with work for Fiat, Home Depot and the X Games.

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NBC Universal expects turn a profit on the Winter Olympics, partly by relying more on video distribution via Twitter and Facebook designed to draw viewers to their TV sets.

In London two years ago, NBC found that sharing on Twitter and Facebook generated interest in broadcasts that aired hours later in prime-time. At this winter’s games in Sochi, where the tape delay will be even greater, the network is increasing the hours being live-streamed by 42% and encouraging people to set their DVRs directly through Twitter.

“The more screens people watch on, the more they consume on TV,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research at NBC Universal.

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