Hasta La Creative!

As we all know, The Martin Agency recently played off everyone’s favorite complaint about digital advertising by creating a series of GEICO ads that couldn’t be skipped…because they end before they even start.

It was a good idea that almost made up for the fact that cord-cutters like ourselves often see the same GEICO ad three times in a row with no recourse but to swear up and down that we will NEVER spend money on the client’s services even if we happen to be in desperate need of cheap car insurance. (We blame media buying agencies, because THEY ARE WASTING THE CLIENT’S MONEY.)

Now Leo Burnett and Allstate have produced a new variation on that “unskippable” theme: an ad that punishes the viewer for trying to make it go away.

The spot and its #SkipMayhem tag debuted about a week ago, but this is the first we’re seeing of it because we don’t happen to be friends with any Allstate salesmen on Facebook. It’s unfortunately not embeddable, so you have to click through to the site…not annoying at all!

The underlying spot is a standard entry in the Mayhem canon, with Dean “Dennis Duffy” Winter playing the part of a buzzing phone that facilitates a wreck.

The fun starts when one tries to skip the ad…to be greeted instead with footage of a baby crying, a poorly played recorder, a man eating tin-foil and other forms of unjust punishment. Every time a viewer clicks “skip” he/she faces another variation on this multimedia version of the old water torture trick.

Eventually, the video devolves into grating metallic noise accompanied by this warning:

Meanwhile, Winter intones:

“You don’t have to watch this…just watch the ad.

I could do this all day.

You really don’t get it, do you? You can’t skip Mayhem.”

When asked for comment, Leo Burnett deferred to the client. We’ve yet to hear back from Allstate itself.

While we enjoyed this take on the “how annoying can an ad be?” theme, we wonder why insurance companies are the clients most in-tune to the annoyingly ubiquitous nature of their own campaigns. The model could very easily be applied to most bank ads, athletic wear ads, computer ads and, for God’s sake, automobile ads.

Maybe clients in those industries are simply more inclined to believe their own bullshit.

Le photographe Brad Wilson a saisi le regard profond d’animaux exotiques. Ces derniers regardent en direction de l’objectif, nous obligeant à notre tour à les regarder droit dans les yeux. On y découvre des bêtes au regard doux, sauvage, interrogateur, observateur dans lesquels on aime se plonger.

An insightful approach to supplementing Cambodians’ iron-deficient diets to improve their health led to a Grand Prix in Product Design for the Lucky Iron Fish Project and Geometry Global in Dubai.

WHAT IT IS: In Cambodia, much of the population lives on a diet of fish and rice and so suffers from iron deficiency, leading to anemia and other serious health conditions. The simple solution is to cook a small piece of iron in the same pot with a meal for 10 minutes, providing 75% of the iron a family needs. The dilemma was that people were happy to use the iron slab as a doorstop but wouldn’t toss it into the cooking pot.

The solution: Fashion the small piece of iron into the shape of a fish, a cultural symbol of hope and good fortune. Cambodians quickly embraced the lucky iron fish.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Radio Jury made an unconventional pick for this year’s Grand Prix winner — a self-promotional piece for Soundcloud that replicated the Berlin Wall through audio.

What won:

Created out of Grey Berlin, the campaign was created to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It bears particular relevance to SoundCloud since the company’s offices are based in the original “Todesstreifen” (“Death Zone Area”) around the wall. The effort is a disturbing audio experience that combines excerpts from speeches of leaders of the German Democratic Republic, border guards and ominous, atmospheric sounds.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Red Robin is apparently going all-in with its cross-promotion efforts for Terminator: Genisys, which hits theaters July 1 and marks Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s return to the franchise that made his career.

Not only has Red Robin unveiled its monstrous Genisys Burger this month, but the chain has also enlisted the services of Vitro, its creative agency since 2013, and a team of Google engineers who in turn have given the display ad as we know it a Terminator-styled makeover.

The above demo clip featuring Red Robin pitchwoman “Melanie” hints at the fact that “Terminator Vision” initially looks like your average display ad unit until you go to this dedicated site, enter the unique URL provided into your mobile browser (no app necessary) and eventually unlock a rich media system developed by Google engineers.

It was admittedly a bit shaky on first try, and Melanie’s nonstop chatter can be grating, but Terminator Vision cleverly picks up on the latter as you see the world through the T-800’s eyes.

The machines, in this case, have become self-aware–but even more importantly, they’ve alleviated the usual banner ad boredom…for a moment, at least.

Segundo alguns estudiosos, tornamo-nos uma sociedade que não discute ou contempla o futuro. E quando tentamos enxergar 100, 200, 1000 anos a frente de nosso tempo, descrevemos uma distopia. Luiz Yassuda, Gabriel Prado e Tales Cione discorrem sobre o assunto, concordando e discordando dos três textos homônimos ao tema do programa, escritos por Luli Radfahrer, […]

> LEIA MAIS: Mupoca #028 – O fim do futuro

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Caitlyn Jenner captured the public’s attention with her Diane Sawyer interview and Vanity Fair cover, but did her revelation change the public’s view of transgender people?

In swing states, not really.

A large majority of respondents in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio said in a Quinnipiac University poll that Ms. Jenner’s transition did not change their minds one way or another on transgender people. In Florida, 79% said the transition didn’t make them feel more or less accepting of transgender people. Eighty-one percent said the same in Ohio and 84% in Pennsylvania.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

DDB New York launched a new spot for Mars Petcare brand IAMS, telling the story of “A Boy and His Dog Duck.”

The spot shows a boy growing up alongside his dog, Duck, who gained the name when he couldn’t pronounce “Duke” as a toddler. Viewers see a montage of shared moments with the dog, from when it was just a puppy to intruding on a prom date, to needing encouragement to jump in the seat of the car as an elderly dog, before learning the origin story of the name. It’s an emotional approach, designed to show the supposed benefits of feeding dogs IAMS throughout different stages of life. In other words, it relies on a tried and true formula for the category rather than attempting to innovate. And we’re not sure what it says about us exactly, but we can’t hear the name “Duck” without thinking of this guy.

Today in completely unsubstantiated “news,” a source tells us that a certain big-name agency owned by a certain big-name holding company is experiencing some technical difficulties in its New York office.

Specifically, our source claims that the office’s air conditioning system has not been functioning properly for over a week. Because Manhattan is trending “very hot” at the moment, many employees currently “[camp] out like refugees” in the space’s corridors in hopes of catching the slightest hint of a natural breeze.

In addition to this unforgivable offense, our source also tells us that the office elevators are kaputt and that company email isn’t functioning properly either. (It must be Outlook, the worst tech product ever released on an unsuspecting, undeserving public.)

This “story” somehow includes every element of our recurring work nightmare.

But it’s not all bad news for this agency, which is in the midst of revealing its new face to the world at large. We hear that “staffing changes” are pending and that employees are not terribly happy about reports of a sky-high salary for the parent company’s chief executive, who’s too busy listening to brand strategy insights from the guy on Entourage and the woman with the clickbait butt to pay attention.

Here is Shutterstock’s approximation of our tipster’s daydream:

Employees could always visit the Hulu Seinfeld pop-up apartment a few short subway stops away. This real-life marketing stunt presumably includes working AC units in addition to other attractions like “Kramer’s reverse peephole.“

Le designer Roy Harpaz est à l’origine du magnifique lecteur de vinyls baptisé « Toc ». Ce dernier a la particularité d’être vertical et offre la possibilité de passer rapidement d’une piste à une autre à l’aide d’une télécommande grâce à un capteur qui scanne tous les morceaux des vinyls insérés.