Hasta La Creative!

In this inspirational ad from Wieden + Kennedy for Powerade, a boy who represents a young Derrick Rose rides through the south side of Chicago to a voiceover by Tupac Shakur—the late rapper’s first-ever narration of a commercial.

“You see, you wouldn’t ask why the rose that grew from the concrete had damaged petals,” Shakur says. “On the contrary, we would all celebrate its tenacity. We would all love its will to reach the sun. Well, we are the roses. This is the concrete. These are my damaged petals. Don’t ask me why. Ask me how.”

The bike ride from the south side to the United Center reflects Rose’s journey from the streets of Englewood, through adversity, to the NBA. The scenes then change to the present day, with the recently injured Bulls point guard drinking a Powerade courtside. Copy flashes, “We’re all just a kid from somewhere,” and the spot ends with a Rose wearing a “Just a kid from Chicago” sweatshirt.

The #powerthrough hashtag seems poignant in light of Rose’s recent injuries. And of course, using lines from “The Rose That Grew Through Concrete” is almost too lovely and perfect.

CREDITS
Client: Powerade
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy
Production Company: Smuggler
Director: Jaron Albertin

L’Atelier D est un studio créé par le designer canadien Jonathan Dorthe. Voici l’un de ses derniers projets, un service de plateaux et de boîtes à rangement. Intitulé OFFSET en référence à la technique de découpe « offset », les différents éléments peuvent être assemblés de mille et une façons.

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Another Dove campaign positioning the brand as the friend of female self-esteem is being accused of Doing It Wrong. If you missed the Washington Post’s take on Wednesday, which called the new effort an “egregious overstep,” here’s one key bit:

The only purpose of this cooing, of course, is to lull consumers into a sense of intimacy so human, so convincing, that you forget that Dove is actually trying to sell you something; that in fact, Dove only exists on this planet to sell you things, and that Dove’s pursuit of sales occasionally involves behavior you may find offensive and/or unsavory.

Last year Dove took a hit over a campaign that apparently tricked women into believing they were trying medical patches that would make them prettier (all the better to reveal that all they needed was self-esteem). This time the criticism is over Dove tweets sidling up to women who sound down about their bodies to reassure them that they are beautiful.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

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 here 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, Target readies its summer sales season with the help of Questlove and Black Thought of the Roots, along with Charli XCX, who do a cover of Deee-lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart.” (The song was used in another spot that broke during the “Saturday Night Live’s” 40th anniversary special.) Nike features the world’s best golfers — and Charles Barkley — for its new driver. And McDonald’s recruits graffiti artists to spray its heartwarming branding.

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

Continue reading at AdAge.com

(TrendHunter.com) When you look at these images, do you see a blue and black dress, or a white and gold dress? Caitlin McNeill posted a photograph of this frock on her Tumblr page, asking users of the Internet to…

We’ve yet to receive a statement from the agency, but multiple sources tell us that Dave Clemans is no longer executive creative director at Omnicom’s Colangelo Synergy Marketing.

Clemans joined the Darien, Connecticut-based shop less than two years ago after spending a year and a half as ECD at Taxi’s New York office; both the recent appointment and the previous one earned writeups in Adweek.

The agency, which counts Unilever, Pepsi, the NFL, and others among its past/current clients and focuses primarily on “promotions and shopper marketing” rather than traditional creative, developed the position for Clemans before he joined in the Summer of 2013.

At the time, he told Noreen O’Leary that “brands realize they need a lot of disciplines so we’re trying to figure out how to make this work for them.”

Clemans began his career in the creative department at Crispin and spent time at both GS&P and The Martin Agency before moving into the ECD position at CHI&Partners. He held that role for more than two years and then joined Taxi, which he left amidst a larger executive shakeup led by the departure of Durk Barnhill (now CEO of Saatchi New York).

Clemans was one of many who worked on the VW account at CP+B; other notable projects include Best Buy, Virgin, Burger King’s European campaigns, and Crispin’s anti-tobacco work.

Again, the agency has yet to respond to our requests for comment on why its director left or whether it looks to replace him, though one of our sources claims that his departure was part of a series of layoffs.

Updates if we get them.

Berlin-based Thjnk launched a new spot for Audi, reminding viewersof the importance of going to an Audi dealer instead of a random mechanic.

To do so, the agency makes said mechanics seem downright frightening. The spot opens on a mechanic as he sees a lone Audi driving down a desolate road. Soon the car’s “Service due” light goes on and another mechanic perks up. As the car drives on more and more mechanics emerge, until there’s a zombie-like army chasing the car, which makes it into the Audi dealership just in time, ending with the tagline, “Don’t let your Audi fall into the wrong hands.”

The spot, directed by Sebastian Strasser of Radical Media, does a good job of building atmosphere and mimicking the pacing and feel of a horror movie. Intentionally over-the-top, the ad aims not for the typical message of superior service, but “…the monumental showcasing of the eternal struggle between good and evil,” the agency said in a statement. If that sounds like a bit too much, there is something of a self-awareness to the approach, as Thjnk and Audi seem to be in on the joke.

Credits:

Client: Audi
Title: “Mechanics”
Agency: Thjink Berlin GmbH
Executive Creative Director: Stefan Schulte
Creative Director: Siyamak Seyedasgari
Account: Nicole Bierwolf, Hendrik Heine
Director: Sebastian Strasser
Production Company: RadicalMedia berlin
dop: Roman Vasyanov
Producer: Christoph Petzenhauser, Kathy Rhodes, Yan Schoenefeld
Casting: Julia Kim (US), Francesca Green (UK)
Editor: Paul Hardcastle, Trim Editing
Colorist: George K, MPC London
Score: Robert Cairns
VFX: Time Based Arts, London
VFX Supervisor: James Allen
VFX Lead Artists: James Allen, Sheldon Gardner, Steven Grasso

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