Mar 14

Olympic Skier Ted Ligety Chats With a Snowflake Depressed About Climate Change

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Olympic skier Ted Ligety plays straight man to a sullen, animated snowflake in this 90-second spot from Al Gore's Climate Reality Project.

It's part of CRP's "I Am Pro Snow" campaign featuring winter sports stars. Ligety's side of the conversation was created from footage of the gold medalist chatting with a technician while shooting a segment for Warren Miller's documentary Ticket to Ride.

Copywriter Jim Heekin voices the snowflake, who's just not cool with global warming. "For me, 2013—not the best year," he says. "I had a lot of my friends, close friends, melt way before their time." The flake tries to get a grip, telling Ligety: "Sorry, dude. This is my stuff. I should be a better friend to you."

The absurdity continues as the skier provides thigh-drum accompaniment while the flake raps, "Yo, my name is snow/And my beats got flow/And, yo, these winters gettin' hotter/'Case you didn't know." (Climate change skeptics will, of course, point to the fact that early 2014 has been one of the coldest winters for most of the U.S.)

Props to CRP for taking an unconventional approach, though the spot might be a bit too flaky for its own good.


    



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Feb 14

Most Interesting Man Eclipsed by Fake Bobsledders in New Dos Equis Ad

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The Olympic athletes in this Dos Equis ad may just be actors (the Olympics won't let non-sponsors use legit athletes for advertising), but they still end up being the stars of this ad ostensibly about the Most Interesting Man in the World.

It's less an ad for beer and more of an ad for female bobsledding, since the women at the start of this video have gotten a lot of the attention. Gross, creepy attention, especially in the comments of the YouTube clip or whichever website is drooling over them, but attention all the same.

Far be it for me to say that the Most Interesting Man in the World has been upstaged, but he's definitely got some competition.


    



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Feb 14

This Catchy Jamaican Bobsled Song Is Timed to Match the Track at Sochi

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Have you been waiting for someone to come up with a Jamaican Bobsled Team reggae song synced with the course in Sochi, fitting the exact shape of the racetrack with all its twists and turns?

Well wait no more, because Draftfcb New York and the Jamaica Tourist Board have done just that. According to Draftfcb, "If you press play at the exact moment the Jamaican Bobsled Team starts its run down the actual racetrack in Sochi on Sunday, you'll have your very own authentic soundtrack to one of the most anticipated moments of the Winter Olympics."

The song's got a catchy groove—"To the right! To the left! It's bobsled time!"—with an appealing animated promo clip that recalls old-school video-game graphics. ("Mon" appears just once in the lyrics, in case you were wondering.)

This marks Draftfcb's second recent tuneful foray, following the Kmart/Joe Boxer "Jingle Bells" spot from the agency's Chicago office. The reggae song's cute, but that ballsy yuletide classic set an extremely high bar for inspired musical silliness. Sorry, bobsledders, I'm afraid it's all downhill from there.


    



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Jan 15

BBC’s Sochi Ad Will Make You Never Want to Leave the House, Much Less Compete in the Olympics

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The BBC's official trailer for its coverage of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, has its champions and detractors, with some applauding the 90-second clip's epic sweep and others lamenting its dark tone and dearth of emotional appeal.

Created by RKCR/Y&R and director Tomek Baginski, the film focuses on hyper-realistic winter desolation, its frames filled with frozen peaks, dagger-like ice formations and majestic pines toppling in plumes of snow. A booming narration by actor Charles Dance, as the voice of nature, begins: "I am the dreadful menace. The one whose will is done. The haunting chill upon your neck. I am the conundrum." And he gets even more intense, warning: "The ones that came before you. Stood strong and tall and brave. But I stole their dreams away. Those dreams could not be saved."

Athletes appear around the one-minute mark, trekking across a lonely mountain pass, like some lost party of explorers inexplicably hauling skis, skates and hockey sticks in a haze of hypothermic delirium.

Response has been decidedly mixed. Mostly I applaud the BBC for trying something a bit unexpected. If nothing else, the approach is sparking conversation and debate, fueling the promotional fires, while a more aspirational/feel-good spot, no matter how marvelously executed, would've been predictable and perhaps left some viewers (and reviewers) feeling a bit numb.

Yes, a focus on individual athletes or specific events might have been compelling, but the clip does well in positioning the Winter Games as an outsized, soul-stirring challenge, a war waged against almost mythic forces poised to smite us at every turn. The voiceover, from Tywin Lannister himself, drives home the point that the Olympics can be the ultimate game of thrones.


    

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