Hasta La Creative!

Samsung is keeping up with its favorite advertising pastime: beating up on Apple.

A new spot from 72andSunny takes aim at the iPad Air, poking fun at the grandiose Apple commercial, voiced by Bryan Cranston, that played hide the skinny tablet behind a pencil. In Samsung's cheekier version, the pencil isn't starting poems or finishing symphonies. It's cheating at golf, and getting stuck in ceilings. And hiding behind the iPad Air is an "even thinner" Galaxy tablet, with all kinds of extra whiz-bang features.

Given that Apple pretty much invented—and still leads—the category, it's a bit of an odd choice for Samsung to literally position its product in its rival's shadow. (As pretentious as Apple's tone can be, the brand does have some bragging rights as far as shaping culture goes.) Then again, Samsung's strategy seemed to work pretty well in the smartphone space, and the brand is gaining on Apple in tablet share—it's hard to argue with success, even if Samsung is starting to sound more smug itself.

A second new Samsung spot offers a side-by-side comparison of LeBron James on an iPhone and a Galaxy smartphone. That ad does a better job of staying out of its own way and getting to its point (simply put, that the Galaxy is way better). Still, it's hard to see a stylus pen without thinking of a Palm Pilot … and nothing says 2014 like Palm Pilot.

Funny how Alex Bogusky is still seeing opportunities where brands and agencies are missing them. Case in point: A recent tweet to Liberty Mutual urging the insurance company—whose Winter Olympics ads are all about overcoming setbacks—to make a commercial about Heidi Kloser, the U.S. skier who was badly injured the day before the Sochi Games began.

USA Today has the story. "It was pretty much a no-brainer," says Bogusky, a fellow Coloradan and a big fan of Kloser's. He sent a direct message to Liberty Mutual, which got its agency, Havas Worldwide, working on a commercial. They filmed Kloser, 21, at home in Vail, Colo., where she had returned for surgery and rehab on her knee. Her parents appear, too, and recall Heidi's poignant question to them after the injury. (You probably remember Kloser walking with the help of crutches during the Opening Ceremony.) The ad, which you can see below, will air Wednesday night during NBC's Olympic coverage.

"At Liberty Mutual, we believe that with every setback, there's a chance to come back. And rise," says the voiceover for the company's anthem spot (also posted below), which has been running throughout the Games.

That fits Kloser perfectly, as she is already looking to 2018—although, as she admits to USA Today, "I'd rather star in a commercial because I won a gold medal."

When you use Old Spice hair products, your hair is capable of anything.

First, it leaps off your head—that's a given. Then, as we've seen, it either hits on women at work or skillfully operates claw machines on the boardwalk to retrieve lost children.

Now, though, it reveals its most impressive talent to date—playing all the best-loved Huey Lewis and the News songs on the keyboard. In the interactive video below, also embedded at ThatsThePowerofHair.com, you can request any of 29 Huey Lewis songs, and a mop of hair will play them soulfully for you, supported by props like a disco ball and Hula girl.

"The Power of Love," "The Heart of Rock 'n' Roll," "I Want a New Drug," "Bad Is Bad," "Doing It All for My Baby"? Hear all those and 24 more great hits right now.

The digital experience, on desktop and mobile, is being embedded online in custom banners, news sites and Old Spice's social channels. Agency: Wieden + Kennedy.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Old Spice
Project: "That's the Power of Hair"

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Craig Allen, Jason Bagley, Matt O'Rourke
Copywriter: Jason Kreher
Art Director: Max Stinson
Executive Interactive Producer: Mike Davidson
Director of Broadcast Production: Ben Grylewicz
Director of Interactive Production: Pierre Wendling
Technology Lead: Ryan Bowers
Account Team: Georgina Gooley, Liam Doherty, Nick Pirtle, Michael Dalton, Jessica Monsey
Executive Creative Directors: Susan Hoffman, Joe Staples

Production Company: MJZ
Director: Tom Kuntz
Executive Producer: Scott Howard
Producer: Emily Skinner

Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Carlos Arias
Asst. Editor: Christopher Mitchell
Producer: Lisa Barnable

VFX Company: Framestore, New York
Creative Director: Mike Woods
Producer: Christine Cattano
Head of Commercial Development: Ming-Pong Liu
Lead Developers: Sebastian Buys and Nien Liu
Lead Compositor: Mindy Dubin

Music Company: Stimmung
Executive Producer: Ceinwyn Clark
Post Engineer: Rory Doggett
Composer: Greg Chun

If you need to outrun giant monsters that want to eat you, drive a Subaru Forester.

