Hasta La Creative!

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 over the weekend. 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, Walmart promotes its increased spending on higher pay, education and training this year. (The appearance of a big “15” on a checkout aisle in this context seems like a reference to the $15-per-hour minimum-wage goal of many wage activists, but Walmart isn’t going that far: It said in February that it would increase pay to at least $9 per hour this year and $10 per hour next year.)

In other ads, State Farm suggests that Chris Paul’s (fictional) twin brother Cliff has been an identify thief this whole time. And Ram Trucks is the latest brand to offer an empowered female perspective with its spot “Courage Is Already Inside,” which aired during the Country Music Awards on Sunday night. The ad features surfers, soldiers, snowboarders, ranchers and Miranda Lambert.

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Here’s one for Whiplash fans…

W+K London crafted a new spot for butter brand Lurpak, celebrating Lurpak spreadable and inviting home cooks to go “Freestyle.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to try something a little different. We’re going freestyle,” the spot begins, celebrating improvisation in the kitchen. Set to a jazz soundtrack, the ad invites comparisons between improvisational music and cooking.

“Freestyle,” directed by Juan Cabral, is visually striking, going way beyond typical food porn with inventive shots and unusual angles. The voiceover isn’t always as on point, such as when it concludes with the line, “That’s food,” but it provides the necessary framework for the concept, which presents the spreadable version of the butter as a means of freeing up exploration in the kitchen. It may be a bit of a stretch in terms of product integration, but it does make for a memorable spot with an interesting approach and there’s plenty of room left to more fully flesh out the idea.

The :30 version:

Credits:

Client: Lurpak
Project: Freestyle
Agency: Wieden & Kennedy London
Creative directors: Sam Heath, Kim Papworth
Creatives: Gustavo Kopit, Barnaby Blackburn
Designer: Bruce Usher
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Davidson,  Iain Tait
Agency Executive Producer: Danielle Stewart
Group Account Director: Rachel Parker
Account Directors: Hannah Gourevitch, Katja Giannella
Account Executive: Stephanie Brooks
Head of Planning: Beth Bentley
Planners: Jennifer Lewis, Theo Izzard-Brown
TV Producers: Gemma Knight, Sahar Bluck
Creative Producer: Rebecca Herbert
Production Company: MJZ
Director: Juan Cabral
Production Company Producer: Stephen Johnson
Director of Photography: Anthony Dodd Mantle
Editorial Company: Work Post
Editor: Neil Smith
Post Executive Producer: Julian Marshall
VFX Company: MPC
VFX Producer: Anandi Peiris
Music and Sound Company: Soundtree
Composers: Peter Raeburn, Ben Castle, Luis Almau
Sound Designer: Parv Thind
Producer (Soundtree): Jay James
Mix Company: Wave Studios
Mixer: Parv Thind
Producer (Wave Studios):Rebecca Boswell

Avec 80 ans d’expérience en tricotage derrière lui, Alfred ‘Alfie’ Date, un homme âgé de 109 ans, occupe ses vieux jours à tricoter des pulls pour habiller et protéger les pingouins australiens et néo-zélandais du pétrole. Le renversement d’une nappe de pétrole dans l’océan, en 2013, a affecté beaucoup d’oiseaux et la Victoria’s Phillip Island Penguin Foundation ne cesse de faire appel aux dons de tricots.

Grey London created a PSA encouraging parents to teach their children to dial 999 (the British equivalent of 911) in case of an emergency for parenting website Mumsnet.

The PSA, which was supported by the British Red Cross, uses audio from a real emergency call in which 5-year-old Elleemae Addison saved her mother Loretta by calling for help when she had an epileptic seizure. In the PSA, the audio from the phone call is played over home video footage of the Addisons. The combination is powerful, with the footage driving home what was at stake as Elleemae made that call to save her mother, making the PSA pretty impossible to ignore or forget.

“Ads are glossy and distant. How we record our lives is awkward, beautiful, and constantly changing,” Grey London chairman and chief creative officer Nils Leonard told Adweek. “The black holes, mixed media, low resolution, distortion and awkward crops are the canvas of our real lives, and the craft leveraged here was all in service of amplifying this incredible phone call with as much emotion as possible.?”

Dans le cadre de l’exposition « The Play of Brilliants » au centre parisien d’art et de danse Eléphant Paname, DGT architects a conçu l’installation « Light in Water » qu’ils avaient déjà présentée au Milan Design Week 2011. Il s’agit d’une cascade d’eau circulaire, installée dans la pénombre, où le visiteur peut interagir en touchant les 3 tonnes d’eau qui tombe en continu.

Du 6 mars au 31 mai 2015, au Elephant Paname, Paris.
Photos by Takuji Shimmura.

Food for thought: Imagine an airline with an 88% failure rate.

The cost of all this extravagant myopia was something on the order of $355 million last season, and yet the time-honored practice continues apace. With just three weeks to go before the broadcasters unveil their fall schedules, executives are hunkering down in front of their flatscreens to try to divine the next “Empire.” Of the 84 scripted projects in contention, the following have the best shot at making it to a screen near you.

NBC

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Diet Coke has dropped agency BETC London and is working with Dawson Pickering — the agency created by former BETC London executive creative director Neil Dawson and head of copy Clive Pickering last year — on a project believed to be related to last year’s “Regret Nothing” campaign, Brand Republic reports.

BETC London had worked on the account since 2012, when it beat out Publicis in a review. “BETC London is proud of all the work we have done with the team over at Coca-Cola,” Andrew Stirk, chief executive at BETC London, told the publications, adding, “We wish the team and the brand the very best for the future, and are excited about the upcoming opportunities for BETC London.”

The news follows the agency losing its share of the Bacardi business, following a global consolidation that left the company’s brands with BBDO and OMD. It also comes as Coca-Cola courts its roster shops to select the direction of its new campaign.