Hasta La Creative!

(TrendHunter.com) The fictional photography of Didier Massard shows just how much photography can tell as story. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. The only catch is that the viewer is often forced to…

Adult Swim has put its back into marketing Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s insane science fiction cartoon Rick and Morty. And well they might: It’s one of the best shows on the air, and last year it occasionally got more demo viewers than Harmon’s broadcast sitcom, Community.

So, it follows that the network would have a mild blowout around the release of the first season of Rick and Morty on Blu-Ray, too.

Accordingly, Roiland called on Ben Bayouth, puppet maker and costumer to the … well, to the very weird. (Seriously, the “creature suits and puppets” page alone is a huge productivity suck.) Bayouth made Rick, Morty and Meeseeks puppets and a giant Meeseeks suit (from this episode) in order to tell the world about the show.

Here’s the 90-second spot. It starts airing Wednesday evening on Adult Swim.

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When the cartoon premiered, Adult Swim erected a crashed spaceship in front of the Flatiron Building in New York, and the show got all kinds of attention at Comic Con, with a panel and a booth for its production company, Starburns Industries. (I don’t even want to tell you about the lines to get Harmon to sign things.) So, there are interestingly high standards for anything R&M-related over at Adult Swim, and they keep coming up with new tricks to promote it, not unlike FX’s various shenanigans around Archer.

We figured we’d also do an unboxing Vine (see below) so you can see the contents of the Blu-Ray, because another fun piece of the campaign is inside the box: Like the Jim Mahfood-drawn Kickpuncher comic book in Community’s Season 1 DVD set, Roiland and series writer Ryan Ridley collaborated with storyboard artist Erica Hayes to make a very cool little Jack Chick-style comic book fleshing out some of the show’s stranger sci-fi plot points.

The nation’s largest soda marketers — which have been feeling the heat from health advocates — on Tuesday pledged to reduce beverage calories consumed per person nationally by 20% by 2025.

Executives from PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Co. and Dr Pepper Snapple group announced the goal in New York City at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. The effort includes involvement from the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which was founded by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation.

“I am excited about the potential of this voluntary commitment by the beverage industry. It can be a critical step in our ongoing fight against obesity,” former President Bill Clinton said, according to a statement.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

(TrendHunter.com) The newest head office and distillery center for the world-renown Bombay Sapphire gin company consists of a large glass structure. Far from the usual industrial look of breweries, this design has…

Like it or not, your surroundings inform the special little bubble you live in. Just when you thought you couldn’t be stereotyped, well, here are some handy maps that define each state by the brands they Google the most.

The results are pretty fascinating, too, from the obvious to the surprising. I had no idea Grand Marnier was so popular in Delaware, or that American Eagle was so in vogue among West Virginians. Less surprising results are Microsoft in Washington and Disney in Florida.

Where it gets super interesting is when competing brands bubble up in adjacent states, like Jose Cuervo and Patron in Arizona and New Mexico, or Dodge and Chevrolet in Montana and North Dakota. 

Finance comany Direct Capital actually created three maps—showing the top three Googled brands in each state. Check them out below, and see the interesting juxtapositions that happen when geography and culture collide.

Via Design Taxi / Brand New / Direct Capital.

 
Most Googled brand in each state:

 
Second-most Googled brand in each state:

 
Third-most Googled brand in each state:

Despite a huge new iPhone push, Samsung’s ads are continuing to dominate Apple for viral views: The Korean smartphone maker pulled in 25 million views on two new spots, which shot to first and second place in the Visible Measures Viral Video Chart for the week ending on Sunday. They replaced two other Samsung ads that made the top of the list last week.

The No. 1 “Then and Now” ad called out Apple’s new iPhone 6 for supposedly copying features from the Samsung Galaxy. At the same time, the three ads that Apple had in the top 10 last week fell to just one this time around — a video introducing the iPhone 6 that slipped to the 10th spot.

Gatorade grabbed the No. 3 position by tugging at Yankees fans’ hearts: In a new spot, departing Captain Derek Jeter meets fans on a walk through the Bronx while Sinatra sings “My Way.” The company’s “Sweat It to Get It” campaign also re-appeared on the charts at No. 9, while Nike’s animated “Gear Up” helped bring a third sports-themed campaign to the list.

Continue reading at AdAge.com