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, a petite version of Randy Moss misses games because he has cable, while the regular-sized Randy Moss enjoys his favorite teams with DirecTV’s “NFL Sunday Ticket.” Previous DirecTV ads mocking cable, and cable customers, have starred Rob Lowe, Eli Manning and Tony Romo (although Mr. Lowe’s ads also got DirecTV in trouble with the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division).

Stephen Curry meanwhile relives his NBA Finals win for Under Armour while Emmanuel Mudiay shows what life is like after the draft in a Footlocker spot. And Adidas celebrates soccer idol Lionel Messi in a jaunty, fan-narrated spot.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

This quietly terrifying multi-channel campaign from the British Heart Foundation strives to keep its audience off balance in more ways than one.

Surprise is the key theme of the campaign, breaking today via DLKWLowe in London. Each facet mimics the swiftness and unexpectedness of the malady itself.

“Compared to other terminal illnesses, like cancer, heart disease can be especially cruel,” Dave Henderson, chief creative officer at DLKWLowe, tells AdFreak. “Its suddenness means families often never get the chance to even say goodbye, which has a huge emotional impact on those left behind.”

A minute-long TV commercial, “Classroom,” directed by Tom Tagholm of Park Pictures, shows a whispered conversation between father and son, hinting from the very beginning that something isn’t right.

The twist itself isn’t that hard to guess. But the dawning realization of what’s coming increases the story’s power—it becomes more and more unsettling as it progresses. In the end, it’s clear that as that as sad as this conversation is, it’s sadder still that when dealing with heart disease in real life, people don’t get to have those talks. The tagline drives home that point: “Heart disease is heartless. It strikes without warning.”

Ultimately, the organization is seeking help from viewers. “By making people contemplate the unexpected devastation that heart disease causes, we hope to inspire people to donate funds to continue BHF’s lifesaving research,” says Carolan Davidge, the client’s director of marketing and engagement.

“I don’t think we can tip toe around a disease that’s so cruel anymore,” adds Henderson. “We have to hit people with the reality of what we’re dealing with here. And the impact and reality of heart disease is personal to every person so each piece of creative in this campaign seeks to speak to different audiences.”

Several online spots created by Make, the DLKWLowe’s in-house production company, have a different tone and feel than “Classroom,” though they ultimately pack a similar punch.

In one, a Skype chat between a youngish mom and dad on their fifth wedding anniversary ends particularly badly.

In another, a backyard game of catch turns into a tragic afternoon for a cute pooch and its owner.

For some, that approach may seem unintentionally humorous (in a dark sort of way), even verging on parody. Still, the sense of disorientation and confusion—the WTF! moment, if you will—is exactly what the spots are all about. This is how quickly lives can irreparably, irreversibly change for the worse.

Meanwhile, in a mini-doc, real heart-disease patients keep the beat to remind us that one in four who are stricken don’t survive.

In an effort to make the message even more personal, there’s even a “Heart Attack Simulator.” A mobile app that asks users to hold their phones against their hearts, it delivers a jolt that isn’t so much physical as emotional—the phone rings, and a chilling recorded message, the kind no one wants to receive, begins to play.

Overall, each element of the wide-ranging campaign has a distinctive flavor, but they all manage to stay on point, memorably delivering the message. And while fear-based advertising can be tough to stomach, that’s a small price to pay for the possibility of preventing more lives from suddenly sliding into ruin and despair.

Feet are the interface between the earth and us. They are our connection to the earth and the earth’s connection to us.

by

From Adbusters #121: Manifesto for World Revolution Pt. IV

Artist unknown

We can take care of our feet by isolating them

from the hazards and dangers of the world, just as we can protect ourselves by isolating ourselves and ensuring that we never encounter any thing that will harm us, challenge us, or make us feel bad. In doing so, we become weak. We begin to find the smallest injury a disaster and the mildest insult a tragedy. We lose the ability to relate to those around us and find their problems and their joys beyond comprehension as we become more and more wrapped up in our own. The world outside becomes too difficult to deal with and fraught with danger. The less we venture out, the weaker and more vulnerable we become. We descend into a spiral that results in us living like a soft white maggot in a dark damp hole. A world we cannot connect to can be seen in one of two ways. Either we don’t care about it or we feel impotent to affect it.

Feet are the interface between the earth and us. They are our connection to the earth and the earth’s connection to us. Shielded from the earth – the actual earth – immune from its rough vagaries and tenderness, we can ignore it or literally ride rough shod over it. In shoes, concrete and tarmac become your surface of choice. Like an agoraphobic prisoner in a world of our own creation we stay within the person-made world or take it with us. To the shod, this beautiful planet feels like an insole. Do you wear earplugs during every conversation? Do you wear gloves while making love? Every step is an interaction when your feet are naked. So what can you hear when you walk shoeless? Thorns say, “Leave this place alone”. Sand says, “Come play.” Stones say, “Pay more attention!” Water says, “Go crazy.” Turf says, “Run baby run.” Broken glass, concrete and gravel say, “Go rent a jack hammer and reform the society that divorces itself from the earth to stay at home and masturbate over fear of falling in love.” What do you hear when you are wearing shoes? “Everything is alright.” “There is nothing to worry about.” “There are no problems here.” Except everything is not all right. Our problems are monstrous. The planet screams at us. Just take your shoes off and listen.