This Subaru ad from Japan draws its villains from Attack on Titan, the forthcoming live-action adaption of the anime by the same name. The movie's director worked on the commercial, which reportedly included some pretty nifty practical effects, including a puppet that required seven sets of hands to control.

Apparently, dystopian fantasy car battles are in vogue right now. There was that ad where Acuras are actually live horses locked in a bitter race against a gang of evil mechanical horses. And there was that one for the Nissan Rogue, where some guy uses his four-wheel-drive to battle a horde of menacing snowmen.

Sure, Subarus are a little less fight and a little more flight. Then again, the titans don't look like they'd explode into white powder on impact.

BuzzFeed's attempt at an inspiring, empowering video for women falls short, and the target audience is having no problem letting BuzzFeed know it.

"Photoshopping Real Women Into Cover Models" opens with four women lamenting that they'd never look like models in a magazine spread. Each woman then participates in a professional photo shoot—hair, makeup, styling and all—and then a Photoshop expert retouches the images to make them look like typical magazine cover models.

We watch the women's reactions as they see the photos for the first time. And … all of them dislike the retouched photos of themselves.

In light of the wildly popular Dove campaign and the praise Aerie received for promising not to retouch its photos of models, why aren't more people loving this video? Maybe it seems too contrived, and the creators seem too intent on pushing a message to the viewers. The women looked lovely during the photo shoots, and their reactions just don't seem very honest. And while the Photoshop jobs were definitely extreme, the message here is that it's vain for women to even want to look attractive.

"Once someone else has done your makeup, and someone else has done your hair, and someone's directed the way your body looks, and then taken away your imperfections … then there's not much left of who you really are," says one of the four women.

In that one line, women are reduced simply to the way they look.

While some think it's inspirational, others are balking. "Denigrating women for wanting to enhance, improve and better themselves is no better than denigrating women for being fat and ugly," one viewer wrote on Facebook.

If Victoria's Secret's ultra-Photoshopped catalogs are one extreme, and BuzzFeed's "You're vain if you enjoy a blowout" video is the other, maybe most women are looking for a happy medium—at the very least, something that doesn't seem disingenuous.

In retrospect, it seems obvious. To get cats to pay attention to your direct mail, just soak the damn fliers in catnip—and watch the kitties lose their minds when the mail arrives.

That's what Vancouver agency Rethink did recently for a cat litter client. As seen in the video below, the engagement with the marketing is undeniable—and pretty cute to watch also.

Owners have been targeted through their pets' olfactory senses before, of course, though in somewhat grosser ways—like the old Animal Planet ads that smelled like urine, placed at the foot of lampposts in the U.K.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Bulk Cat Litter Warehouse
Agency: Rethink Canada, Vancouver
Creative Directors: Ian Grais, Chris Staples
Art Director: Leia Rogers
Copywriter: Bob Simpson
Designer: Lisa Nakamura
Account Manager: Marie Lunny
Print Producer: Cary Emley / Sue Wilkinson
Printer: Metropolitan Fine Printers
Editor: Chris Nielsen
Cats: Mona, Bella, Ommie, Jojo, Paul, Linus, Malo, Taika,
Riley, Gracie, Prince Ruv, Bagheera, and Pebble

Controversial ministry Abba's Delight has put up a billboard in Louisville, Ky., that targets "people of faith who are uncomfortable with their same-sex attractions."

Abba's Delight founder Daniel Mingo says the billboard, which tells unhappy gay people that "you have options," was intended to be a helpful message, so he was taken aback by the negative feedback he's gotten. Gay reform ministries are quackery to begin with, but they usually aren't this passive-aggressive. Abba's Delight is still denouncing homosexuality and claiming it's incompatible with religious faith, but if gay people are happy being sinful and wrong, this ministry seems to say, they can have at it.

