Hasta La Creative!

Dead children, domestic abuse, missing puppies and cyber bullying made the Super Bowl more like the Somber Bowl. Advertisers tugged at the heart-strings, made us tear up and in some cases, even gasp, in an effort to sell cars, beer, soda and insurance.

While most of the commercials had a serious tone, ultimately the underlying messages were positive. Nissan, Dove Men + Care and Toyota celebrated dads, while Coca-Cola looked to put an end to hate-filled internet comments by turning them into positive messages. Always emphasized female empowerment and Microsoft featured a little boy with prosthetic legs to show how its technology is bettering lives.

Still, at least one may have gone too far.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

This new Foot Locker ad from BBDO debuted last night but, because it wasn’t a campaign launch and only ran in local markets, it didn’t earn nearly as many headlines as its competitors.

(From the perspective of Nationwide and Ogilvy, that could be a good thing.)

Damian Lillard of the Trail Blazers appeared in several recent campaigns for both Adidas and Foot Locker, but this one marks the debut of his first signature shoe and features a few celebrities who, unlike Lillard, are already well past their expiration dates:

We’d hoped Humpty Hump might get the gig; here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes action on set via The Oregonian.

Credits:

Agency: BBDO New York

Client: Foot Locker

Title: Signature Celebrity

Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars

Chief Creative Officer New York: Greg Hahn

Executive Creative Director: Chris Beresford-Hill

Executive Creative Director: Dan Lucey

Creative Director/Writer: Jessica Coulter

Creative Director/AD: Eli Terry

Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe

Executive Producer: Anthony Curti

Music Producer: Melissa Chester

Graphic Designer: Jessica Andrew

Worldwide Senior Director: Troy Tarwater

Account Director: Janelle Van Wonderen

Account Manager: Nick Robbins

Assistant Account Executive: Sam Henderson

Production Co – O Positive

Director: Jim Jenkins

Executive Producer: Ralph Laucella

Executive Producer: Marc Grill

Director of Photography: Jeff Cutter

Editorial – No6 Editorial

Editor: Jasopn MacDonald

Executive Producer: Corina Dennison

Producer: Malia Rose

Assistant Editor: Zach Patton

Sound – Heard City

Sound Mixer: Phil Loeb

Online – No6

Flame: Ed Skupeen

Assistant Flame: Mike Grosshandler

Color – CO3

Colorist: Tim Masick

Savannah, Ga., lawyer Jamie Casino had a big hit last year when he ran the most absurdly badass local Super Bowl ad of anyone—an epic two-minute tale of crime, death and retribution that got more than 5 million YouTube views.

Casino, of course, had to return for an encore. And you can see it below.

There are so many questions. (For one, why is this two-minute Super Bowl ad three-and-a-half minutes long?) Plotwise, the damn thing is barely coherent, unlike last year’s spot, which was ludicrous but at least easy to follow.

This time, we have Casino talking about all the personal bullies he’s encountered in life and how he overcame them—childhood tormenters, cancer, his younger brother’s murder and local strong-arm government in Savannah. Casino is heard cross-examining a character, “Injustice,” who symbolizes the broken Savannah city leadership. “Bullying is bad. Silence is worse,” says the line at the end.

We can’t wait for next year’s ad, when Casino fully transforms into Batman.

Mophie est une marque de coques rechargeables pour smartphone et vient surement de livrer l’une des meilleures publicités diffusées lors des mi-temps du Superbowl. Rues inondées, tempête de neige, les chèvres se tiennent sur des ânes et les prêtres volent des écrans plats, c’est l’apocalypse. La Terre semble se désagréger en étant complètement engloutie par l’espace. Oui, Dieu n’a apparemment plus de batterie. A découvrir.

Ogilvy created the year’s most depressing Super Bowl ad with its “Make Safe Happen” spot for Nationwide.

The spot, which ran during the first half of the game, opens with narration by a young child. “I’ll never learn to ride a bike,” he says over a melancholic acoustic guitar track, and then continues to list all the things he’ll never do. “I couldn’t grow up, because I died from an accident,” he reveals at the end of the spot, followed by the message, “The number one cause of childhood deaths is preventable accidents.”

Unsurprisingly, people didn’t take the depressing message interrupting their football and cute animals very well. The social media backlash was quick and pronounced. So, what exactly was Nationwide thinking?

