Hasta La Creative!

Sony could be excused if they had decided not to bother advertising the release of MLB 14 The Show at all. The latest installation in the long-running franchise, the only baseball simulation for PS3 or PS4, has literally no competition (which is how Sony got away with releasing the PS4 version a full month into the baseball season). Instead, they tapped Portland-based boutique agency Mutt Industries, who teamed up with Eastbound and Down star Danny McBride for a integrated campaign spanning broadcast, digital and social media. At the center of the campaign is a really fun online spot starring McBride, who also stars in the broadcast version.

In the 1:45 spot, McBride tells you something you should already know: that “Baseball is Better” — better than all other sports, and better than babies. He goes on to list all the reasons baseball is the best: no crying, no flags, no clocks, etc., all while sporting a badass old school Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. McBride is inserted into the game itself (Hey Sony: You really should make Kenny Powers a playable character) allowing Mutt Industries to show MLB 14 The Show‘s shiny new graphics, which really do look great. Most fans of the franchise have been eagerly anticipating the title for months now, but “Baseball is Better” may convince a few converts that The Show is worth picking up this year.

Broadcast spots will air on on Adult Swim, ESPN, Discovery, FX, History, MLB Network, Comedy Central and other cable stations, while digital and social media content highlights top MLB players, including Miguel Cabrera, Andrew McCutchen, Brandon Phillips, and Buster Posey. Over the course of the baseball season, Mutt Industries will release over 100 unique videos for the campaign, with each player given a unique role and character. Interestingly, Mutt Industries developed, directed and  produced the entire campaign in-house with creative director Mike McCommon doubling as the commercial director. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.

Among the new releases, Samsung plugs a new Galaxy-exclusive LeBron James app, Taco Bell explains the benefits of its new “one-handed breakfast” in a spot that’s part of a larger campaign Ad Age’s Maureen Morrison previewed yesterday, and Jose Cuervo offers a little history lesson just in time for Cinco de Mayo.

As always, you can find out more about the making of the best commercials on TV at Ad Age’s Creativity.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Com o vazamento de conteúdo, a Activision teve que adiantar em alguns dias o anúncio de um novo título da popular franquia “Call of Duty”. Mas claro, tudo provavelmente já era parte do plano.

Com previsão de lançamento em novembro, “Advanced Warfare” terá uma trama centrada nas corporações militares privadas, como a polêmica Blackwater, por exemplo, com jeitão de ser apenas mais uma das infinitas sequência de CoD, não fosse por um detalhe: Kevin Spacey.

Com a publicação de um misterioso áudio no SoundCloud, chegou-se a considerar algum tipo de viral para “House of Cards”, a série viciante da Netflix. Porém, ao analisar o espectro da onda sonora, aparecia uma imagem de um soldado.

Por fim, a Activision revelou o primeiro trailer de “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare”, com Kevin Spacey no papel de um personagem que controlará as forças mercenárias. Não é Frank Underwood, mas o tom é bem parecido. Se eu fosse os produtores, negociava um mashup de mídias com a Netflix.

A série CoD, aliás, já flerta com Hollywood faz tempo. O roteirista David Goyer, que trabalhou com Nolan na trilogia “Batman” e no recente “Homem de Ac?o”, escreveu as histórias de “Call of Duty: Black Op” e “Black Ops II”. No ano passado, Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana” e “Traffic”) roteirizou “Call of Duty: Ghosts”. Atores como Gary Oldman, Kiefer Sutherland, Ed Harris, Sam Worthington, Michael Keaton, Michael Rooker, Idris Elba, Timothy Olyphant, William Fichtner, entre outros, já dublaram personagens dos jogos, sem contar os comerciais estrelados e dirigidos por grandes nomes da indústria.

Outra peça da campanha de “Advanced Warfare” é uma reportagem patrocinada feita pela VICE, que aborda a indústria das empresas militares.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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After two decades of mocking the powerful as a columnist and screenwriter, Belal Fadl has been blacklisted, with no newspaper in Egypt willing to defy the government by hiring him.

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Advertising Agency:TBWA, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Chief Creative Officer:Saad Hussein
Creative Director:Chow Kok Keong
Copywriter:Tan Jit Seng
Art Director:Loo Kok Seng
Production Manager:Jeff Hong
Producer:Shelly Ahmad

John Lewis is marking its 150th anniversary with a TV ad that paints the retailer as an integral part of Britain’s history.

Rupert Murdoch is doubling down on romance.

News Corp. is buying Harlequin Enterprises, a publisher of such titles as “Destiny’s Last Bachelor” and “The Heartbreaker Prince,” for C$455 million ($415 million) in cash, according to a statement today. Murdoch is purchasing Harlequin from Canada’s Torstar Corp. and will fold it into News Corp.’s HarperCollins publishing unit, which has an imprint called Avon Romance.

Harlequin, founded in 1949, publishes more than 1,300 authors and releases more than 110 titles monthly. With novels issued in 34 languages, the company also gives News Corp. access to an international audience of readers.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It’s time to get ready for the festival that started it all. In less than one month the eighth annual Internet Week takes over New York with an amazing lineup speakers and events like the Webby Awards, The Webutante Ball, and thousands of others around the city.

Over the course of four days, entrepreneurs and leaders paving the future across multiple industries – media, marketing, automotive, fashion, finance, technology, venture capital, design, government, and education – will come together to discuss the tech-driven future.

Here’s a quick snapshot:

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Domenic Bahmann est un directeur artistique, photographe et illustrateur australien qui s’inspire des objets du quotidien. Dans sa série « Conceptual Work », il égaye les objets de la routine en formant des compositions colorées et en imaginant des scènes drôles. Sa série est à découvrir en intégralité dans la suite.

When John Oliver mercilessly skewers an ad because the taxpayer-funded product it promoted flopped, what's the agency that created the ad to do?

One option would be to ignore it. Another would be to write a lengthy public defense.

Some background: Last year, Portland, Ore., shop North launched a campaign to promote Oregon's healthcare exchange, Cover Oregon. Last week, Cover Oregon shut down its $200 million website after failing to get it working properly. On Sunday, Oliver—in his first HBO show—took the effort to task, using the most twee of North's music-themed ads as the lightning rod. The parody, hilarious and scathing, went so far as to bring in Lisa Loeb to sing about "stupid Oregon idiots," while a set behind her reads "You Fucking Idiots."

Yesterday, North chief creative officer Mark Ray responded in a blog post titled, "Yes, John Oliver, We Are Stupid Fucking Idiots." It's worth reading in full, but among the core arguments are that North had nothing to do with the website, the ad was one of a diverse group, and the campaign was effective in its purpose—raising awareness of the site.

Those are all reasonable, substantive points, and Ray's indignation on the whole is proudly and skillfully communicated, even as it devolves into defensiveness that a good-faith effort was met with such vicious ridicule.

Unfortunately, all of that is sort of besides the point—insofar as the point was for John Oliver to be funny without particular concern for substance or nuance. North's commercial, which leaned into an Oregon stereotype, was simply manna from heaven in that regard—a perfectly packaged device for illustrating the state's ineptitude in delivering a functioning website. Cheap shot or not, the joke connected.

Ray's response, meanwhile, may actually fuel the fire, tying the agency directly to Oliver's routine (which mentioned only the ad, not the creator, though there's certainly been plenty of ink spilled on its provenance). Indeed, it reads like performance art. And while the campaign itself may be a classic case of good advertising helping to kill a bad product, it's a probably rarer case of good advertising helping to make a good TV skit.

As frustrating as the reality of the exchange's failure may be, John Oliver probably couldn't have done his bit half as well without North.

Via Willamette Week.