Conversely, John Waters would say anyone who's seriously that conflicted and miserable being gay should do everyone a favor and not be gay, so there's that.

WDRB 41 Louisville News

We often wonder: Who do the kids in our favorite ads become when they grow up? Well, Lori Day, founder of the Brave Girls Alliance, snagged an interview with the girl from the famous 1981 Lego ad (above left) that recently recaptured the zeitgeist—and your Facebook feed—as a protest against the Lego Friends line and the world of pink princesses in general.

Her name is Rachel Giordano. She's 37 now, and a doctor. In the 1981 ad, which we've written about before, she proudly shows off her own creative Lego creation next to the headline, "What it is is beautiful." The copy makes no mention of gender, and the toy is described as a "universal building set." The new Lego Friends line, on the other hand, comes with narratives intended to appeal to girls, like the Heartlake News Van you see Giordano holding in the other photo above, taken recently.

The product summary for the Heartlake News Van on the Lego site says girls can "get Emma ready at the makeup table so she looks her best for the camera." The toy comes with a news desk, but the van itself is mostly a makeup trailer with a huge vanity.

To those who wonder what the big deal is, and what's wrong with the recent developments in gendered toys, Giordano says: "I know that how I played as a girl shaped who I am today. It contributed to me becoming a physician and inspired me to want to help others achieve health and wellness. I co-own two medical centers in Seattle. Doctor kits used to be for all children, but now they are on the boys' aisle. I simply believe that they should be marketed to all children again, and the same with Legos and other toys."

I agree, but let's be frank. We still need the princess toys. My son would be heartbroken without his Tinker Bell.

UPDATE: We've received responses from both Survival Magazine (which is online only had says it has no print edition) and the photographer. You can read their statements at the bottom of this post.

Original item below:

How should you respond if a photographer says you're using her photo without permission? Probably not by calling her an asshole.

Kathy Shea Mormino, proprietor of the popular backyard chicken site The Chicken Chick, says that's what happened to her when she tried to get one of her photos removed from Survival Magazine's Facebook page and blog.

On her own business' Facebook page, Mormino shared a screenshot of an email she received from the magazine with the subject line "You're an asshole Kathy." The note also called her "a complete and total jerk" and threatened to come after her for up to $10,000 in legal fees. The magazine's email called her action a "false take down" and noted "we will be contacting all your sponsors."

Here's how Mormino (whose LinkedIn bio says she's also an attorney) described the situation to her 133,000 Facebook fans:

A fan alerted me yesterday that someone removed my watermark from my photo & used it without permission on their blog and Facebook page, so I sent them an email AND FB message requesting that they remove it. They ignored me & deleted my FB request, so I reported the copyright infringement to the Internet Police who took it down for them. THIS is the email I just received from Survival Magazine. What on earth is WRONG with some people?! Please feel free to let them know what you think of that.

Her supporters say they posted several incensed comments on the magazine's Facebook page, only to have all the comments removed. The page currently does not allow any "posts by others" and seems to be removing comments about the issue when they're posted to the magazine's other Facebook activity.

We reached out to both Mormino and Survival Magazine early today for comment and will update if we hear back.

UPDATE: Survival Magazine tells Adweek that Mormino never contacted them about the photo but instead complained to Facebook. One of its contributors sent the email to Mormino, the magazine claims, "not in response to any contact from her but in response to her complaining to facebook about several of our posts that had nothing to do with her chickens or her content. She was doing malicious stuff. She filed take down notices on about 10 of our posts that custom content created by us and had nothing to do with her."

The magazine also claims that the watermark was never removed from the photo, and that the photo was removed "immediately" after the magazine was notified of Mormino's Facebook post, not because she contacted the magazine.

Survival also confirms it shut down its Facebook page because of the ordeal.

UPDATE 2: Mormino reached out to Adweek late Friday to provide the following screenshots and comment. She denies Survival Magazine's portrayal of events, saying she only filed a take-down notice with Facebook for her photo and no other content. 

