Hasta La Creative!

To stoke viewers’ (already feverish) anticipation for season 4 of international hit Game of Thrones, DDB New Zealand has crafted a unique social media/experiential event for SKY Television’s premium entertainment channel SoHo, entitled “Bring Down The King.”

With help from production company Finch, DDB has erected a seven meter statue of the show’s much hated King Joffrey in Aotea Square, one of the largest public squares in Auckland. A rope is positioned around the statue’s neck, attached to a winch, and fans are challenged to topple the statue using the hashtag #bringdowntheking on Twitter. For every tweet using the hashtag, the statue will be one step closer to toppling, but it will take one million such tweets to bring down Joffrey.

“Game of Thrones is a worldwide phenomenon and King Joffrey is quite possibly the most hated fictional television character of all time,” explained SKY’s director of programming, Travis Dunbar. “It’s exciting to give fans an opportunity they are dying for; to assist in the demise of the King of the Iron Throne.”

DDB executive creative director Shane Bradnick was equally enthused, saying, “It’s great to be working with clients that want to create ideas that bring the fictional, digital and real worlds together. Let’s bring the bastard down!”

You can keep up with the campaign at bringdowntheking.com. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

(TrendHunter.com) These pizza pictures are undeniably going to make you hungry for a slice. As a pizza lover, I can honestly say this man is a genius. Just when you think Instagramming pictures of food was becoming…

Gary Busey's at his manic, unhinged best in WongDoody's spot introducing the $99 Amazon Fire TV set-top box.

Everyone's favorite gnarled, Oscar-nominated lunatic begins, "If you're like me, you like talkin' to things." The actor says hello to his pants and a lamp before thanking the fish for living in the sea. He rings a bell, and as the tone resonates, he vibrates his head and mugs for the camera. Classic Busey!

Bedeviled by a Roku streaming player that won't obey his verbal commands, he snarls, "It's frustrating when things don't listen. Especially high-tech things." Mr. B. then demonstrates a key Fire TV attribute. He voice-queries the device—searching for himself, naturally—and spits out a hammy, celebratory "Yes!" when a menu of his movies appears on the screen.

Actually, it's one of his saner, more restrained performances. Dude's usually way more bizarre than this. 

Andrew Hirsch, chief executive of customer publishing firm John Brown, has launched a stinging attack on the concept of native advertising and believes companies including The Telegraph and AOL cannot prove its value.

(TrendHunter.com) This spectacular ‘Like Mother Like Daughter’ series was captured by photographer Yolanda Liou. Based in London, she teamed up with fashion blogger Lilly-Jo Cullen for this beautiful…

In the aftermath of the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting: Marketing 2020, there is all but an industry mandate to clean up the advertising ecosystem for the benefit of all upright publishers and advertisers. Reducing bot traffic, which results in wasted ad spend, is now a priority for marketers with considerable digital budgets. In order to continue moving ad dollars both online and into mobile buckets, anti-bot security must become more important than mere viewability; knowing an ad can be seen fails to take into account whether the potential audience has been verified as human (and not an automated bot).

The solution that marketers are looking for will come to be known as secure media and encompasses engagement-based units, such as click-to-play video, and those that are user-configured, such as “build your dream car” opportunities. The only way to guarantee ad effectiveness for a brand campaign is to engage with a validated human audience through units that result in cognition. Ultimately, bots can’t drive cars or make travel plans, but real users can be verified. Secure media are units that advertisers will buy with complete assurance that they are seen by actual people.

The amount of bot fraud in our midst is unrivaled in any other industry and is sadly leading to a crisis of confidence on the buy side. In excess of 25% bot fraud in display advertising is weighing down already dismal effectiveness metrics and wreaking havoc on both ROI and campaign optimization strategies. By providing secure media options to advertisers, publishers will simultaneously increase ad effectiveness and improve media rates.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Le studio de design Piet Boon a récemment accompli la transformation de la chapelle d’un ancien hôpital militaire d’Anvers en un restaurant au design magnifique. Proposant différentes ambiances, ce réaménagement invite à se mettre à table dans un lieu atypique et propose une expérience gastronomique unique.

Considerada um dos grandes males da sociedade moderna, ela, a reunião, é um assunto que sempre rende. De reuniões para melhorar o aproveitamento das reuniões até um Braincast, atire a primeira pedra quem nunca reclamou que determinada reunião roubou um tempo de sua vida que você nunca mais irá recuperar. Ou, pior ainda, que simplesmente teve a impressão de estar em um episódio de “Além da Imaginação, como bem definiu Dan Solomon, da Fast Company, ao escrever sobre “The Expert”.

Escrito e dirigido por Lauris Beinerts, o curta é baseado em “The Meeting”, conto de Alexey Berezin. A trama mostra o que acontece quando o cliente, criativo e técnico têm ideias bastante diferentes sobre como algo deve ser feito e, principalmente, sobre a possibilidade ou não de que aquilo seja feito.

“The Expert” tem legendas em português (de Portugal). Dê o play e caminhe pela alameda da memória…

Groupon is returning to the U.S. airwaves as a TV advertiser for the first time since the 2011 Super Bowl.

The daily-deals and e-commerce company is launching a seven-week TV campaign on April 7 in six markets: Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, Minneapolis, Nashville and San Francisco. The company isn’t disclosing the spend on the buy, but senior VP-global marketing Rich Williams said that the campaign could be extended depending on whether it drives results like increased traffic and new subscribers.

The ad depicts people doing various activities — from rock climbing to dining at a sushi bar to taking a blender they’ve purchased from Groupon out of its box — and highlights the search functionality on Groupon’s mobile app. There are 60- and 30-second cuts, but it’s mostly the latter that will be airing.

Continue reading at AdAge.com