“Preventable injuries around the home are the leading cause of childhood deaths in America,” Nationwide  said in a statement released last night in response to the backlash. “Most people don’t know that…The sole purpose of this message was to start a conversation, not sell insurance. We want to build awareness of an issue that is near and dear to all of us—the safety and wellbeing of our children. We knew the ad would spur a variety of reactions.” Nationwide went on to claim that “thousands of people visited MakeSafeHappen.com, a new website to help educate parents and caregivers with information and resources in an effort to make their homes safer and avoid a potential injury or death.”

Still, given the negative publicity, we’d be pretty surprised if Nationwide considered the ad a resounding success.

For most viewers, Nationwide’s Super Bowl spot was likely the most depressing of the night, but St. Louis residents were treated to a regional spot that might just have it beat.

The 60-second PSA by the Missouri-based National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse features a clashing juxtaposition between a perky, bouyant song narrating a tale of drug abuse with ironic lyrics “That’s how … how you got addicted to heroin!”—and, well, a dramatic scene showing an addicted teen and his mother. It’s promoting Ncada’s program for families who suspect a loved one is battling addiction. 

“The stark contrast in tone between the upsetting images and the almost light-hearted music is an intentional choice that reflects the stark contrasts of these real-life situations” states the video’s YouTube summary. 

“In using the tools of drama to convey this crucial truth in a 60-second spot, we created a parallel disconnection between the visual story we see on screen and the musical story we hear. It is disturbing. It is jarring. It is painful to watch. And we must pay attention to it.”

Yes. It’s all those things. Jeez. 

If last year marked Facebook’s dive into video, this year might be Twitter’s turn.

Twitter has featured video on its service for years, but never made it a central feature. Until last week, video on Twitter meant links to YouTube; six-second Vines cross-posted from Twitter’s video-sharing app; and TV networks posting ad-supported clips as part of Twitter’s Amplify program. Now Twitter has started to roll out the ability for anyone to record, edit and post videos to the social network without leaving its mobile apps.

This could mean a lot more video popping up on Twitter, just as video has overtaken Facebook. It could also mean a lot more opportunties for the publicly traded company to make money.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Budweiser ran two ads for its flagship brand during the Super Bowl last night. The first was soft and cuddly, the much anticipated sequel to last year’s “Puppy Love” spot, “Lost Dog.” For the second, “Brewed The Hard Way,” also created by agency Anomaly, the brand went into attack mode.

The ad proclaims Budweiser to be “Proudly A Macro Beer” which is isn’t made to be “fussed over” but for a “crisp, smooth finish” before going on to attack craft breweries. Oddly enough, Budweiser seems to want to have it both ways as the ad celebrates the beer’s beechwood aging, before stating, “Let them drink their pumpkin peach ale, we’ll be brewing us some golden suds.”

It’s a bit odd that A-B InBev would take this route, a little over a week after purchasing Seattle craft brewery Elysian, known for its annual pumpkin beer festival (following a string of similar purchases including Blue Point, Goose Island and Redhook). Of course, most viewers will be unaware of that piece of hypocrisy, but the ad retains an air of desperation. It concludes by re-introducing the classic tagline, “This Bud’s For You,” which will anchor a new campaign for the brand, replacing “Grab Some Buds.”

While Budweiser is clearly nostalgic for the days when it wasn’t losing ground to a host of competitors with superior products, Budweiser Vice President Brian Perkins told AdAge that this is not a retro campaign. “‘This Bud’s For You’ was a very powerful tagline at one time and it’s still there in the psyche of American beer culture,” he said. “We can make millions of these per day. But this one’s for you and it’s the same quality standard and the same attention to detail as everything else.”

Faking out your followers on Twitter is quickly becoming a tired tactic for attention, but Monster still deserves a round of applause for its Super Bowl social stunt.

BBDO New York worked with the job listing site (which wasn’t a Super Bowl advertiser this time around) to create a tweet celebrating the Seattle Seahawks’ victory. The problem, of course, was that the New England Patriots won the game 28-24 thanks to a last-second interception.

As you can see above, most Twitter users saw a cropped version of the congratulatory image. But clicking through to the full image revealed the punch line at the bottom:

Congratulations Seattle from http://t.co/sPr4G1gHup! #biggame pic.twitter.com/eAa59yw1om

— Monster (@Monster) February 2, 2015

In addition to sparking more than 4,000 retweets and 2,400 favorites, the stunt increased discussion of Monster by more than 1,500 percent compared to the average day, BBDO says. 

Dans la série des génériques des Simpsons, il ne manquait plus que la version pixel art. Sur une musique remixée par Jeremy Dower, ce sont les graphistes Paul Robertson et Ivan Dixon qui s’y sont collés et force est de constater que le résultat de cette vidéo d’animation est tout simplement bluffant. A découvrir sans plus tarder.