Hasta La Creative!

When Kevin Spacey appears on screen these days, you expect him to speak to camera in a South Carolina drawl, assess his chances at screwing over a rival, and perhaps even (spoiler alert) kill a person or two.

He does none of those things in E*Trade's new campaign from Ogilvy & Mather, but does aim for an air of mystery in his role as a "talent scout" who can tell by looking at someone whether he or she is "Type E*"—the company's term for sophisticated, savvy, self-directed investors.

This Spacey spot is the first in what will be a series, Ogilvy tells us.

An earlier spot that launched the campaign was titled "Epic Musical" and featured everyday people singing and dancing because they are Type E*. The new campaign follows the demise of the E*Trade baby, the star of Grey's longtime campaign, who was put out to pasture after six years of never growing up.

"If you think about it, our target has grown to become more sophisticated, so the baby needed to grow up as well," said Russell Messner, global managing director at Ogilvy. "That being said, we did not want to alienate the smart wit and irreverence that are inextricably linked to the E*Trade brand. We believe Kevin Spacey, our 'Type E* Talent Scout,' is a great embodiment of this new phase in the brand's history."

CREDITS
Client: E*Trade
Spot: "Talent Scout"
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, New York
Executive Creative Director: Steve Howard
Group Creative Director: Chris Van Oosterhout
Chief Creative Officer: Alfonso Marian
Copywriters: Gage Clegg, Ian Going, Chad Johnson, Allison Lackey
Art Directors: Lauren Van Aswegen, Kevin Riley, Becca Morton
Executive Producer: Maureen Phillips
Global Managing Director: Russ Messner
Executive Group Director: Adam Puchalsky
Account Director: Melissa Bartolini Kearney
Head Planner: Margaret Rimsky
Senior Planner: Ned Sonnenschein
Director: Stacy Wall
Senior Content Producer: Karen Rossiter
Production Company: Imperial Woodpecker
Editing: Chris Franklin, BigSky Edit
Music: Tonal Sound
Color Correction: Chris Ryan, Nice Shoes
Mix: Tom Jucarone, Sound Lounge

Here we are in prom season again, and there's a delicious scent in the air. But this time it's not fragrant flowers. It's fried chicken. 

Enter KFC, which is encouraging prom-goers to adorn their wrists with fried chicken before heading to the big dance and twerking all up on each other, which I assume is what the kids are doing these days. 

You can actually order one for $20 (sorry, limit of 100). You get a lovely corsage for your date and a $5 gift card to go and buy the chicken yourself.

A note from the florist, Nanz and Kraft:

"Chicken not included (duh). Each corsage kit includes a $5 KFC gift check, so you can customize your corsage with Original Recipe, Extra Crispy or Kentucky Grilled Chicken. Whichever best matches her dress. Local corsages will have fresh baby's breath and out-of-town corsages will have silk baby's breath."

Take a look below at what will probably happen if you get this delicious bit of fast-food swag. 

Via Buzzfeed.

Mocking hipsters was cool until H&R Block started doing it. (Actually, it's probably been passé for a while now. Really, it was so 2012.) Nonetheless, in an effort to reach millennials, the tax prep brand has been running a social media campaign titled "Hipster Tax Crisis."

The effort hinges mostly on the idea that anyone who fits one of many stereotypes that's been lobbed at the ill-defined group in recent years—e.g., horn-rimmed glasses—is probably bad at doing their taxes. As the Guardian points out, that's really not true—young people just seem to favor TurboTax.

In fairness, the campaign does include some decent zingers. "Growing organic arugula on a fire escape does not enable to you take a farm tax credit," reads one print ad (labeled as a "Hipster Tax Fact"). But a truly painful "Hipster Tax Rap" video more than compensates for the better moments.

It's good for brands to take risks, and to rib their consumers. But it's not exactly risky to keep beating a dead horse. Macklemore is mainstream. Hipsters, whoever they are, have won. And if a marketer is going to take aim at them, there's a high bar to beat in jeans brand Denham's delightful remake of American Psycho.