— Len is a podiatry student and Tai Chi practitioner.

• #121
• feet
• isolation
• earth

Source

Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: The U.S. political season is well underway, and things are just starting to heat up. With nearly two dozen GOP candidates flooding the field, and a timid field of Democratic candidates falling in step with the Clinton Machine, it will be interesting to see what kind of political ads will begin to surface once things start to shake out.

It makes sense that we haven’t yet seen an onslaught of political ads. It’s still too early, and the crowd is still too crowded.

For some customers, the story behind a product can be almost as important as the product itself. Such was the case for one recent shopper at The Apartment by The Line, a luxury boutique specializing in home dcor, clothing and jewelry, who decided to buy a neoclassical black opaline glass lamp after learning it was a one-of-a-kind French antique.

The transaction would have been largely unremarkable except for one detail: This customer wasn’t standing in SoHo browsing The Line’s curated collection with a sales associate by her side. She was halfway around the world, interacting with a cutting-edge virtual display that used 360-degree video technology and a Samsung Gear VR headset to tour the showroom and learn more about the items she liked.

Welcome to the future of retail, where brands are in the early stages of using virtual reality to create fully immersive, contextual experiences that reach beyond existing physical and digital channels to create a very new, and very real, type of shopping experience: v-commerce.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

“Working Not Working” is growing up. The job platform founded in 2012 to streamline the process of hiring and getting hired for freelance work has just received a financial and advisory boost from top companies including Droga5 and Airbnb.

According to founders Justin Gignac and Adam Tompkins, the $700,000 angel fund, from a number of contributors including Droga5 Creative Chariman David Droga, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and Grow Interactive co-founder Drew Ungvarsky, will allow them to implement features on the site most requested by members and also broaden the company’s reach.

Mr. Gignac and Mr. Tompkins said that with the additional funding, they hope to make the site more social so that creatives can connect with each other. They also intend to allow companies and hiring managers, not just creatives, to have their own profiles and to add a system whereby members can keep track of opportunities they get through the site and in which talent managers can track who they’ve reached out to.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Summer may be coming to an end, but here’s a fun way to keep reliving the good times—high-quality GIFs of your photos from the season, courtesy of Booking.com.

The Priceline-owned online travel agency is inviting consumers to submit pics of their summer adventures, then turning its favorites into animated GIFs. For eight days between today and September 3, Booking.com will release a new batch of winners. And if the launch samples are any indication, the results will be pretty great.

Highlights so far include ice-cream thievery, cocktail snorkeling, and a zany rainbow. Check out them out below—the original photos are on the left, and their GIF versions on the right. 

Overall, the contest is an extension of the company’s “Wing Everything” push, celebrating spontaneous vacation. Would-be participants can compete by hash-tagging a pic #WingItYeah on Twitter or Instagram, or submitting via the Booking.com Facebook page. Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam has hired four digital artists to create the GIFS: James Kerr, Cari vander Yacht, Chris Timmons, and Justin Gammon. 

As for Booking.com’s criteria for selecting which photos to GIF, the marketer says its looking for “jealousy-inducing” shots of things like “infinity pools” and “epic views.” In other words, it wants to reward you for doing what you were doing on social media anyways: bragging. 

See more GIFs, and the campaign credits, below.

CREDITS 

“BOOKING.COM–WHO WON BOOKING SUMMER?”

Chief Marketing Officer: Pepijn Rijvers
Head of Brand: Manuel Douchez
Brand Communications Director: Andrew Smith
Brand Specialist: Robert Schreuders
Social Media Product Owner: Julian Poole
Media Planning Director: Anoeska van Leeuwen
Media Manager: Kelly Lee
Media Specialist: Marie Lootvoet

WIEDEN+KENNEDY AMSTERDAM

Executive Creative Directors: Mark Bernath, Eric Quennoy
Creative Directors: Genevieve Hoey, Sean Condon
Art Directors: Jeffrey Lam, Kia Heinnen
Copywriter: Jake Barnes
Director of Interactive Production: Kelsie Van Deman

Interactive Producer: Matthew Ravenhall
Strategic Planner: Emma Wiseman
Communications Planner: Josh Chang
Group Account Director: Jordi Pont, Marcos Da Gama
Account Director: Aitziber Izurrategui
Account Manager: Caroline-Melody Meyer
Head of Design: Joe Burrin
Designer: Thomas Payne
Project Manager: Stacey Prudden
Business Affairs: Kacey Kelley

GIF ARTISTS

Cari van der Yacht
Chris Timmons
Justin Gammon
James Kerr

SOCIAL LISTEN AND RESPOND TEAM

AKQA London