Hasta La Creative!

Happy hunting, indeed!

A staggering 707 unique illustrations of Haruhi Suzumiya, the anime icon, have been hidden on billboards, in magazines, and even handed out on the street all around Japan. Each one has a QR code and a number that lets you report your find over at Haruhi.com, where fans are slowly filling in the film frame by frame with their snapshots—slowly giving shape to what appears to be a short anime teaser of Haruhi singing a song.

The incredible web design lets you pinpoint the found locations and hear the song so far—with the missing bits scrubbed out. Fans have been hoping it’s a teaser for the first Haruhi movie from Kyoto Animation since 2010. But it seems it could be teaser for Sankyo pachinko game instead.

Still, it’s a fun way to announce anything, and a truly herculean media buying effort.

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, Beats serves up a one-minute version of its epic new World Cup-themed commercial (Ad Age’s Shareen Pathak and Mark Bergen have the backstory, along with the five-minute short-film version, here); the Geico Gecko hangs out with Rocky and Bullwinkle; Giorgio Armani serves up a fresh broadcast cut of the Armani Code fragrance campaign starring Chris Pine that it’s been running online; and a Spike network-specific spot for the Scion FR-S pits a couple of special agents against a gang of masked criminals.

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

When LeBron James had to stagger off the court last night with a heat-induced leg cramp, one brand seemed all too happy to pour a few hundred milligrams of sodium into the wound. 

Gatorade, which mocked LeBron in a series of tweets about how dehydration wouldn’t be an issue if he didn’t “drink something else,” today apologized for the posts.

LeBron is the most high-profile celebrity endorser for Powerade, a fact which Gatorade’s Twitter account seemed to relish with vindictive glee after the basketball superstar had to take an early exit from Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

“The person cramping wasn’t our client,” @Gatorade told a fan who mistakenly called James the brand’s No. 1 client. “Our athletes can take the heat.”

In another response to a Twitter user praising Gatorade for its topical zingers, the brand wrote: “Thanks, Randy. We’ve been hydrating all day. We never cramp.”

While the tweets remain up, the brand has issued a statement of apology.

“Our apologies for our response to fans’ tweets,” Gatorade said. “We got caught up in the heat of the battle. As a longtime partner of the Miami Heat, we support the entire team.”

Hat tip to AdLand.

@LazyBumDrew we were waiting on the sidelines, but he prefers to drink something else.

— Gatorade (@Gatorade) June 6, 2014

@OfficiallyRandy Thanks, Randy. We’ve been hydrating all day. We never cramp.

— Gatorade (@Gatorade) June 6, 2014

@AthIeteMotivate Especially during important games.

— Gatorade (@Gatorade) June 6, 2014

@CarmichaelDave This is awkward….We don’t sponsor him. #fail

— Gatorade (@Gatorade) June 6, 2014

@ryanbkoo The person cramping wasn’t our client. Our athletes can take the heat.

— Gatorade (@Gatorade) June 6, 2014

As Sprint Corp. nears an agreement to buy T-Mobile, the man in the hot pink T-shirt will soon step into the limelight.

John Legere, the chief executive officer of T-Mobile who’s known for wearing company-branded shirts and taunting his competitors on Twitter, is likely to run the combined company, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. He’s being favored over Dan Hesse, the 60-year-old CEO of Sprint, who took over a broken company in 2007 and did enough fixing, even while operating at a loss, to attract a new owner last year.

As negotiators hammer out the finer points of an agreement, Mr. Legere will increasingly be responsible for the prospects of an enlarged company. It would fall to him to integrate disparate management teams and divergent marketing strategies, while also combining two networks that are years behind the technological advances of their biggest rivals, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

MUH·TAY·ZIK | HOF·FER brings function back to form in a new print campaign for YDesign Group’s consumer brands, YLighting and YLiving. Entitled “Design Necessities,” the campaign aims to take the often-intimidating world of modern design off its pedestal by emphasizing the basic, practical roles it serves in our lives.

The ads manage to be matter-of-fact and humorous in tone by pointing out the obvious. “People sit,” reads the ad for YLiving featuring a chair (above), with other ads in the campaign following the same tone. It’s a no-nonsense approach that attempts to reach consumers bogged down with attempts at schtick and trendiness. The visual design of the ads is similarly simple and to the point, in a way that works to underscore the campaign’s message.

“As soon I saw the creative team’s ad ideas, they just felt right,” said John Matejczyk, co-founder and executive creative director at MUH·TAY·ZIK | HOF·FER. “Of course, we then had to go through the creative process of figuring out just why they felt so right. What it came down to is they capture the very essence of modern design, which is not about creating rarified, unreachable, untouchable heirlooms, but fully satisfying actual everyday needs. That’s why we called it ‘Design Necessities.’ We worked closely with YDesign Group to develop the ideas and keep them clean and simple, just like modern design should be.”

Stick around for a another image from the campaign, along with credits, after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve just confirmed, as per your tips, that a round of layoffs took place at Leo Burnett Chicago this week.

A spokesperson tells us that the agency had to let “less than 10 of our friends and colleagues” go in a one-time staffing shift; no details as to who was affected, though some creatives have lost their jobs. You may recall that this move follows a larger series of layoffs in February.

Again, we have no official word on the who or the why. In other recent Leo Burnett news, the Chicago-based McDonald’s account changed hands as the agency continued to produce work for clients like Coors Light Canada.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Behold Coca-Cola’s newest happiness machine: the Bio Cooler, a soft-drink dispenser that doesn’t need electricity or batteries to run.

The unit, developed by Leo Burnett Colombia and the International Physics Centre in Bogota, uses two cooling methods based on ancient technology. Watering the plants atop the device produces evaporation, and a mirror at the top is used to convert gas into liquid inside the cooler. Coke claims the cooler works better the hotter it gets, and the brand chose to demonstrate in Aipir, Colombia, where temperatures can approach 115 degrees Fahrenheit and residents travel 12 hours to fetch ice.

Some commenters have questioned whether it’s crass to provide a thirsty population with a fridge that dispenses Coca-Cola, which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly the healthiest beverage choice. That point would apply if this were a purely altruistic endeavor. Since it’s a promotional exercise, however, such arguments don’t really hold water.

True to its marketing mantra, Coke’s peddling a feel-good vibe—just as it did with those sharable cans that split in half and friendly bottles (also from Burnett Colombia) that can only be opened when joined with other bottles.

Via Ads of the World.

(TrendHunter.com) Maciek Jasik, a polish photographer, exposes her subjects while simultaneously concealing their identities. How? She creates hazy compositions through color-play.

The series features both naked…