Hasta La Creative!

Early promotions chipped away at the Black Friday crowd this year, putting more pressure on retailers to entice shoppers leading up to the holidays. From Thanksgiving Day through Sunday, 133.7 million consumers shopped in stores and online, down 5% from 2013, according to a National Retail Federation survey. Total spending fell 11% to $50.9 billion, according to the survey, which was conducted by Prosper Analytics and Insights.

On top of early promotions that drew focus away from Black Friday, access to deals through online outlets and more confident consumers who are less reliant on deep discounts, contributed to weak traffic over the weekend, said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, in a statement.

“We are excited to be witnessing an evolutionary change in holiday shopping by both consumers and retailers, and expect this trend to continue in the years ahead,” said Mr. Shay.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A campaign featuring a mashup of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and real network stars calls attention to the 50th anniversary of a beloved Christmas show.

We came here from the Internet as fast as we could to tell you of a brand-new development in seafood technology: the fried shrimp gun. With flour, egg yolk, tempura flakes and a soupçon of billowing fire, you can blast your shellfish craving into oblivion, apparently. 

The minute-long video appears to be an ad for Japanese cell phone company NTT DoCoMo, the biggest cell provider in the country. It has a few other shorts on its YouTube channel that are difficult for non-Japanese speakers to appreciate, but hooray for the shrimp gun.

This is a mother-daughter team of shrimp-projectile experts, I guess? What’s great about it is that the mom stops the daughter mid-fry to tell the daughter there’s obviously a better way to make shrimp tempura. And so begins the daughter’s nightmare journey into invertebrate firearm cookery, complete with an excellent shot of the younger woman flinching as her mother calmly launches the shrimp toward a target across the room.

Shrimp guns may be specific, but the experience is universal.

Honda has apparently faked a hack of its own Twitter account, handing the @Honda handle to its ad mascot Skeletor.

Já pensou como deve ser pousar em outro planeta? O artista digital e animador sueco Erik Wenquist usou essa ideia como inspiração para criar um retrato incrível dos planetas que formam o sistema solar, baseando-se em imagens reais, dos arquivos da NASA.

O curta “Wanderers” nos leva a um passeio de pouco menos de 4 minutos em uma jornada espacial, sem a pegada enfadonha dos documentários sobre o espaço, mas com o ar mágico que o cinema costuma conseguir ao retratá-lo.

Cada uma das localidades foi recriada através de simulações digitais dos espaços reais, usando mapas e fotos reais como referência, o que faz com que o curta se torne uma espécie de tour científico do espaço – verdadeiro, porém muito mais belo e elegante do que as imagens reais.

A participação de Carl Sagan como narrador do curta é resultado da sobreposição de um áudio antigo em que o famoso astrônomo lê um trecho do livro “Pale Blue Dot”, que combina muito bem com a proposta de Erik.

Quem quiser também pode conferir uma galeria de imagens do curta em alta resolução, que podem ser usadas como papel de parede.

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TD Bank gave 24 of its customers $30,000 to contribute to a community cause of their choosing, with just one stipulation: they had to complete the project in 24 hours.

Created in collaboration with Leo Burnett and Diamond Integrated Marketing, the campaign is captured in the above four-minute video (which fell through the cracks here last week). The video release was perfectly timed for Thanksgiving and easily went viral, having past the 3.5 million views mark on YouTube in under a week. “#MakeTodayMatter” shows surprised TD Bank customers learning they’ve been awarded the money for a cause of their choosing and then getting to work on making a difference in just one day.

The majority of those nominated for the campaign were chosen by TD employees, TD Chief Marketing Officer Dominic Mercuri told Adweek, with a few “chosen based on random live interviews in branches and stores with random customers.” Mercurri added, “We didn’t know if this idea would work. Would people drop everything to bring to life their idea? Turns out—yes, they would.”

Those ideas are on full display in the “#MakeTodayMatter” video, from buying all-new gear for a local youth football team, to making a woman’s home wheelchair accessible (allowing her to leave for the first time in years), to a gala event to boost the self-esteem of foster children. It’s hard to not be at least a little touched with people making their charitable ideas a reality. There are also separate videos for each project, hosted on a campaign website, as well as a social component. As you may remember, Leo Burnett and TD Bank went viral with the similarly charitable, “Automated Thanking Machines” this summer, and TD also collaborated with Philadelphia-based Tierney to commission “Art For Trees,” promoting eco-initiative MillionTreesNYC back in October.

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Someone among Samsung’s top ranks was expected to take the hit for plummeting smartphone sales. Signs pointed to the head of the mobile division, one of the Korean conglomerate’s three central global business units. Instead, it looks to be the head of marketing.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the executive changes over the weekend: “Samsung Electronics’ mobile business head, J.K. Shin, the chief of the company’s consumer electronics unit, B.K. Yoon, and the current chief executive for the component business, Kwon Oh-hyun, will all maintain their positions, Samsung said. But D.J. Lee, one of Mr. Shin’s top lieutenants as president and head of sales and marketing at the company’s mobile unit, is leaving his current position, people familiar with the matter said Monday, taking responsibility for lackluster smartphone sales. It wasn’t immediately clear who would replace Mr. Lee. When contacted by phone, Mr. Lee declined to comment.”

Samsung did confirm another management shift, according to the Wall Street Journal. Hong Won-pyo, head of the Media Solutions Center, the company’s software and services hub, is now charged with leading the global marketing strategy office, based in Korea. The move triggers further ambiguity about Samsung’s software strategy, which has been lackluster and cited as a reason for its smartphone collapse. Operating profits for mobile fell 60% last quarter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Martin Hill est un artiste environnemental qui récupère des éléments tels que des feuilles, des branches ou des cailloux qu’il trouve dans la nature pour ensuite les rassembler de manière circulaire et très créative. Il en résulte de superbes sculptures graphiques, créant une dimension onirique et surnaturelle. À découvrir dans la suite.