To disprove the site's claims that "she never ever notified us, not once," Mormino provided the following screenshot of her original Facebook comment notifying them of her copyright:

Mormino also sent Adweek copies of the original email she received from Survival Magazine calling her an asshole. Here is the complete text:

For someone who raises chickens you're a complete and total jerk, you have cost us hundreds of dollars in promotions of our posts, and we will be sueing you to recoup that and legal fees which are estimated to be between 5-10k. What an asshole with nothing better to do than go around the web filing false take down notices. We will also be contacting all of your sponsors.

In addition, Mormino sent us Facebook's confirmation notice for the removal of the chicken photo, which she says it's the only content she filed a take-down request for.

After the jump, you can read Mormino's full statement:

The screenshot images in the photo collage speak for themselves. One can plainly see that I contacted Survival Magazine directly by commenting underneath my photo on their Facebook page at 2:00 pm on 2/12/14.  I identified myself as the owner of the copyrighted photo and requested that they remove it from their page. Survival Magazine deleted my comment, ignoring my respectful, polite request. I filed a copyright infringement complaint with Facebook and Facebook removed the photo from Survival Magazine's FB page at 5:40pm. For Survival Magazine to claim that they took the photo down themselves, implying that their moral compass pointed in the right direction at any point in the course of these interactions, is patently false.

At 5:50pm on 2/12/14, an unidentified agent from Survival Magazine emailed me the profane response to Facebook's take-down notice seen in the photo collage above. No person at Survival Magazine has ever identified themselves as the author of that email or as the author of the reply to the Adweek article, which calls into question more than just their professionalism. For some anonymous entity at Survival Magazine to claim that I filed a "false take down notice" is sheer insanity. There is no dispute that the photo is of my chickens and my chicken coops in my backyard or that I took it and watermarked it. Further, there is no dispute that Survival Magazine used my photo on Facebook and their website without my permission.

Finally, in response to the claim that I filed "take down notices on about 10 of our posts that custom content created {sic} by us and had nothing to do with her" I categorically deny that baseless claim.

I challenge Survival Magazine to produce an iota of evidence in support of the accusation that I filed more than one Facebook copyright complaint. Facebook provides notices to the complainant and offender when removing content from a page; those notices contain the complainant's name and contact information as well as a section that requires the complainant demonstrate ownership of the challenged content. I filed one and only one complaint against Survival Magazine's Facebook page. Any accusation to the contrary is 100% fabricated. Whether my photo ever contained a watermark and whether Survival Magazine ever removed a watermark from my photo is completely irrelevant to the issue of unauthorized use of my intellectual property.

Last, this is a very clear instance of theft of intellectual property by Survival Magazine. I would have excused the unauthorized use of my photo. Their bad behavior ex post facto, however, is completely inexcusable. 

McDonald's puts our minds to the test in this British campaign from Razorfish that features prankvertising and an online quiz.

The premise is that people can't concentrate on anything else when the Big Mac is nearby. Unlike some recent hair-raising ad stunts, and the million-calorie sandwich itself, the prank element here is pretty benign.

On a busy street, a young couple with a camera ask presumably unsuspecting passersby to take their picture. As they primp, a large portrait of a Big Mac is carried past by a different couple, who quickly switch places with the original pair just as the photo is about to be snapped. (It's cool how boyfriend No. 1 starts a sentence as the Big Mac obscures him from view, then boyfriend No. 2 appears and completes the sentence once the switch is made.)

The subjects don't seem to notice that anything's amiss. Maybe a devil baby puking up special sauce would've gotten their attention? Just a thought.

Anyway, the original couple from the clip also host a series of interactive "mind games" designed to demonstrate the Big Mac's distracting power. I thought the hypnotic properties of two all beef patties, yada yada, on a sesame seed bun had been irrefutably established long ago. Obviously, when one appears, so plump and juicy … I cannot turn away!

Oddly, when McD's showed in detail how McNuggets were made, I couldn't make the screen go dark fast enough. Still, I'll have fries with that!