Also, treating a portion of your target demographic like a cheap piñata might not be the best way to grow your business in the cohort. But who cares. Hipsters don't have any money, and with ESPN personality Kenny Mayne as a spokesman, the sports junkies must be a lock.

Plus, H&R Block is going for the normcore set, which is much more fashionable these days.

Fresh from the gnarly folks at Mountain Dew comes "the first soda that is also a tool."

A nifty new Dew bottle designed by Sancho BBDO Colombia is fitted with a hex nut wrench in the cap, so you can fix your board after you've face-planted trying to land a sick trick that ended up all sketchy. It's perfect for skaters who could use a little extra hand during their next search for Animal Chin.

I guess it is cool and all, but I'm pretty sure you can only tighten screws; if you tried to loosen them, wouldn't the cap itself just unscrew? It also doesn't seem like you'd get much torque this way. But I nitpick. It would be killer if the bottle came with some cash stuffed inside it for emergency room bills. Or Obamacare. Dude, put Obamacare in the bottle. 

But whatever, this poser's hella old—gotta bail. Wake me up when the hoverboard is real.

Check it, brah.

For years, cookies were the glaring blind spot in mobile advertising. The slivers of code that track user data across the web don’t work well on phones. Other tracing solutions are piecemeal. So advertisers have sprayed device screens with banner ads and prayed for sales.

But major tech companies are looking to completely bypass the cookie, aiming to track consumers on their phone and every other device they use.

Last year, when Facebook bought ad server Atlas Solutions, from Microsoft, it wasn’t forthcoming about its plans. Now, it’s preparing to pitch the tool as a “cross-platform solution” that will eventually make the cookie obsolete, according to Graham Mudd, Facebook’s director of advertising measurement.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Um redditor percebeu uma curiosa brincadeira no longa-metragem “Capitão América – O Soldado Invernal” – na lista de afazeres do super herói, que inclui momentos que ele havia perdido enquanto dormia, os 5 primeiros itens mudam de acordo com a região em que o filme é exibido.

Nos EUA, a lista conta com menções ao seriado ‘I Love Lucy’, o muro de Berlim e o CEO da Apple, Steve Jobs, enquanto a versão britânica da lista destaca os Beatles e Sean Connery. Na Rússia, Yuri Gagarin aparece em primeiro lugar, e a dissolução da União Soviética também é mencionada.

EUA

Reino Unido

Rússia

Também existem versões para a França (que destaca a copa de 1998 e Daft Punk), para a Coréia do Sul (Oldboy e Copa de 2002), Itália (Vasco Rossi e Roberto Benigni), México (Shakira e Octavio Paz), Espanha (Rafa Nadal e Chupa Chups), Austrália (AC/DC, Steve Irwin) e até para o Brasil – a listagem brazuca do Capitão América lembra de Ayrton Senna, Wagner Moura, Xuxa, Mamonas Assassinas e Chaves.

França

Coréia do Sul

Itália

México

Espanha

Austrália

Brasil

Os cinco últimos itens, contudo, se mantêm os mesmos, dando uma impressão de importância global – comida tailandesa, Star Wars e Star Trek, Nirvana, o filme Rocky e Troubleman (a trilha sonora).

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Provavelmente uma das coisas mais bizarras do últimos tempos, e talvez por isso mesmo com grandes possibilidades de fazer sucesso. O KFC resolveu aproveitar a temporada de bailes e criou um corsage – aquele buquê de flores que serve de enfeite para as meninas, usado no pulso – feito de frango frito. E o pior de tudo? O produto é verdadeiro e está à venda em uma edição limitada de 100 unidades por US$ 20 cada um.

Particularmente, a última coisa que eu gostaria se estivesse no lugar de uma dessas garotas é ir a um baile cheirando a frango frito, mas vai saber. O comercial mostra o rapaz presenteando seu par com o inusitado enfeite. No começo, a garota parece incrédula, enquanto sua mãe faz cara de dúvida e seu pai de aprovação. No final, ela acaba cedendo ao “romance” e percebe como tem sorte… Então, tá.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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